XIV.
February 29th.
… THE whites remain exempt from the malady.
One might therefore hastily suppose that liability of 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.
