remittent fevers, bowel affections, and all forms of malarial or marsh
diseases: fewer would die than of those in the city, but a large
proportion would come out with broken-down constitutions. Yellow
fever sometimes extends for two or three miles around the city; but
if it does, it always commences in the latter. Here, then, we have
three distinct medical climates actually within sight of each other.
This is by no means a peculiarity of one locality, but thousands of
similar examples may be cited in warm climates. Charleston, South
Carolina, its suburbs, and Sullivan’s Island, in the harbor near the
city, give us another example quite as pertinent as that of Mobile.
In our cotton-growing States, the malarial climate is by no means
confined to the low and marshy districts; on the contrary, in the
high, undulating lands throughout this extensive region, wherever
there is fertility of soil, the population is subjected more or less to
malarial diseases. These remarks apply, as will be seen further on,
more particularly to the white population, the negroes being comparatively
exempt from all the endemic diseases of the South.9 The
tropical climate of Africa, so far as known to us, differs widely from
the same parallels in other parts of the globe: it has no wow-malarial
climate. Dr. Livingstone “has been struck down by African fever
upwards of thirty times,” in sixteen years.10
But let us go a little more into details, and examine a few of the
races of man, in connection with non-malarial climates. The Anglo-
Saxon is the most migrating and colonizing race of the present day,
and may he selected for illustration. Place an Englishman in the
most healthful part of Bengal or Jamaica, where malarial fevers are
unknown, and although he may be subjected to no attack of acute
disease, may, as we are told, become acclimated, and may live with a
tolerable degree of health his threescore and ten years; yet, he soon
ceases to be the same individual, and his descendants degenerate.
He complains bitterly of the heat, becomes tanned; his plump,
plethoric frame is attenuated; his blood loses fibrine and red globules;
both body and mind become sluggish; gray hairs and other marks
of premature age appear-—a man of 40 looks fifty years old —the
average duration of life is shortened (as shown by life-insurance
tables); and the race in time would he exterminated, if cut off from
fresh supplies of immigrants. The same facts hold in our Southern
„ A medical friend (D r . G o rd o n ) who has had much experience in the diseases of the
interior of Alabama, South Carolina, and Louisiana, has been so kind- as to look over these
sheets for me, and assures me that I have used language much too strong with, regard to
the exemption of negroes. He says they are quite as liable as the whites, according to his
observations, to intermittents and dysentery.
10 “ London Chronicle” Dec. 15, 1856.
XX. XV . O iu
States, though in a less degree; and the effect is in proportion to the
high range of temperature. We here have short U e r s , whicl do
not exist in he Tropics; and the wear and tear of W „ e r s
are by them to a great extent, counterbalanced. The English a“ mv
M g g that Englishmen * B B S S S b S S l
length of residence affords no immunitv but on / f ’
— r offlcere snd
remain longest in the climate.11 8
— T a t H i l f '7.E S“ on “ » • i *
J “ws in hot latitudes, wift E e 2 % £
T a‘ ; b"* S i “ ““* >» «tanged i Z S
ong.ua! type by ages of residence in foreign climef. The»“ a
little colony of Jews at Oranganor, in Malabar, near Cochin who
have resided there more than 1000 years, and 4 o have p r e s s ed
the Jewish type unchanged. There is in the same neighborhood a iR B i ^ I 91 Waek'JW8’blood. S There are also m India the Parsee sb, uwt ho havMe b eoefn fafilnmdoosot
as long m the counfay as the Jews, and still do not approximate to
P P f f f t t m°re’ in India itself we see, in the
different castes the most opposite complexions, which have remained
independent of climate several thousand years. Unlike the Anglo-
Saxons,- the Jews seem to bear up well against that climate.
of ^ +u +mStS °f’Warm eountries nowhere present the same vigoi
aithou^ t i ° n “ P°pulati0n of Great Britain or Germany; and
although they may escape attacks of fever, they are annoyed by
Bp 11B1 KI no x ’a sse!rtfs that tthheB mG ear 9manWic racHes w aonudld s hdoiret eoru-ltiv eind ■MB i if sa andthough 1 am not di8posed to g°fo ms
wwehltl laTdadplteedd ttoo Sth ose races ^as Tthen t e°mUpr e^ra6tWe zEo^nel aonfd E Sutraotpese afrreo mso
which history derives them. Europe, irom
There is, unquestionably, an acclimation, though imperfect as-ainst
thm^ h S B B B l m l more especkily their
marsh fo ** grown UP> are less liable to violent attacks of our
the n o r t r rT h ^ lV ^ 0^ t0 IN ^ fr68h immigrants from
flammable • Lri ^ pletboric’ tbeir s^ tems “ «re ine
n S ™ t4h»a n na!ti ves, ith eyn 0etx pmer°ireen cHea bthlee m, w*eh e«n* a*tt1ac k%ed , thine sae
w i ° HN30N on TroPical Climates, London, 1841, p. 66.
o f th e ejew ” ” d e ta ilS ’ " T m S °fM a n k i n d ’” N o t i & G l i d d o n , c h a p t e r “ P h y s i c a l H i s to r y