as the remedy, the colored people must be taught that the first step towards the reduction of disease is to begin at the beginning, to provide for the health of the unborn. The error, commonly entertained, that marriageable men and women have nothing to consider except money, station, or social relationships demands correction.
The offspring of marriage, the most precious of all fortunes, deserves surely as much forethought as is bestowed upon the offspring of the lower animals.
It is well that we teach, in the school room and from the pulpit, about the condition that exists in the parental line, maternal and paternal. The necessity for such instruction is somewhat indicated, in the effect upon the prenatal state, of such conditions as scrofula or struma, of various forms of tuberculosis and syphilis, of epilepsy, of rheumatism, and of insanity. These are only a few. We have to contend even with hereditary proclivity to some forms of the acute communicable diseases, such as diphtheria and scarlet fever and also to immunity from the same.
We must furnish, by all available means and through every possible channel of information, persistent and systematic instruction in public, home and personal hygiene. We should utilize especially the power of the pulpit and influence the public school authorities to institute, in the colored schools throughout the South, special instruction on these subjects. The importance of such instruction is evident in the agitation which is now occurring among the educators in the schools of the Eastern states. If it is needed there then the need of it in the colored schools of the South must be urgent indeed.
We must give such education as will tend to a better general knowledge, especially of the two diseases which, I believe, more than any, should be the most dreaded as being the most prolific of injury to mankind and especially to the colored people on account of their ignorance of the communicability of disease combined with their poverty. I refer to the contagious maladies tuberculosis and the one called "specific" or syphilis, the moral as well as the physical blot on all civilized life. The former is well known nowadays to be one, if not the worst contagion to which the human family is subjected. In its various forms it is responsible, probably, for more deaths among the colored people than any one disease with a definite phenomenon. As less is known about the latter disease, syphilis, I must mention it a little more forcibly, however unpleasant and brief the utterance. The poison of the malady once engrafted into the living body, and producing its effect there, leaves, according to my professional experience, and observation, organic evils which are never completely removed. Various forms of disease of the skin; some forms of consumption; some phases of struma or scrofula; many forms of cachectic feebleness and impaired physical build—what are denominated delicate states of constitution—these and other types of disease are so directly or indirectly connected with the "specific" taint, it becomes impossible to be too careful in tracing it out, or in measuring the degree to which it extends in the field of morbid phenomenon, in our efforts to improve the vitality of the colored people and to enlighten them upon this class of diseases.
The widespread encouragement of thrift, industry and efforts among the colored people to gain a livelihood or, to put it more boldly, to get money and keep it, thereby obtaining the means with which to supply themselves with the necessaries of life, and possibly, with some of its comforts, will materially wipe out a large percentage of that class of diseases and death that proceed from such causes as worry, excess of work, physical and mental strain, late hours, broken rest, etc.
Washington, D. C., is considered a very clean city. It is, therefore, significant that the 11,705 nuisances, referred to in the foregoing, are an indication as to the great risk, from this source throughout the South. It is obvious at once that the colored people, who form the bulk of the poor class, are the principal victims to that which escapes official inspection.
Notwithstanding the fact that the colored population of the District of Columbia is less than one-third of that of the whites, in the year 1899-1900, there died in the homes located in the back alleys of the city 411 colored persons and eleven white persons, indicating to what extent these unsanitary homes are occupied by the colored people.
Space will not permit the further elucidation of the foregoing causes and remedies, which I have done nothing more than to touch upon. However, I cannot close without giving further emphasis to my views by offering in evidence the conditions, as to vitality, of the Jews. The facts are that this race, from some cause or causes, presents an endurance against disease that does not belong to any other portion of the civilized communities amongst which its members dwell. We do not have far to go to find many causes for this high vitality. The causes are simply summed up in the term "soberness of life." The Jew drinks less than the Christian; he takes, as a rule, better food; he marries earlier; he rears the children he has brought into the world with greater personal care; he tends the aged more thoughtfully; he takes better care of the poor; he takes better care of himself; he does not boast of to-morrow, but he provides for it; and he holds tenaciously to all he gets. It may be true that he carries these virtues too far, but I do most earnestly plead that if the colored people will only emulate the Jew, they, like the Jew, will win, like him they will become strong, and like him in scorning boisterous mirth and passion, will become comparatively happy and healthy.