Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 79.djvu/410

406 of sensibility is not a race trait, but a consequence of the involuntary simplicity and temperateness of life of the common Chinese.

One doctor remarks that at home it is the regular thing for a nervous chill to follow the passing of a sound into the bladder, whereas among his patients it seldom occurs. Another comments on the rarity of neurasthenia and nervous dyspepsia. The chief of the army medical staff points out that during the autumn maneuvers the soldiers sleep on damp ground with a little straw under them without any ill effects. I have seen coolies after two hours of burden-bearing at a dog trot shovel themselves full of hot rice with scarcely any mastication, and hurry on for another two hours. A white man would have writhed with indigestion. The Chinese seem able to sleep in any position. I have seen them sleeping on piles of bricks, or stones, or poles, with a block or a brick for a pillow and with the hot sun shining full into the face. They stand a cramped position longer than we can and can keep on longer at monotonous toil unrelieved by change or break.

But there is another side to the comparison. There is little pneumonia among the Chinese but they stand it no better than we do, some say not so well. There is much malarial fever and it goes hard with them. In Hong Kong they seem to succumb to the plague more readily than the foreigners. Among children there is heavy mortality from measles and scarlet fever. In withstanding tuberculosis they have no advantage over us. While they make wonderful recoveries from high fevers they are not enduring of long fevers. Some think this is because the flame of their vitality has been turned low by unsanitary living. They have a horror of fresh air and shut it out of the sleeping apartment, even on a warm night. In the mission schools, if the teachers insist on open windows in the dormitory, the pupils stifle under the covers lest the evil spirits flying about at night should get at them. The Chinese grant that hygiene may be all very well for these weakly foreigners, but see no use in it for themselves. It is no wonder, therefore, that their school girls can not stand the pace of American school girls. Often they break down, or go into a decline or have to take a long rest. In the English mission schools with their easier pace the girls get on better.

Here and there a doctor ascribes the extraordinary power of resistance and recuperation shown by his patients entirely to their diet and manner of life and denies any superior vitality in the race. Other doctors practising among the city Chinese insist that the stamina of the masses is undermined by wretched living conditions, but that under equal circumstances the yellow man has a firmer hold on life than the white man.

From the testimony it is safe to conclude that at least a part of the observed toughness of the Chinese is attributable to a special race