How to Save the Republic, and the Position of the South in the Union [pp. 184-197]

HOW TO SAVE THE REPUBLIC, ETC.
ART. VI.-HOW TO SAVE THE REPUBLIC, AND THE POSITION OF THE
SOUTH IN THE UNION.
EMANCIPATION - ABOLITION - NATURAL LAW OF SLAVERY - PHYSICAL
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE NEGRO-FATAL RESULTS OF SUBSTITUTING
WHITE LABOR FOR BLACK AT THE SOUTH, ETC.
[Samuel A. Cartwright, M. D., of New-Orleans, long known and distinguished
for his profound investigations upon the subject of Southcern Slavery and the
physiological character of the negro, has prepared for our pages the following
most able paper, which we hasten to present to our readers, though necessarily
attended with an enlargement of the number. It is too valuable to be postponed a single day.
The paper referred to by Dr. Cartwright as having been prepared by him for
the Medical Convention, will be found in our July, August, and perhaps subsequent numbers of this year.]-Editor.
NEW-ORLEANS, July, 1851.
DEAR SIR,-There is shut up in the archives of the science of medicine
enough of hidden knowledge to save the Union now and forever, if it were
brought to light.
Knowledge is not power, unless it is made active by be;ing set free. Imprisoned in the dissecting room, or in the student's closet, it is like light
under a bushel. To be made an element of political power, the aid of the
politician, the greater the better, is needed to give it an impul se that will
send it to the cottage of every voter. The object of this communication,
and of the first article in the Medical Journal, I herewith send you, is respectfully to call your attention to the result of some scientific investigations that I faintly hope may be converted into an instrument of good to
assist in saving the Union, if brought upon the political arena at this inportant crisis.
Some time ago I was appointed by the Medical Association of Louisiana
to make a report on the diseases and peculiarities of the negro race. In
perf)orming that duty, the third of a century's experience in treating diseases in a section of country where the white and black population are
nearly equal, lent mne its aid. A vast number of facts, standing thickly and
closely along the obscure by-paths, that none but Southern physicians
travel, have been interrogated, andl the important truth demonstrated,
"that the same medical treatment, under the same external circum
stances, which benefits or cures a white man, often injures or kills a negro,
and vice versa." It may not be unworthy a great statesman to inquire, if
what is true in Medicine may not be truie in Government, and to investigate the question, whether thie laws and free institutions, so beneficial to
the white man, may not be detrimental and deteriorating to the negro?
That a great difference exists between the organization of the white and
black man, has long ago been proved by anatomists.
Semmerring, for instance, a learned author of the last century.-Difference in physiology also implies difference in structure. The practice of
negroes in exposing their bare heads and backs, through choice, to the rays
of a sun hot enough to blister the skin of a white man, proves that they
are under different physiological laws from him-not from habit-(as such
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