FOURTH PAPER.
WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF THE GREAT MORTALITY AMONG THE NEGROES IN THE CITIES OF THE SOUTH, AND HOW IS THAT MORTALITY TO BE LESSENED?
BY JAMES RANDALL WILDER, M. D., PHAR. D.
JAMES RANDALL WILDER, M. D., PHAR. D.
James Randall Wilder was born at Columbia, S. C., and is the son of Charles M. Wilder, who was postmaster at Columbia for many years. His mother was Marla Coleman, also a native of the Palmetto State.
Dr. Wilder is a man of spotless character, and enjoys a striking appearance, a magnetic personality, and a brilliant and versatile mind. His early training was received in the public schools of his native city. He spent a season in the classical department of Howard University, and from there he went to Howard Medical College, from which he graduated in the year 1888. Availing himself of the unrivalled opportunities afforded by the Freedman's Hospital, he rapidly acquired both theoretical and practical knowledge, so that when he stepped into the world he possessed a preparation seldom equaled by the young practitioner. He has also the degree of Phar. D. from Howard.
He located in Washington, the capital of the nation, where today he enjoys a large and lucrative practice. His modest, sympathetic nature makes him an ideal man for the sick room. His ability has won professional recognition not only for himself but for others. He was for many years physician to the National Home for Destitute Colored Women and Children, and is today the examining surgeon for a number of benevolent and charitable organizations. He has been prominently connected with many of the business ventures of the colored people in the District of Columbia for the past ten years, and is ranked as a broad-minded, solid, public-spirited citizen—a grand object lesson for what is best and most progressive in the community. He has invested his earnings judiciously, so that today he has a competency seldom attained by a man of his years. The success gained, the making the most of himself, renders him the best advocate of truth, and a potent factor in the growth and development of the race. This plain, honest, earnest young man is a type of the generation since citizenship came—a splendid example of worth since the selfhood of the race has been partially recognized, and the members have been permitted to add their quota to the sum of human advancement and achievement. The hour calls for fact, not fancy—for flesh-and-blood examples of what has been done by the young manhood of the country. The interest here and now is due to the fact that he has had somewhat to say on a subject of vital moment, and has said it vigorously and eloquently. Here he is the champion of truth, performing a service in a dignified, scholarly manner, and so winning the praise and gratitude of all lovers of truth. His article must call a halt to those inconsiderate ones who persistently repeat what through haste and insufficient data has been given to the world as fact—as logical inference from scientific investigation.
Dr. Wilder has collected a large library of professional and literary works, and has never ceased to be a hard student. His home shows the taste of the scholar and wide-awake practitioner. He married Miss Sallie C. Pearson of Columbia, S. C., and to them have been born two children—Charles McDuffie and Susan Maceo.
Dr. Wilder belongs to that class of quiet, earnest souls who pursue the "even tenor of their way" and are doing most to establish truth, to refute error, content to let the "deeds, though mute, speak loud the doer."
The American Negro finds himself, at the beginning of the twentieth century, seriously embarrassed by the many false and damaging accusations that have been made against him, not least of which is the charge of physical inferiority. The charge has been wholesale that the Negro differs from the white man physically, and that he is ethnically and strongly predisposed to certain fatal and contagious diseases. This stigma of disease has been placed upon him and repeatedly emphasized, but despite the fact that the effort has been made for years, by men learned in anthropology to find and prove the inherent inferiority of the Negro, based upon anatomical, physiological and biostatic peculiarity, to-day the bare statistical fact of his high mortality alone supports the calumnious fabrication. It is true that according to official statistics the Negro's death rate in this country is relatively high, but the causes of disparity are extrinsic and remedial and he was not stamped thus ab initio, but by the fiat of the Creative-will.
The Negro, identified as he is with the great human family, is subject to the same deteriorating influences that affect his fellow-man. Hence impure air and water, polluted soil from defective sewerage, adulterated food-stuffs, and the unhealthful conditions imposed during the school-going period of life—which are questions of public hygiene and general concern—contribute, in no small degree, to his mortality. But aside from these influences, common to all people, he is subject to others peculiar to himself, on account of the environments that govern him. The proverbial unreliability of statistics justifies the assumption that the Negro's death-rate is not as great as it is said to be. The occupations of the Negro tend to keep him in the back-ground and to encourage a neglect on the part of the census enumerator to record accurately all of the Negroes in a certain locality. But the Negro dies faster than the white man, and it is not my purpose to deny it, but to recite a few of the real causes of the disparity in the cities of the South, and to show how that mortality is to be lessened.
(1) American slavery, with its unparalleled cruelty and bestiality has injured the Negro, intellectually, physically and morally. It has been claimed that the admixture of the Negro with the Caucasian has given us a resulting mulatto, weaker physically than either of the parent stock, but this statement is based upon hypothesis, and is not borne out by the facts in the case. It is true, however, that a resulting lowering of vitality has followed the admixture of "kindred blood," which was almost unavoidable during the days of slavery as the result of certain well-known procreative practices that obtained on the part of the master, and on account of the itineracy of the Negro incident to his chattelism. In "those dark days" it was hard enough for the Negro to recognize his near kin on his maternal side, and it was infinitely impossible for him to trace the "family tree" from the paternal side. The evil effects of this consequent admixture of "similar" blood cannot be denied, and must bear a modicum of responsibility for the excessive mortality of the Negro of to-day.
(2) The fact that the great majority of the Negro women in the cities of the South are compelled to work steadily even while they are enceinte, doubtless often interferes with the normal development of the internal organs of their offspring, causing a lack of vitality which is not apparent to the casual observer, but which must make them an easy victim to disease.