treats exhaustively the whole catalogue of diseases and the numerous ills which flesh is heir to, it can be safely claimed that he does not establish his main proposition set forth in the beginning of the chapter, and that at least a Scotch verdict is demanded: “not proven.” CHAPTER III. Subject. Anthropometry. Gist. “In vital capacity, the most important of all physiological characteristics, the tendency of the race has been downward.”[36] Ample statistics are presented to show that in proportion to structure[Pg 19] the Negro is heavier than the white man. This fact, the author tells us, is ordinarily considered favorable to a healthy development and freedom from pulmonary weakness. “The elaborate investigations of the medical department of the New York Mutual Life, in 1874, of the Washington Life, in 1886, the Prudential Insurance Company of America, in 1895, and the New York Mutual Life, in 1895, prove conclusively that low weight in proportion to age and stature is a determining factor in the susceptibility of an individual to consumption.”[37] [Pg 19] In order to explain away this apparent advantage in favor of the Negro, the author has invented a unique physiological principle, viz: “A physiological law may hold good for one race and not for another.”[38] It is noticeable that the author applies this principle only when it suits his convenience but withholds it whenever it runs across his theory. By a series of measurements based, confessedly, upon insufficient data, it is concluded that the Negro has a smaller lung capacity, smaller chest expansion, and a higher rate of respiration than the white man, and that the Mulatto is inferior to both the parent races in these vital functions. These differences are considered a powerful factor in lung degeneration, and proof positive of physical inferiority. In these respects he tacitly repudiates his erstwhile principle that “a physiological law may hold good for one race and not for another,” and assumes that the two races are subject to like conditions of disease and death. On the whole it may be said that this is the least interesting chapter in the whole book. The data are so slender and the arguments are so evidently shaped to a theory, that we are neither enlightened by the one nor convinced by the other. But the author’s judgment must be justified. The gloomy warning comes with Catonian regularity at the end of each
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