The first man and his place in creation : considered on the principles of science and common sense from a Christian point of view : with an appendix on the Negro / by George Moore.

Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The first man and his place in creation : considered on the principles of science and common sense from a Christian point of view : with an appendix on the Negro / by George Moore. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    a corruption of * tlie humours and juices of the body.' Men who, aiter a lengthened sojourn in those regions, return to Oman, throw away the surphis provisions brought from the African coast, burn their clothes and bedding, and for the first two or three months eschew society ; a peculiar effluvium 3-endering them, it is said, offensive to the finer olfactories of their compatriots.' * Whatever we may think of the philosophy ttat accounts for the effluvium by attributing it to corruption, it is evidently something produced by the climate, which better enables those exposed to it to resist its influence: and, therefore, we can well understand how those who have acquired the dark skin from forefathers exposed for ages to a climate productive of such accommodating peculiarities, should, with the dark skin, also permanently retain the effluvium that may operate as a ' protective atmosphere against malarious influences.' This effluvium seems, however, to be the occasion of considerable exaggeration. Perhaps some who have suffered from it would ' die of a rose, in aromatic pain,' if sniffed with a prejudice. Mr. W. Winwood Eeade says, ' I have repeatedly sat among crowds of negroes in small, ill-ventilated rooms, and have detected no smell more disagreeable than the oil with which they anoint themselves, j Disgust as often imagines what it does not perceive as charity overlooks things offensive by seeing things above them. The woolly hair is generally associated with the negro skin, not always. It is, however, real hair, and not at all wool, but affording, by its tendency to form a close, curling, dense, natural helmet, another beautiful evidence of accommodating power in the human constitution, as by this means the negro's head is well defended from the intense heat of the sun. Some negroes are said, by observers who have endeavoured to find in them indications of a distinct species of man, to have hair growing in tufts, like wool on sheep, but this.is proved to be a * Captain Burton on The Begions of Central Africa, vol. ii., p. 14. t Savage Africa,