as to any particular class of people born in health, is
constructed to pass through this cycle and is not of itself,--that is
to say, by its own organism,--capable of giving origin to any of the
phenomena to which we apply the term disease. We must, therefore, seek
for origins of the phenomena in causes lying outside the body, and
affecting it in such manner as to either render the natural actions
and processes irregular, or to excite actions and processes that are
altogether new.

Writing out in correct lists all the groups of phenomena that make up
the term disease, we will find that they invariably come from without.
From my point of view all the groups of diseases are in truth
accidents; exposure to some influence or influences that pervert
function or create new motion. I must first refer to the cause to
which at various times has been ascribed the responsibility for this
excessive mortality, viz.: that innate vital weakness exists in the
colored population of this country as a result of amalgamation. On
this theory the black race when mixed with the Caucasian is the only
one which produces with the latter a progeny of weakened innate
vitality. I have never seen this statement supported by any
trustworthy knowledge or information. On the other hand it has always
been accompanied by the most absurd arguments which invariably tend to
expose the mind of the writer as being prejudiced to the intermingling
and the intermarriage between the two races. It is among the
possibilities that physiological peculiarities account for
dispositions to disease belonging to typical classes of the human
family. No one has as yet been able to determine what those
peculiarities are. Whether they are primitively impressed on a race,
or are acquired is a question that can be answered only when the exact
relationships of diseases to race are discovered. My own view is, that
acquired and transmitted qualities and specific existing social
peculiarities are sufficient agencies for the production of all the
known variations of vitality belonging to peculiar races.

I am now thoroughly convinced that the causes of this great mortality
of the colored people of the cities of the South are _poverty_,
_prejudice_, and _ignorance_. For obvious reasons I will submit them
in the following arrangement:

1. _POVERTY:_

a. Contagious Diseases (close contact).--Diphtheria, scarlet fever,
small-pox, tuberculosis, syphilis, etc.

b. Unsanitary Nuisan