Part 46

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.

(3) The same social and economic conditions that keep the expectant mother busy with her daily labors, also abbreviate her "lying-in-period," which not only weakens her physically, but deprives her newly-born offspring of its natural food--thus consigning it to an infant's grave, or so debilitating it that it succumbs to the first disease with which it becomes affected. It is bad enough to be bottle-fed, physiologists tell us, but it is infinitely worse to be hand-fed. The majority of the Negroes in the Southland are hand-fed from birth with food decidedly improper both as to quality and quantity, thus making defective the very substructure of their being. Is it any wonder that such a people die faster than another people, who nurse their young or have it done, or who give them pure cow's milk modified scientifically, or other artificial infant food prepared skilfully amid the best sanitary environments?

(4) The early motherhood of the Negro has its evil effects. The proper age for a woman to become a mother is at twenty-five years and usually before that time development is not complete, and the whole organism is in a transition state. It is equally true that the use of any organ before it has attained its complete growth or development is damaging to that organ and interferes with its normal function, and "we cannot but believe that children developed in immature sexual organs must be deficient in true vital force and energy. It is often noticeable that a child apparently strong and vigorous, may have but little power to resist disease, or may even be strongly predisposed to some infirmity." The colored women in the section under discussion who become mothers, are usually multiporae long before the twenty-fifth year.

(5) The element of overwork must come in for its increment of responsibility in the excessive mortality of the Negro. While deficiency in exercise favors a lack of nutrition conducive to wasting in size, on the other hand too much work favors hypertrophy of vital organs and tissue degeneration. The average healthy man should work about eight hours per day and "should do work to the equivalent of 150 foot-tons daily." The American Negro's working hours, as a rule, are regulated, if at all, by the exigencies of the work to be performed, as it appears to an exacting employer.

(6) The kind of work performed by the Negroes in the Southern cities includes all menial occupations, which conduce to accident and exposure. The death-rate among the laboring class of any community, irrespective and independent of its nationality, is necessarily greater than that of the well-to-do leisure class.

(7) The manner of living of the majority of the colored people in the cities of the South--which is sometimes the progeny of ignorance, but oftener the result of necessity--is responsible, in a large measure, for their high mortality. They are crowded together on back streets, in lanes and ill-smelling bottoms, near ponds of stagnant water, on the banks of rivers--wherever their scanty means consign them. The ignorant among them, like the ignorant among any other people, ignore the teachings of hygiene, because they are ignorant, and not because they are black. They do not know the value of fresh air and sunlight and cleanliness, and hence are ignorant of the fatality attached to the unholy trinity--darkness, dampness and dirt, which is responsible for the tuberculosis that is charged to their "inherent tendencies." The pittance that is paid to the Negro in the name of wages forces him to crowd together in narrow and ill-ventilated sleeping apartments, which is decidedly unhealthful and favors the spread of contagious diseases. Thus smallpox spreads rapidly in a Negro settlement, not because they are Negroes, but because their manner of living brings them into the most intimate contact with one another, so that whatever disease attacks one, rapidly spreads to all of the others who are not immune.

The lack of suitable clothing and proper food, as a result of poverty, weakens the Negro physically. The neglect of the bath through lack of time, is responsible for much of the heart, kidney and skin diseases so prevalent among the laboring classes of the colored people. It takes time to keep clean, and the laborer has no leisure. Ignorance of the seriousness of certain diseases like syphilis, scrofula and rheumatism, has played an important role in the drama of his mortality.

(8) Another fruitful cause of his excessive mortality arises out of his struggle for existence. The exigencies of life are such with him that he does not heed the admonitions of nature made manifest in the early symptoms of disease, so that unwittingly he becomes habituated to discomfort and pain. When the common Negro laborer lays aside his implements of labor on account of sickness, the disease with which he is affected is well founded and passed beyond the abortive and often the curative stage, and very frequently when medical advice is obtained, it is of the dispensary or "physician to the poor" type, which too often savors of unconcern, inexperience and incompetency.

(9) The prevalent habit among the colored people of taking patented cure-all nostrums, which contain narcotics that insidiously benumb the sensibilities and mask the symptoms of disease, would naturally contribute to the mortality of any people.

(10) Not the least fruitful of all of the causes of the Negro's excessive mortality, is a lack of resistance to disease, engendered by the social conditions that obtain in the Southland. There he is so oppressed and persecuted that he finds himself not only an easy prey to disease, but an early victim to death. He has little to live for, and his religion promises him much after death, which, in a sense, he welcomes as a relief from his trials and troubles. This statement will not appear exaggerated when one considers the powerful influence that the mind has over the body. A cheerful, hopeful, contented mind, predisposes to a healthy body, and conversely, a discontented and despairful mind, interferes with the vital functions and invites disease and death.

(11) Lastly, in a consideration of the relatively high mortality of the Negro in the cities of the South, considerable weight must be given to the contracted death-rate of the whites due to their superior social and financial condition. Their environments are, as a rule, as healthful as education can suggest and as money can obtain, and when disease overtakes them, they combat it not only with the skill of science, but with the power of will. The incentives of life, so lacking for the colored people, are theirs in all of their plenitude. The earth is theirs and the fullness thereof, and there is no power therein that they may not covet. This feeling, this knowledge, becomes vis-a-mente that proves a potential factor in their struggle with disease. Despite this powerful influence however, and because of it, the morbidity of the white man in this country is great. I venture the assertion that his morbidity far exceeds that of the Negro--not because he is more prone to disease, but because he is enabled to live longer with disease on account of the influences to which allusion has already been made. The plain fact is, the Negro dies sooner and the white man lives longer with disease, which presents the unique question: Is it not more advantageous to the public good to die of a disease and be buried safely and deeply beneath the soil than to live with it and thus increase the opportunities of disseminating it?

(12) The remedies for the excessive mortality of the Negro in the cities of the South are self-evident. He is a man and identical with other men structurally, so that whatever is health-giving and life-lengthening for other civilized peoples, is health-giving and life-lengthening for him. To be specific, his greatest need is an increase of knowledge along the line of hygiene, and a studious application of that knowledge. He must not only be taught to run the race of life intelligently, but he must not be hindered in the process of his running. He must know the life to lead, and then lead it. In this he must have the liberal co-operation of his employer, and his brother-in-white generally. He must be paid in accordance with the labor that he performs and must be allowed an equitable participation in the every-day affairs of life. Actuated by the hopes and aspirations that actuate other men, and given a man's chance in the struggle of life, his industry and genius will soon improve his condition and bring him material prosperity, upon which depends, in a measure, the development of moral, intellectual and physical growth. Leisure and opportunity, comfort and freedom from sordid cares and anxieties regarding the immediate necessities of life, must be secured, if a race is to find time for study and thought, and to develop its best moral and physical life. May not the Negro justly find some consolation in his excessive mortality of to-day? May he not believe that "death is the philosophy of life?" May he not feel that his race is being strengthened by the dying of the weak, just as a tree is strengthened by losing its unsound branches? If so, then the future Negro in this country will be the fittest of "the survival of the fittest," and will represent the grandest type of physical manhood that the world has ever known.

FIFTH 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 DR. R. F. BOYD.

R. F. BOYD, M. D., D. D. S.

Dr. R. F. Boyd has clearly demonstrated by energy, pluck, ability and upright dealing with his fellowman, the possibility of rising from poverty's hard estate to honor's golden prize. Dr. R. F. Boyd was born and partly reared on a farm in Giles County, Tennessee, where he learned to hoe, to plow, to reap and to mow. When quite a boy he worked for the famous surgeon, Dr. Paul F. Eve, in Nashville, and attended as best he could night school in the old Fisk buildings on Knowles street. He taught his first school at College Grove, Tennessee. The Doctor would teach a school and at its close re-enter Fisk University or Central Tennessee College. In 1882 he graduated from Meharry Medical College, with the degree of M. D. He went to Mississippi and taught a high school at New Albany and practiced his profession till the fall of 1882, when he re-entered the Central Tennessee College to complete his college course, receiving at the same time an adjunct Professorship in Chemistry at Meharry and made teacher of Physiology and Hygiene in Central Tennessee by which he was able to pay his college expenses. In 1883 he was made Professor of Physiology in Meharry, which position, together with a position in the Literary Department, he held till he graduated from the College Department of Central Tennessee College, in 1886. In 1887 he graduated from the Dental Department of Meharry, receiving the degree of D. D. S., teaching in the school at the same time. In June, 1887, he opened his office in Nashville, where so many had tried and failed. In 1888 Dr. Boyd was made Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in Meharry; in 1890 he attended the Post-graduate School of Medicine at Chicago, from which he received a diploma. In 1890 he was made Professor of Hygiene, Physiology and Clinical Medicine, which position he held until 1893, when he was made Professor of the Diseases of Women and Clinical Medicine, which chair he still holds. In 1892 he took a special course in the Post-graduate Medical School and Hospital of Chicago, on the diseases of women and children, among whom the greater portion of his practice is. One of the greatest needs of the colored people in the South is well regulated hospitals, where trained nurses can handle and care for the sick under skilled physicians. Until Mercy Hospital was instituted, there was no place of this kind in the South. It was Dr. R. F. Boyd who established and instituted this the largest and most complete hospital owned and controlled by colored people. There surgeons of our race do all kinds of operations and trained and graduate nurses of the race care for the sick under their management.

It is in this institution where the graduates of Meharry in the Medical and Nurse-Training Departments get their practical work. It is the great center to which colored physicians of the South may send cases to be operated upon by skilled physicians and handled by trained nurses. The death rate of this institution has been less than three per cent from all causes.

Besides this work, Dr. Boyd has taken a great interest in secret societies. As an Immaculate, he has gained a National reputation and has filled nearly all of the offices in the Supreme Lodge. As a Pythian he has served the Grand Lodge as Grand Medical Register, and has been honored by the Supreme Lodge as Supreme Medical Register, and is Surgeon General of the Military or Uniform Rank of that Order. The Ancient United Sons and Daughters of Africa is a creation of his own brain and he is at present Supreme Secretary of that Order. As a business man he ranks among the foremost of the race. He owns some of the best realty of the city, among which is the Boyd Building, 417-419-421-423 Cedar Street. This building has four business fronts, a hotel and restaurant, offices of various kinds and four large society halls, in which about forty societies meet. The Mercy Hospital was purchased by him solely, at a cash value of $6,000. Besides this he is the owner of other valuable property of Nashville and suburbs.

This is a question of vital importance to us as a race and to the nation as well. Much thought has been given to it by the best thinkers of both races and many articles have been written by friend and foes. All kinds of solutions have been proposed and yet the great death-rate goes on. In the larger cities of the South our people die from two to three times as fast as the whites.

The number of premature deaths is on the increase; the infant death-rate is appalling; and consumption, a hitherto unknown disease among our people, is credited with one-fourth the victims of all ages.

All the powers of science and art are being taxed to the utmost to afford a complete solution to this problem. Every large city in the South is being awakened to the sense of the importance of this subject. And well they may; for the ignorance, the vice, the poverty, the habitation and the food that cause this alarming death-rate effect the whole community.

A proper knowledge and observance of the laws of health will give happiness to all.