Page:George Archdall Reid 1896 The present evolution of man.djvu/288

276 again only serves to keep them saturated with earth poison.

"It would not have been unreasonable to suppose that the coolies, coming from an evidently malarious country, would have acquired a high degree of immunity to the malarial poison; unfortunately such is very far from being the case, and that this is so is entirely due to the causes mentioned above. Were the coolies to live under conditions more sanitary than their present ones, it is probable that they would show a certain amount of immunity. There can, I think, be no doubt, therefore, that, given a better sanitation, as regards the coolies living on estates, a very sensible decrease in their mortality would at once take place, and there would be far fewer cases utterly broken down in health, with sallow earthy complexions, unfit to work for a few hours together."—Dr. Ozzard in the British Guiana Medical Annual and Hospital Report, 1893, p. 91.

This difference in habits between Europeans and Asiatics explains why in India the former appear sometimes to suffer less than the latter.

"The following is a table compiled by Waring of the malarial sickness during ten years among the troops in the Madras Presidency.

"The native troops accordingly suffered from simple malaria fever to a greater extent than even the European, but the number of cases of remittent fever