Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/839

Rh "This will-power is utterly beyond the comprehension of us Westerns, nor can doctors give the complaint a name; sailors say they die out of 'pure cussedness.' A Maori will count up the days he has to live, inform his friends of the fact, and die up to time; he calmly lies down and dies without an effort."

So much as regards the course of diseases; now as to treatment. The most successful means of treating such cases lies in the use of alcohol, and so unaccustomed are most of these people to its action that very small doses are required to produce a good effect. It acts partly by a kind of intoxicating influence, putting a little energy, or even "devilment" into them. If administered with cautious judgment, this support may be kept up until convalescence is fairly established, when with returning strength they realize that destiny means them to survive; here the ordinary good effects of stimulant treatment are much enhanced by the previous abstinence.

It is well known how very excitable are these woolly-haired, thick-lipped, flat-nosed races, the excitement representing the opposite mental condition to the extreme languid depression of which I have already spoken. For instance, at the great Mohurram festival at Bombay, which I once witnessed, I noticed that all the noise and mad dancing and boisterous fanaticism of the night processions were manifested, not by the natives of India, who were in a large majority, but by the negroes, their religious fervor and the frenzy born of bhang conspiring to excite them. It is this sensitiveness to rapid mental change that gives alcohol such potent virtues with them in sickness.

The natives of our Eastern empire, always excepting the fine Sikh races, and those living near the northern frontier, than whom I have never seen finer or braver specimens of mankind, are people of poor stamina, and are easily prostrated. Timid and feeble, they dread the pain of illness, and dislike the thought of death mostly on account of the ordeal of the dying process. They are therefore ready, nay, over-anxious for medical treatment, and are fond of both liniments and physic. But in spite of this they fare worse than the Europeans in all ordinary diseases; symptoms are more severe if less sthenic, prognosis is graver. Some explanation may be found in their habitually poor diet, which leaves little balance to the credit account in the nutrition of the tissues, and consequently small resisting power to disease, but more, I think, belongs to a want of "real grit" among them, a characteristic racial failing.

For example, a catarrhal condition of the alimentary canal will pull such a patient down with alarming rapidity, out of all proportion to the other symptoms, and indeed often to a fatal ending. Stimulants in such cases are, of course, of great use, but not to