PHILOSOPHY OF THE NEGRO CONSTITUTION, ELICITED BY QUESTIONS PROPOUNDED BY DR. C. R. HALL, OF TORQUAY, ENGLAND, THROUGH PROF. JACKSON, OF MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL COLLEGE, BOSTON, TO SAML. A. CARTWRIGHT, M.D., NEW ORLEANS.

Dear Sir:—The paper of mine, alluded to by your London correspondent, Dr. Hall, which he saw in the medical work you mention, is not, as he supposes, "The Report on the diseases and physical peculiarities of the Negro race," the physicians of Louisiana, in convention assembled, appointed me to make; but only some additional observations intended for students and those persons whose want of knowledge of Comparative Anatomy prevented them from understanding the Report. The Appendix, intended for students, was published in the Charleston (South Carolina) Medical Journal, and also in the work you mention, under the caption of the original Report to the Medical Convention, and the Report itself was omitted by the editors of those works under the erroneous impression, that the Appendix for students contained the substance of that paper; whereas it does so only in the sense that the four first rules contain the substance of the arithmetic. No wonder your intelligent correspondent should not find, in the Appendix of the Report, the information he was seeking, and hence the questions he asks you to refer to me for solution. I herewith beg leave to send you a copy of the "Report on the diseases and physical peculiarities of the Negro race," which the Louisiana physicians appointed me to make to the State Medical Society. In that paper your correspondent will find most of the questions he asks already answered.

I thank you for the opportunity thus afforded me of supplying an omission in the Southern works above alluded to, of a paper, very imperfect and defective, it is true, yet embodying in a small space the results of the experience and observation of a Southern practitioner, extending through a period of active service of a third of a century's duration, and which had the honor to meet with the approbation of the physicians generally of the South. To the few questions not answered therein I propose to reply, and at the same time to extend my remarks on that branch of the subject more directly connected with the particular object of your correspondent's investigations.

To the question, "Is not Phthisis very common among the slaves of the slave States and unknown among the native Africans at home?" I reply in the negative, that Phthisis, so far from being common among the slaves of the slave States, is very seldom met with. As to the native Africans at home, little or nothing is known of their diseases. They have no science or literature among them, and never had. The word Consumption, is applied to two very different diseases among negroes. The Cachexia Africana, Dirt-eating of the English, and Mal d'Estomac of the French, commonly called Negro Consumption, is a very different malady from Phthisis Pulmonalis, properly so called. The Cachexia Africana, like other spanoemic states of the system, may run into Phthisis, or become complicated with it. Dr. Hall asks, in what does the peculiarity of Negro Consumption consist? It consists in being an anoematosis and not a tuberculosis. Not having seen my Report, he may have inferred that it was a tubercular disease—whereas it is an erythism of mind connected with spanoemia. Negroes, however, are sometimes, though rarely, afflicted with tubercula pulmonum, or Phthisis, properly so called, which has some peculiarities. With them it is more palpably a secondary disease than it appears to be among white people. European physicians are just beginning to see and acknowledge the truth taught by our Rush in the last century, that what is called Phthisis Pulmonalis is not a primary, but a secondary disease; the tubercles of the lungs not being a cause, but an effect of the primary or original vice of blood origin, or as he called it, general debility. For half a century the attention of the medical profession has been directed to the special and ultimate results of Phthisis, instead of the primary condition of the system causing the formation of tubercles. The new knowledge, derived from the stethoscope, by detecting those abnormal deposits of abortive nutrition, called tubercles, has been received for more than its worth, and has greatly served to keep up the delusion of treating effects instead of causes. The tubercular deposits, revealed by auscultation, are not only the effects of abortive nutrition, but the latter is itself the effect of some derangement in the digestive and respiratory functions, vitiating the nutritive fluids, and producing what Rush called general debility. The defect in the respiratory organs arises from the fact, long overlooked, that in a great many persons, particularly the Anglo-Saxons, the lungs are inadequate to the task of depurating the superabundant blood, which is thrown upon them at the age of maturity, unless aided by an occasional blood-letting, active and abundant exercise of the muscles in the open air, and a nutritious diet, as advised by the American Hippocrates, Benjamin Rush. White children sometimes have Phthisis, but here, as everywhere, it is a rare complaint before maturity (twenty-one in the male and eighteen in the female.) The lymphatic and nervous temperament predominating until then, secures them against this fell destroyer of the master race of men. Phthisis is, par excellence, a disease of the sanguineous temperament, fair complexion, red or flaxen hair, blue eyes, large blood vessels, and a bony encasement too small to admit the full and free expansion of the lungs, enlarged by the superabundant blood, which is determined to those organs during that first half-score of years immediately succeeding puberty. Well-formed chests offer no impediment to its inroads, if the volume of blood be out of proportion to the expansibility and capacity of the pulmonary organs. Hence it is most apt to occur precisely at, and immediately following, that period of life known as matureness, when the sanguineous system becomes fully developed and gains the mastery, so to speak, over the lymphatic and nervous systems. With negroes, the sanguineous never gains the mastery over the lymphatic and nervous systems. Their digestive powers, like children, are strong, and their secretions and excretions copious, excepting the urine, which is rather scant. At the age of maturity they do not become dyspeptic and feeble with softening and attenuation of the muscles, as among those white people suffering the ills of a defective system of physical education, and a want of a wholesome, nutritious diet.

Your correspondent asks, "Do the slaves consume much sugar, or take rum in intoxicating quantities?"

They do not consume much sugar, but are occasionally supplied with molasses. Their diet consists principally of pickled pork and corn bread, rice, hominy, beans, peas, potatoes, yams, pumpkins and turnips. Soups, tea, coffee and slops, are seldom used by those in health, and they object to all such articles of diet, as making them weak. They prefer the fattest pork to the lean. In the Atlantic States salted fish is substituted for or alternated with pork—the shad, mackerel and herring, principally the latter. In Cuba pickled beef is used, but they prefer pork. Their diet is of the most nutritious kind, and they will not labor with much effect on any other than a strong, rich diet. With very few exceptions, they do not take rum or other intoxicating drinks, except as a medicine, or in holiday times. Something equivalent to the "Maine Liquor Law," (which you can explain to your correspondent,) has long been in practical operation on all well regulated Southern plantations. The experience of two centuries testifies to the advantages of restraining the black population, by arbitrary power, from the free use of intoxicating poisons. Man has no better natural right to poison himself or his neighbor, than to maim, wound or kill himself or his neighbor. In regard to intoxicating drinks, the negroes of the South are under wiser laws than any other people in the Union—those of Maine excepted. But these wise unwritten laws do not so well protect those negroes who reside in or near towns and villages, and are not under proper discipline. The Melanic race have a much stronger propensity to indulge in the intemperate use of ardent spirits than white people. They appear to have a natural fondness for alcoholic drinks and tobacco. They need no schooling, as the fair skin races do, to acquire a fondness for either. Nearly all chew tobacco or smoke, and are not sickened and disgusted with the taste of that weed as white men always are when they first begin to use it. As an instance of their natural love for ardent spirits, I was called to a number of negro children, who found a bottle of whisky under a bed, and drank it all without dilution, although it was the first they had ever tasted. It contained arsenic, and had been placed where they found it by the father of some of the children, with a view of poisoning a supposed enemy. But with that want of forethought, so characteristic of the negro race, he did not think of the greater probability of his own children finding and drinking the poison than the enemy he intended it for.

I am asked, "If I have determined by my own observation the facts in regard to the darker color of the secretions, the flesh, the membranes and the blood of the negro than the white man—or is the statement made on the authority of others?"

The statement is made on the authority of some of the most distinguished anatomists and physiologists of the last century, confirmed by my own repeated observations. The authorities to which I particularly refer are Malpighi, Stubner, Meckel, Pechlin, Albinus, Soemmering, Virey and Ebel. Almost every year of my professional life, except a few years when abroad, I have made post mortem examinations of negroes, who have died of various diseases, and I have invariably found the darker color pervading the flesh and the membranes to be very evident in all those who died of acute diseases. Chronic ailments have a tendency to destroy the coloring matter, and generally cause the mucous surfaces to be paler and whiter than in the white race.

I now come to the main and important question—the last of the series, and the most important of all, viz: "How is it ascertained that negroes consume less oxygen than white people?"

I answer, by the spirometer. I have delayed my reply to make some further experiments on this branch of the subject. The result is, that the expansibility of the lungs is considerably less in the black than the white race of similar size, age and habit. A white boy expelled from his lungs a larger volume of air than a negro half a head taller and three inches larger around the chest. The deficiency in the negro may be safely estimated at 20 per cent, according to a number of observations I have made at different times. Thus, 174 being the mean bulk of air receivable by the lungs of a white person of five feet in height, 140 cubic inches are given out by a negro of the same stature. It must be remembered, however, that great variations occur in the bulk of air which can be expelled from the chest, depending much upon the age, size, health and habits of each individual. But, as a general rule, it may be safely stated, that a white man, of the same age and size, who has been bred to labor, is, in comparison to the negro, extra capacious. To judge the negro by spirometrical observations made on the white man, would indicate, in the former a morbid condition when none existed. But I am free to confess that this is a subject open to further observations. My estimate may be under or over the exact difference of the capacity of the two races for the consumption of oxygen.

The question is also answered anatomically, by the comparatively larger size of the liver, and the smaller size of the lungs; and physiologically, by the roule the liver performs in the negro's economy being greater, and that of the lungs and kidneys less, than in the white man. But I have not the honor to be the first to call attention to the difference in the pulmonary apparatus of the negro and the white man, and to the fact of the deficiency in the renal secretion. The honor is due to Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States. In his Notes on Virginia, Mr. Jefferson suggested that there was a difference in the pulmonary apparatus of negroes, and that they do not extricate as much caloric from the air by respiration, and consesequently consume less oxygen. He also called attention to the fact of the defective action of the kidneys. He remarks, "To our reproach be it said, that although the negro race has been under our eye for a century and a half, it has not been considered as a subject of natural history." Another half century has passed away, and nothing has yet been done to acquire a knowledge of the diseases and physical peculiarities of a people, constituting nearly a moiety of the population of fifteen States of the American confederacy, and whose labor, in cultivating a single plant, which no other operatives but themselves can cultivate without sacrificing ease, comfort, health and life, affords a cheap material, in sufficient abundance, to clothe the naked of the whole world. Even the little scientific knowledge heretofore acquired concerning them, has been so far forgotten, that when I enumerated a few of their anatomical and physical peculiarities, well known to the medical men of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I was supposed by some of my cotemporaries in the South to be broaching novelties and advancing speculations wild and crude. But I would not be understood as underrating the editors of the Charleston Medical Journal and some other Southern writers, for mistaking anatomical facts for wild speculations, and condemning them as such in their editorial apologies for not publishing the same. The fault lies not with them, but in that system of education which seems intended to keep physicians, divines, and all other classes of men in Egyptian darkness of every thing pertaining to the philosophy of the negro constitution. It is only the country and village practitioners of the Southern States (among professional men,) who appear to know any thing at all about the peculiar nature of negroes—having derived their knowledge, not from books or schools, but in the field of experience. It is the latter class of medical men, by far the most numerous in the South, who have with great unanimity sustained my feeble efforts to make the negro's peculiar nature known, and the important fact that he consumes less oxygen than the white man. Until his defective hÆmatosis be made an element in calculating the best means for improving the negro's condition, our Northern people ought not to wonder at finding their colored population, born to freedom by the side of the church and school-house door, in a lower species of degradation, after trying for half a century or more to elevate them, than an equal number of slaves any where to be found in the South. "Will not a lover of natural history," says Mr. Jefferson, "one who views the gradations in all the races of animals with the eye of philosophy, excuse an effort to keep those of the department of man as distinct as nature formed them?" But no effort has since been made to draw the distinctions between the black and the white races by the knife of the anatomist, but much false logic has been introduced into our books and schools, to argue down the distinctions which nature has made. It is to anatomy and physiology we should look, when vindicating the liberty of human nature, to see that its dignity and best interest be preserved. "Among the Romans," says Mr. Jefferson, "emancipation required but one effort, but with us a second is necessary, unknown to history." This second belongs properly to natural history; the difference in the last not being artificial, as among the Romans, or the present Britons, requiring only an act of legislation or a revolution to efface forever, but natural, which no human laws or governmental changes can ever obliterate. The framers of our Constitution were aware of these facts, and built the Constitution upon the basis of natural distinctions or physical differences in the two races composing the American population. A very important difference between the two will be found in the fact of the greater amount of oxygen consumed by the one than the other. If the Constitution be worth defending, surely the great truths of natural history, on which it rests as a basis, are worth being made known and regarded by our statesmen. That negroes consume less oxygen than the white race, is proved by their motions being proverbially much slower, and their want of muscular and mental activity. But to comprehend fully the weight of this proof of their defective hÆmatosis, it is necessary to bear in mind one of the great leading truths disclosed by comparative anatomy. Cuvier was the first to demonstrate beyond a doubt that muscular energy and activity are in direct proportion to the development and activity of the pulmonary organs. In his 29th lesson, vol. vii, p. 17, D'Anatomie ComparÉe, he says, "Dans les animaux vertebrÉs cette quantitÉ de respiration fait connaÎtre presque par un calcul mathÉmatique la nature particuliÈre de chaque class." In the preceding page he says,—"That the relations observed in the different animals, between the quantity of their respiration and the energy of their motive force, is one of the finest demonstrations that comparative anatomy can furnish to physiology, and at the same time one of the best applications of comparative anatomy to natural history." The slower motions of the owl prove to the natural historian that it consumes less oxygen than the eagle. By the same physiological principle he can tell that the herring is the most active among fish, and the flounder the slowest, by merely seeing the gills of each: those of the herring being very large, prove that it consumes much oxygen and is very active; while the flounder, with its small gills, consumes but little, and is very slow in its motions as a necessary consequence. Hence the habitual slower motions of the negro than the white man, is a positive proof that he consumes less oxygen. The slow gait of the negro is an important element to be taken into consideration in studying his nature. I have the authority of one of the very best observers of mankind, that this element in the negro's economy is particularly worthy of being studied. It is no less an authority than the father of his country, the first President of the United States, the illustrious Washington. Washington knew better, perhaps, than any other man what the white man could do; his power of endurance and strength of wind under a given speed of motion. Yet he found that all his observations on the white race were inapplicable to negroes. To know what they could do, and to ascertain their power of endurance and strength of wind, new observations had to be made, and he made them accordingly. He made them on his own negroes. He saw they did not move like the soldiers he had been accustomed to command. Their motions were much slower, and they performed their tasks in a more dilatory manner; the amount of labor they could perform in a given time, with ease and comfort to themselves, could not be told by his knowledge of what white men could do. He therefore noted the gait or movements natural to negroes, and made observations himself of how much they could effect in a given time, under the slow motions or gait natural to them. He did this to enable him to judge of what would be a reasonable service to expect from them, and to know when they loitered and when they performed their duty. Those persons unacquainted with the important truth that negroes are naturally slower in their motions than white people, judging the former by the latter, often attempt to drive them into the same brisk motions. But a day's experience ought to be enough to teach them that every attempt to drive negroes to the performance of tasks equal to what the white laborer would voluntarily impose upon himself, is an actual loss to the master; who, instead of getting more service out of them, actually gets less, and soon none, if such a course be persisted in; because they become disabled in body and indisposed in mind to perform any service at all. Every master or overseer, although he may know nothing of the law above mentioned, discovered by Cuvier, may soon learn from experience the important fact, that there is no other alternative than to let their negroes assume, by their own instincts, the natural gait or movement peculiar to them, and then, like Washington, observe what can be effected in a given time by that given gait or movement, and to ask for nor expect more. In vol. ii, pages 511 to 512, (Washington's Writings, published by Jared Sparks) are recorded a few of the observations made by the father of his country on his own slaves, as an illustration of the preceding remarks. It is to be regretted that Mr. Sparks, out of deference to a modern species of idolatry (all fanaticism is idolatry,) which has taken deep root in Great Britain and despotic Europe, and has from thence been transplanted into our republic, particularly in the Northern portion of it, should have suppressed so much of the valuable observations of Washington on the negro race, as only to publish a small fragment of the extensive knowledge his comprehensive mind had stored up on this important subject, well known to his neighbors. The fragment informs us, that on a certain day he visited his plantations, and found that certain negro slaves there mentioned, by the names of George, Tom and Mike, had only hewed a certain number of feet—whereupon Washington sat down and observed their motions, letting them proceed their own way," and ascertained how many feet each hewed in one hour and a quarter. He also made observations on his sawyers at the same time and in the same manner. From the data thus acquired he ascertained, in the short space of an hour and a quarter, how many feet would be a day's work for hewing, and how many for sawing, under their usual slow gait or movement. This hewing and sawing were of poplar. "What may be the difference, therefore," says Washington, "between the working of this wood and other, some future observations must make known." But Mr. Sparks, out of deference to the new school of idolatry, having its head quarters in Exeter Hall, omitted, almost entirely, the publication of any more observations on the subject. It is no less idolatry to set up an anti-scriptural dogma and to make it a rule of action, than to worship a block or a graven image in the place of the true God. The true God has said in the Pentateuch, the most authentic books of the Bible, "And of the heathen shall ye buy bond-men and bond-maids [slaves] and your children shall inherit them after you, and they shall be your bondmen [slaves] forever." Leviticus, chap. xxv, verses 44, 45, 46. But the Dogma or Negro god of Exeter Hall says that "negro slavery is sin," and that it is contrary to the moral sense or conscience. Medicine was anciently called the divine art; to be entitled to hold that appellation, ought it not to lend its aid to arrest in this happy republic the progress of idolatry, which is only another name for fanaticism? And will your learned correspondent help to arrest it in England? Or will he, like Prichard, Todd, and others, make science bow to the policy of his government?—To build up India at the expense of our Union? The subject of his investigations, tubercular disease, if properly studied, leads directly to that species of knowledge, enabling him to determine on physiological principles, which is the best system of ethics, that taught in the Bible, to enslave the Canaanite, or that taught in Exeter Hall, to set him free? It will lead him to the discovery, that the negro, or Canaanitish race, consume less oxygen than the white, and that as a necessary consequence of the deficient aeration of the blood in the lungs, a hebetude of mind and body is the inevitable physiological effect; thus making it a mercy and a blessing to negroes to have persons in authority set over them, to provide for and take care of them. Under the dogma or new commandment to free the Canaanite, practically exercised in Van Dieman's Land and at the Cape of Good Hope, the poor negro race have become nearly annihilated. Whereas under that system of ethics taught in the Bible and made a rule of action in the Southern States, the descendants of Canaan are more rapidly increasing in numbers, and have more of the comforts and pleasures of life, and more morality and Christianity among them than any others of the same race on any other portion of the globe. They are daily bought and sold, and inherited as property, as the Scriptures said they should be. Whereas in all those countries and places in which they are set free, in obedience to the dogma that "slavery is sin," they rapidly degenerate into barbarism, as they are doing in the West Indies, or become extinct as in Van Dieman's Land. The physiological fact that negroes consume less oxygen indicates the superior wisdom of the precepts taught in the Bible regarding those people, to any promulgated from Exeter Hall. Experience also proves the former to be the best. You hear of the poor negroes, or colored people, as you call them, being beaten with many stripes by their masters and overseers. But owing to the fact that they consume less oxygen than white people, and the other physical differences founded on difference of structure, they beat one another, when free from the white man's authority, with ten stripes where they would get one from him. They are as much in slavery in Boston as in New Orleans. They suffer more from corporeal or other punishments in the cellars and dark lanes and alleys of Boston, New York and Philadelphia, by the cruel tyranny practiced by the strong over the weak and helpless, than an equal number in Southern slavery. In slavery the stripes fall upon the evil disposed, vicious, buck negro fellows. But when removed from the white man's authority, the latter make them fall on helpless women and children, the weak and the infirm. Good conduct, so far from being a protection, invites aggression.

But what connection have these observations, you may say, with the subject of Dr. Hall's inquiries, and what light do they throw on tubercular disease? They show that there exists an intimate connection between the amount of oxygen consumed in the lungs and the phenomena of body and mind. They point to a people whose respiratory apparatus is so defective, that they have not sufficient industry and mental energy to provide for themselves, or resolution sufficiently strong to prevent them, when in freedom, from being subjected to the arbitrary, capricious will of the drunken and vicious of their own color, who may happen to have greater physical strength and more cunning; they show that Phthisis is a disease of the master race, and not of the slave race—that it is the bane of that master race of men, known by an active hÆmatosis; by the brain receiving a larger quantity of aerated blood than it is entitled to; by the strong development of the circulating system; by the energy of intellect; by the strength and activity of the muscular system; the vivid imagination; the irritable, mobile, ardent and inflammatory temperament, and the indomitable will and love of freedom. Whereas the negro constitution, being the opposite of all this, is not subject to Phthisis, although it partakes of what is called the scrofulous diathesis. In the negro constitution, as the Frenchman would say, "l'arbre arteriel cede sa prominance À l'arbre veineuse," spreading coldness, languor and want of energy over the entire system. The white fluids, or lymphatic temperament, predominating, they are not so liable as the fair race, to inflammatory diseases of the lungs, or any other organ; but from the superabundant viscidities and mucosities of their mucous surfaces, they are more liable to engorgements and pulmonary congestions than any other race of men. In proof of which I beg leave to refer your correspondent to a standard work entitled "Observations sur les Maladies des Negres, par M. Dazille. Paris, 1776."

Pneumonia, without subjective symptoms, is very common among them. Diphtheretic affections, so common among white children, are very rare among negroes. Intercurrent Pneumonia is more common among them than any other class of people. It is met with in Typhoid fevers, Rheumatism and hepatic derangements, to which they are very liable in the cold season. The local malady requires a different treatment, to correspond with the general disorder. Bad, vicious, ungovernable negroes are subject, to what might properly be termed, Scorbutic Pneumonia—a blood disease, requiring anti-scorbutics. Scorbutic negroes are always vicious or worthless. A course of anti-scorbutics will reform their morals, and make good negroes out of worthless ones. They are liable to suffocative orthopnoea after measles, and die unless bled and purged. But purgatives are injurious in almost all their other affections involving the respiratory organs, except such as act especially on the liver. They check expectoration, says Dazille, and lay the foundations of those effusions and depots of matter so often mistaken for genuine Phthisis. Auscultation cannot well be made available with them. The nose pleads to the eye and touch to form the diagnosis, without calling into requisition the ear. A single examination by auscultation, in persons abounding with so much phlegm, is not sufficient to arrive at a correct diagnosis. Repeated examinations in various postures are too tedious in execution, and too offensive to the auscultator, to come into general use in diagnosing the diseases of the Melanic race. This valuable mode of exploration, so useful in many cases, as practiced by experts, has of late years been carried to a ridiculous extreme, in being made to deceive and delude more practitioners than it enlightens, from the haste and inexperience of those who practice it. With negroes it is unnecessary, except in some rare instances. Their diseases, like their passions, have each its peculiar expression stamped in the countenance. They are like young children in this respect. They cannot disguise their countenance like white people. An intelligent and observant observer can tell from their countenance when they are plotting mischief, or have committed some crime; when they are satisfied or dissatisfied; when in pleasure or in pain; when troubled or disturbed in mind; or when telling a falsehood instead of the truth. An observant physician has only to bring the old science of prosoposcopia, so much used by Hippocrates in forming his diagnosis, to bear upon negroes, to be able, by a little experience, to ascertain the most of them at a glance by the expression of their countenance.

They are very subject to fevers, attended with an obstructed circulation of air and blood in the pulmonary organs. Their abundant mucosities often prevent the ingress of air into the air cells, bloating their lips and cheeks, which are coated with a tenacious saliva. A cessation of digestion from too full a meal, or some hepatic or other derangement, is soon attended with such a copious exudation of mucosities, filling the air cells and tracheal passages, as to cause apoplexy, which with them is only another name for asphyxia. The head has nothing to do with it. So abundant are the mucosities in negroes, that those in the best health have a whitish, pasty mucus, of considerable thickness on the tongue, leading a physician not acquainted with them to suppose that they were dyspeptic, or otherwise indisposed. The lungs of the white man are the main outlets for the elimination of carbonic acid formed in the tissues. Negroes, however, by an instinctive habit of covering their mouth, nose, head and face with a blanket, or some other covering, when they sleep, throw upon the liver an additional duty to perform, in the excretion of carbonic acid. Any cause, obstructing the action of the liver, quickly produces with them a grave malady, the retention of carbonic acid in the blood soon poisoning them.

Hence with white people a moderate degree of hepatic obstruction, by a residence in swampy districts, is often found beneficial in diminishing the exalted sensibility and irritability of phthisical patients. Viscous engorgements of the lungs destroy more negroes than all other diseases combined. They are distinguished from inflammatory affections by the pyrexial symptoms not being strongly marked, or marked at all—by the puffy or bloated appearance of the face and lips—by the slavering mouth—the highly charged tongue—and by the torpor of mind and body. In a word, all the symptoms point to a deficient aeration of the blood, or a kind of half way asphyxia. A torpid state of the system, listlessness and inactivity almost approaching to asphyxia from the diminished quantity of oxygen consumed by the lungs of the negro, form a striking contrast with the energetic, active, restless, persevering Anglo-Saxon, with a tendency to phlogosis and phthisis pulmonalis, from the surplus quantity of oxygen consumed by his lungs. Blistering the nape of the neck, so irritating in nearly all of the diseases of the Saxon race, is almost a sovereign remedy or specific for a large proportion of the complaints that negroes are subject to; because most of them arise from defective respiratory action. Hence whipping the lungs to increased action by the application of blisters over the origin of the respiratory nerves, a remedy so inexpedient and so often contra-indicated in most of the maladies of the white man, has a magic charm about it in the treatment of those of the negro. The magic effect of a blister to that part of the Ethiopian's body, in a large class of his ailments, although well known to most of the planters and overseers of the Southern States, is scarcely known at all to the medical profession beyond those boundaries. Even here, where that portion of the profession who have had much experience in the treatment of their diseases, and are aware of the simple fact itself, do not profit by it in many cases where it is indicated; because they do not perceive the indication clearly, so long as the rationale of the remedy remains unexplained.

Your asking for the proofs of my assertion, "that the negro consumes less oxygen than the white man," has led me into a new, extensive and unexplored field of science, where the rationale of that and many other important facts may be found springing up spontaneously. We have medical schools in abundance teaching the art of curing the ailments, and even the most insignificant sores, incident to the half-starved, oppressed pauper population of Europe—a population we have not got, never had and never can have, so long as we have negro slaves to work in the cane, cotton and rice fields, where the white man, from the physiological laws governing his economy, can not labor and live: but where the negro thrives, luxuriates and enjoys existence more than any laboring peasantry to be found on the continent of Europe; yet we have no schools or any chair in our numerous institutions of medical learning to teach the art of curing and preventing the diseases peculiar to our immense population of negro slaves, or to make them more efficient and valuable, docile and manageable; comfortable, happy and contented by still further improving their condition, which can only be done by studying their nature, and not by the North and South bandying epithets—not by the quackery which prescribes the same remedy, the liberty elixir, for all constitutions. The two races, the Anglo-Saxon and the negro, have antipodal constitutions. The former abounds with red blood, even penetrating the capillaries and the veins, flushing the face and illuminating the countenance; the skin white; lips thin; nose high; hair auburn, flaxen, red or black; beard thick and heavy; eyes brilliant; will strong and unconquerable; mind and muscles full of energy and activity. The latter, with molasses blood sluggishly circulating and scarcely penetrating the capillaries; skin ebony, and the mucous membranes and muscles partaking of the darker hue pervading the blood and the cutis; lips thick and protuberant; nose broad and flat; scalp covered with a coarse, crispy wool in thick naps; beard wanting or consisting of a few scattering woolly naps, in the "bucks," provincially so called; mind and body dull and slothful; will weak, wanting or subdued. The study of such opposite organizations, the one prone to Phthisis and the other not, can not fail to throw some light on tubercular disease, the subject of your correspondent, Dr. Hall's present investigation. In contrasting the typical white man, having an excess of red blood and a liability to inflammatory and tuberculous complaints and disorders of the digestive system, with the typical negro, deficient aerated blood, and abounding in mucosites, having an active liver and a strong digestion, and a proclivity strongly marked to fall into congestions, or cold humid engorgements approaching asphyxia, I hope he will be able to find in this unpolished communication something useful.

New Orleans, July 19th, 1852.