Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/870

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

gives way to the necessity for actual colonists, who with their families are to live, labor, and propagate in the new lands.

Summarizing the views of authorities upon this subject, the almost universal opinion seems to be that true colonization in the tropics by the white race is impossible.[1] The only writers who express themselves favorably are Crawford,[2] whose hopes for India have certainly not been fulfilled; Armand[3] and Rattray,[4] Dr. Livingstone and Bishop Hannington,[5] and the physicians assembled at the Medical Congress at Berlin in 1890,[6] with the Society for the Advancement of Medical Science in the Dutch Indian Settlements.[7] All these authorities may now be classed as antiquated, except the last, and moreover the first one represents that nation which is notoriously unsuccessful in acclimatization. The opinion of the Dutch physicians who have been fairly successful may be met by as good testimony from their own number on the opposite side.

Authorities in favor of the view that complete acclimatization of Europeans in the tropics is impossible might be multiplied indefinitely. Among the earlier writers of this opinion are Knox,[8] Prichard,[9] Dr. Hunt,[10] and Sir Ranald Martin.[11] The best German authority concedes it, including Virchow, Fritsche, Joest, Fischer,[12] with Buchner[13] and Hirsch.[14] The French, who have studied it more scientifically than any other nation, hold to this opinion with no exception.[15] Jousset declares that recruiting stations never effect a permanent recovery, the only remedy being to leave the tropics altogether.[16] This opinion is also shared by many of the Dutch, who dissent from the favorable views of


  1. The most definite as well as the latest expression of expert opinion fully agrees with this. Vide Proceedings of the International Geographical Congress at London, 1895.
  2. Transactions of the Ethnological Society, London, new series, i, p. 89.
  3. Traité de Climatologie, Paris, 1873.
  4. Jousset, p. 426.
  5. Scottish Geographical Magazine, vii, 647.
  6. Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, January, 1891, p. 80.
  7. Referred to in the Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Demography and Hygiene, London, xi, p. 170.
  8. Quatrefages, p. 229.
  9. Jousset, p. 426.
  10. Loc. cit., p. 135; other opinions of early writers are here given as well.
  11. Encyclopædia Britannica, Acclimatization.
  12. Scottish Geographical Magazine, vii, p. 647, and Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, 1885, pp. 210, 257, 474. Prof. Virchow distinguishes between malaria and climate, which is generally a distinction without a difference in the tropics.
  13. Correspondenzblatt, xviii, p. 17.
  14. Verhandlungen, 1886, p. 164.
  15. Dr. Rey, op. cit.; Boudin, Bulletin de la Société d'Anthropologie, 1864, pp. 780 and 828; Legoyt, Jousset, p. 426; Bertillon, Bulletin de la Société d'Anthropologie, 1864, pp. 519 and 578; Bordier, Colonization scientifique, pp. 184, 397, 472; and Revue d'Anthropologie, third series, i, pp. 667, 672.
  16. Jousset, p. 434.