[232] Climateric influences act probably upon wild animals in the same manner; it must be remarked, however, that a captive animal and a man, taken to another country, are not exposed in the same degree to the action of the new medium; conditions are not similarly altered as regards both of them. Sometimes the man, sometimes the animal, will have most chances of resistance; the one being always obliged by his master to submit to an intellectual government, approaching as much as possible his former state; the other, abandoned to himself, and drawn fatally into the new habits which he sees around him.
[233] See, on this point, Boudin, Géographie Médicale, vol. ii, p. 15, Paris, 1857. Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes, p. 230, 1833. G. Pouchet, Des Colorations de l’épiderme, 4to, Paris, 1864.
[234] [Dr. Waitz, in his Introduction to Anthropology (translated and edited by J. F. Collingwood), gives an explanation concerning the colouring matter in the Negro, which is very curious, but with which, however, he does not agree; viz., “that in hot climates the amount of oxygen inspired is insufficient to change the carbon into carbonic acid, and that the unconsumed carbon is deposited in the pigment-cells of the skin.... It is, however, difficult to admit that the browning of the skin in our climate in summer is produced by the same causes as the black colour of the Negro, and that it would only require a greater intensity and a longer duration to become so entirely.” Part. I, sect. i, p. 35.—Editor.]
[235] The precociousness of the genital functions is in direct relation with this general fact.
[236] W. Edwards, Caractères Physiologiques, etc., p. 14. “The tropics alone produce the combination of infantine grace with the full development of female maturity.” Smith, Natural History, etc., p. 190. See, also, Cabanis, Rapports du Physique et du Moral, vol. ii; and Davy, Account of Ceylon. These two authors in particular have quite appreciated these changes.
[237] Boudin, Géographie Médicale, vol. ii, p. 150, 1857.
[238] Meeting of November 7, 1861.
[239] [See above, p. 59, note.—Editor.]
[240] It would appear from the documents collected by Nott (Two Lectures on the Natural History of the Caucasian and Negro Races, Mobile, 1844, compare Boudin, Géogr. Méd., vol. ii, p. 144), that as we advance towards the upper part of the Northern States, madness becomes very frequent among the Negroes. It reaches the proportion of one case of insanity among twenty-eight sane persons in Massachusetts and Maine. We hesitate in acknowledging climateric influence, because the number of cases seems to increase relatively to the degree of instruction among the people; not that madness depends on education, but because it finds out a great number of cases of which we should otherwise have been ignorant, as often happens in the east among a less enlightened people.
[241] Compare Boudin, Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie, August 1, 1861.