Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/151

Rh maladies visited upon civilized men. As to the affirmation frequently made by them, that they never saw a dwarf, a hunchback, or otherwise deformed or native cripple among the savages, the statement might be parried by the supposition that infants born under such disadvantages might not be allowed to live. The intelligent and cautious Lafitau is a good authority within the wide range of his observation and inquiry. He tells us that the severe bodily exercises of the savages, their travels, and the simplicity of their food exempted them from many of the maladies which attend an easy, indolent, and luxurious life, with the use of salt and spices and ragouts, and all the refinements and delicacies that minister to gluttony, tickle the taste, impair the appetite, and undermine health. The savages, with light nourishment, hardened by their trampings, though taking little care against the rigorous extremes of heat and cold, are still strong and robust, with a soft skin and pure blood, “less salt and more balsamic than ours.” “One does not see among them the deformed from birth; they are not subject to gout or gravel, to apoplexy or sudden death; and perhaps they may not have knowledge of the small-pox, the scurvy, the measles, and most of the other epidemic diseases, except through intercourse with Europeans.” Still, Lafitau says that they are human in their subjection to diseases, and have some especial ones of their own, — such as scrofulous maladies, caused, he says, by the crudity of the waters, and by snow-water. The exposure of their chests makes them liable to phthisis, of which the most of them die. Many of them reach an extreme old age. “I have seen at my mission a squaw who had before her children of her children, down to the fifth generation.” There is abundant and according testimony that the natives had great success in the treatment of flesh wounds,