[Sidenote: See Tables V. and W., pp. 50 and 51.]
The principal civil medical officer has prepared returns to show the
diseases of the Singhalese and mixed races, and of the Malabars. The
deaths among the latter are in the proportion of 20 per cent. against
8 per cent. among the former. This remarkable disproportion in the
mortality may be accounted for by the starving condition in which
the Malabar coolies generally arrive in this colony; their uncleanly
habits; their abstinence from animal food, and, as a consequence,
the low standard of their vital organization; and exposure without
sufficient clothing in the cold climate of the hills. They sink rapidly
under attacks of diarrhœa, dysentery, and anasarca.
The diseases which are most prevalent and fatal among the native races
are such as are incidental to this climate, viz., fever, chiefly of
the intermittent type, bowel complaints, and anasarca, while cases
of scrofula and consumption, to which Miss Nightingale alludes as
prevalent “among those converted to Christian civilization,” are
happily seldom met with.
The Commission states, in reply to Miss Nightingale’s question, “Can
we civilize these people without killing them?” that those diseases
which are supposed to be attendant on European civilization are not
common among the native inhabitants of the colony, and that, so far
from the natives dying out before the march of civilization, the native
population is on the increase in the neighbourhood of the larger towns,
while it is only in the remote and less civilized districts that
the population is decreasing, and this from causes which are being
gradually removed by the spread of education.