Peculiarities and Diseases of Negroes [pp. 597-599]

598 PECULIARITIES AND DISEASES OF NEGROES.
customers any way you can fix them; and those who will pursue this course
will be amply repaid in the health and vigorous growth of their negroes, for
they will enjoy all the advantages to be derived from the proper use of the fruit
of the earth, whereof they should eat, while they will escape the manifold evils
that usually arise fiom this source. Before dismissing the subject of fruits, I
would remark that plums, and most cling stone fruits are unwholesome, and
that little-negroes (and I might say big ones too) should never have access to a
plum orchard. Plums are excellent for hogs, but unfit for negroes and children,
for they are sure to take them, skin, seed, pulp and all. The apple, peach,
pear, and many of the small-seeded fruits and berries, are nutritious, cooling,
laxative, anti-scorbutic and highly conducive to health, being designed by God
as a great blessing, and not as a curse to the human family.
Finally, I repeat that the food for negroes should be cooked either by the
cook for the white family, or by some other woman; and that breakfast should
be taken before going out in the morning. IG is a well-established fact that a
full stomach fortifies the system against marsh exhalations.
On the subject of clothing, but little need be added to what has been said in
previous articles. Suffice it to say, then, that negroes should be well clothed,
and that they should have woollen outer garments-at least in the winter reason,
while they should be made to wear them continuously, and not be allowed to
change them until the warm weather of spring renders it proper to lay them
aside entirely. Negroes are particularly exposed on going out of a warm house,
early in the cold mornings of fall and winter, and more especially during the
cotton-picking season, when they are subjected to the combined action of cold
and wet. To guard against the wet, I again insist on the advantages of long
cotton aprons, well covered with paint, and as a protection from cold, it would
be well to furnish overcoats, shawls, or blankets, to be worn in the morning.
The writer so often quoted, in speaking of this subject, thus expresses himself:
'There is no one article of clothing, perhaps, which is more necessary to the
health and comfort of field negroes, than the overcoat. These overcoats,
or capots, are useful in the cool of the morning when starting out to work.
The negro is roused from his slumbers at early dawn. Perhaps he has been
sleeping in a close room, with his head enveloped in his blanket, and he goes
directly in the cold morning air with his skin reeking with moisture. His
stomach is empty, and the general languor which prevails predisposes him to
chilliness, and a repulsion of fluids from the surface upon the internal organs to
an extent well calculated to excite disease.
"In point of fact, we believe it is true, that a large proportion of the attacks of
disease in the autumn and winter, come on, or become developed into notice, at
this time. In cotton-picking, and some other kinds of labor, a thorough wetting
of the clothing takes place. and is kept up for some hours until the time for
breakfast, when the meal is taken in the open air, and sufficient rest allowed to
produce a pretty general chilling of the surface of the body. In view of the
ph siological peculiarities of the negro, which tend to unfit him for the endurance of cold, no one can doubt that this exposure is a trying ordeal for him, and
that it requires all the protection that clothing can give. At no time, except
while sleeping, does a negro require warmth and dryness more than when resting
and eating his meals in the open air, and after active labor. While in the full
excitement of exercise, the wetting he receives from the dew, or from the rain, is
of little consequence; but the moment he ceaseth to act, he is in danger of suffering constitutional injury, and unless particular care be taken to guard him
against it, disease, and often fatal disease, will result from it."
I fully coincide in every position contained in the above extract, but would
again suggest that some of the dangers so forcibly presented may be guarded
against by having the negroes to take their breakfast before going out, which
will be a saving of time as well as of health.
While speaking of the dangers of getting wet, we consider it highly proper, in
view of the errors that prevail on this subject, to enforce the position that no
injury is likely to arise from this cause while the body is kept in motion. If negroes could be kept constantly engaged in active labor, they might work all day