The mortality peculiar to those Indian tribes who have mingled with the white people, must be ascribed to the extensive mischief of spiritous liquors. When these have not acted, they have suffered from having accommodated themselves too suddenly to the European diet, dress, and manners. It does not become us to pry too much into futurity; but if we may judge from the fate of the original natives of Hispaniola, Jamaica, and the provinces on the continent, we may venture to foretel, that, in proportion as the white people multiply, the Indians will diminish; so that in a few centuries they will probably be entirely extirpated[17].
It may be said, that health among the Indians, like insensibility to cold and hunger, is proportioned to their need of it; and that the less degrees, or entire want of health, are no interruption to the ordinary business of civilized life.
To obviate this supposition, we shall first attend to the effects of a single disease in those people who are the principal wheels in the machine of civil society. Justice has stopt its current, victories have been lost, wars have been prolonged, and embassies delayed, by the principal actors in these departments of government being suddenly laid up by a fit of the gout. How many offences are daily committed against the rules of good breeding, by the tedious histories of our diseases, which compose so great a part of modern conversation! What sums of money have been lavished in foreign countries in pursuit of health[18]! Families have been ruined by the unavoidable expences of medicines and watering-places. In a word, the swarms of beggars which infest so many of the European countries, urge their petitions for charity chiefly by arguments derived from real or counterfeit diseases, which render them incapable of supporting themselves[19].
But may not civilization, while it abates the violence of natural diseases, increase the lenity of those that are artificial, in the same manner that it lessens the strength of natural vices by multiplying them? To answer this question, it will only be necessary to ask another: Who should exchange the heat, thirst, and uneasiness of a fever, for one fit of the colic or stone?
The history of the number, combination, and fashions of the remedies we have given, may serve to humble the pride of philosophy; and to convince us, that with all the advantages of the whole circle of sciences, we are still ignorant of antidotes to many of the diseases of civilized nations. We sometimes sooth our ignorance, by reproaching our idleness in not investigating the remedies peculiar to this country. We are taught to believe that every herb that grows in our woods is possessed of some medicinal virtue, and that Heaven would be wanting in benignity, if our country did not produce remedies for all the different diseases of its inhabitants. It would be arrogating too much to suppose that man was the only creature in our world for whom vegetables grow. The beasts, birds, and insects, derive their sustenance either directly or indirectly from them; while many of them were probably intended, from their variety in figure, foliage, and colour, only to serve as ornaments for our globe. It would seem strange that the Author of nature should furnish every spot of ground with medicines adapted to the diseases of its inhabitants, and at the same time deny it the more necessary articles of food and clothing. I know not whether Heaven has provided every country with antidotes even to the natural diseases of its inhabitants. The intermitting fever is common in almost every corner of the globe; but a sovereign remedy for it has been discovered only in South-America. The combination of bitter and astringent substances, which serve as a succedaneum to the Peruvian bark, is as much a preparation of art, as calomel or tartar emetic. Societies stand in need of each other as much as individuals; and the goodness of the Deity remains unimpeached when we suppose, that he intended medicines to serve (with other articles) to promote that knowledge, humanity, and politeness among the inhabitants of the earth, which have been so justly attributed to commerce.
We have no discoveries in the materia medica to hope for from the Indians in North-America. It would be a reproach to our schools of physic, if modern physicians were not more successful than the Indians, even in the treatment of their own diseases.
Do the blessings of civilization compensate for the sacrifice we make of natural health, as well as of natural liberty? This question must be answered under some limitations. When natural liberty is given up for laws which enslave instead of protecting us, we are immense losers by the exchange. Thus, if we arm the whole elements against our health, and render every pore in the body an avenue for a disease, we pay too high a price for the blessings of civilization.
In governments which have departed entirely from their simplicity, partial evils are to be cured by nothing but an entire renovation of their constitution. Let the world bear with the professions of law, physic, and divinity; and let the lawyer, physician, and divine yet learn to bear with each other. They are all necessary, in the present state of society. In like manner, let the woman of fashion forget the delicacy of her sex, and submit to be delivered by a man-midwife[20]. Let her snatch her offspring from her breast, and send it to repair the weakness of its stamina, with the milk of a ruddy cottager[21]. Let art supply the place of nature in the preparation and digestion of all our aliment. Let our fine ladies keep up their colour with carmine, and their spirits with ratifia; and let our fine gentlemen defend themselves from the excesses of heat and cold, with lavender and hartshorn. These customs have become necessary in the corrupt stages of society. We must imitate, in these cases, the practice of those physicians who consult the appetite only, in diseases which do not admit of a remedy.
The state of a country in point of population, temperance, and industry, is so connected with its diseases, that a tolerable idea may be formed of it, by looking over its bills of mortality. Hospitals, with all their boasted advantages, exhibit at the same time monuments of the charity and depravity of a people[22]. The opulence of physicians, and the divisions of their offices, into those of surgery, pharmacy, and midwifery, are likewise proofs of the declining state of a country. In the infancy of the Roman empire, the priest performed the office of a physician; so simple were the principles and practice of physic. It was only in the declension of the empire that physicians vied with the emperors of Rome in magnificence and splendour[23].