_February 29th._
... The whites remain exempt from the malady.
One might therefore hastily suppose that liability to contagion would be
diminished in proportion to the excess of white blood over African; but
such is far from being the case;--St. Pierre is losing its handsomest
octoroons. Where the proportion of white to black blood is 116 to 8, as
in the type called _mamelouc_;--or 122 to 4, as in the _quarteronné_
(not to be confounded with the quarteron or quadroon);--or even 127 to
1, as in the _sang-mêlé_, the liability to attack remains the same,
while the chances of recovery are considerably less than in the case of
the black. Some few striking instances of immunity appear to offer a
different basis for argument; but these might be due to the social
position of the individual rather than to any constitutional temper:
wealth and comfort, it must be remembered, have no small prophylactic
value in such times. Still,--although there is reason to doubt whether
mixed races have a constitutional vigor comparable to that of the
original parent-races,--the liability to diseases of this class is
decided less, perhaps, by race characteristics than by ancestral
experience. The white peoples of the world have been practically
inoculated, vaccinated, by experience of centuries;--while among these
visibly mixed or black populations the seeds of the pest find absolutely
fresh soil in which to germinate, and its ravages are therefore scarcely
less terrible than those it made among the American-Indian or the
Polynesian races in other times. Moreover, there is an unfortunate
prejudice against vaccination here. People even now declare that those
vaccinated die just as speedily of the plague as those who have never
been;--and they can cite cases in proof. It is useless to talk to them
about averages of immunity, percentage of liability, etc.;--they have
seen with their own eyes persons who had been well vaccinated die of the
verette, and that is enough to destroy their faith in the system... Even
the priests, who pray their congregations to adopt the only known
safeguard against the disease, can do little against this scepticism.