Dr. Rush did not consider it odd that the entire race should have contracted leprosy:
[T]he influence of unwholsome diet ... combined with greater heat, more savage manners, and bilious fevers, probably produced this disease in the skin among the natives of Africa.
He also dismissed any objections as to its hereditary properties:
[T]he leprosy is the most durable in its descent to posterity, and the most indestructable in its nature of any disease we are acquainted with. In Iceland Dr. Van Troil tells us, it often disappears in the second and third, and appears in the fourth generation.
He went on to list a number of reasons why he believed that their color was a result of leprosy:
1. The leprosy is accompanied in some instances with a black color of the skin.
And citing someone else, he explained that this disease is responsible for the supposed odor of blacks:
"They [lepers] exhale perpetually a peculiar and disagreeable smell, which I can compare to nothing but the smell of a mortified limb." This smell mentioned by Dr. Theiry continues with a small modification in the native African to this day.
4. The leprosy induces a morbid insensibility in the nerves. ... This insensibility belongs in a peculiar manner to the negroes.
5. Lepers are remarkable for having strong venereal desires. This is universal among the negroes... .
6. The big lip, and flat nose so universal among the negroes, are symptoms of the leprosy. I have more than once seen them in the Pennsylvania hospital.
7. The woolly heads of the negroes cannot be accounted for from climate, diet, state of society, or bilious diseases, for all those circumstances, when combined have not produced it in the natives of Asia and America who inhabit similar latitudes. ... [I]t would seem that the leprosy had found its way to the covering of the head, and from the variety of its effects upon the skin, I see no difficulty in admitting that it may ... have produced wool upon the head of the negro... .
But if being black is a disease, why don't people catch it?
I would reply to such objection by remarking in the first place, that the leprosy has in a great degree ceased to be infectious, more especially from contact, and secondly that there are instances in which something like an infectious quality has appeared in the skin of a negro. A white woman in North Carolina not only acquired a dark color, but several of the features of a negro, by marrying and living with a black husband. A similar instance of a change in the color and features of a woman in Buck's county in Pennsylvania has been observed and from a similar cause.
And of course, there's no reason to expect a race of lepers to be unhealthy or short-lived.
It is no objection to the theory I have attempted to establish, that the negroes are as healthy, and long lived as the white people.
So, what did all this mean? Rush, an abolitionist, warned his audience that if blacks were all victims of disease, this warranted further charity on the part of the white man. Further, he called for the discovery of a cure, and toward that goal retold anecdotes of black men becoming white through "bleeding" (a favorite technique of Rush's), "the influence of fear", "oxygenated muriatic acid", and "unripe peaches."
Of course, if anyone suggested that blacks might simply want to remain the way they are, Rush had words for them, too: "[H]owever well they appear to be satisfied with their color, there are many proofs of their preferring that of the white people"--none of which he provided.
5 comments:
Meine freude i don`t know what chinko-mongolo-turkoid you are. But the keyboard, P.C. and internet which you use to moderate this ''wonderfull'' blog of yours all inventions of the white man, as much as the whole inventions which make the life of everybody on this planet easy and comfortable. I see you don`t see that people wanting to evaporate whites from this planet aren`t racists? No shit! The white race is the most discriminated against. Eaven the thought of many many people that only whites are racist, is itself racist.
i don`t know what chinko-mongolo-turkoid you are.
There appears to be a hell of a lot you don't know. My race is really the least of them.
But the keyboard, P.C. and internet which you use to moderate this ''wonderfull'' blog of yours all inventions of the white man
Given the huge numbers of people involved in all of those and the global contributions to these inventions, you'd have a hell of a hard time proving that everyone who worked on these was white. But even if you're right about those few inventions, what of it? It still wouldn't mean that people of other races are generally less intelligent than whites.
as much as the whole inventions which make the life of everybody on this planet easy and comfortable.
Wrong. See, for example, this list.
I see you don`t see that people wanting to evaporate whites from this planet aren`t racists?
I don't actually see that any such people exist. Perhaps you could show me one? But before you do, remember that none of these have to due with wanting to "evaporate whits from this planet": wanting white people to leave them alone; wanting white people to stop bombing their country or interfering in their internal politics; wanting white people to treat them as the equals that they are; wanting the racial inequities in this country and the entire world to be corrected; wanting jackasses like you to recognize that you don't have some sovereign right to rule the United States, much less the world, because of your skin pigmentation.
The white race is the most discriminated against.
Okay, what planet are we talking about again? It's certainly not Earth.
Eaven the thought of many many people that only whites are racist, is itself racist.
Possibly so, but that doesn't excuse your own racist vomit.
Don't worry, Skemono.
As a White person, I've spent a lot of time around other White people and can tell you, this kind of reaction is common. Sometimes when White people read bad things about other White people they completely flip out and start acting as though all non-Whites are plotting against them. This also often prompts them to begin using forms of the word "racism" indiscriminately (if you can imagine!). Further, it can lead White people to engage in an act of reconstructing an inverted trajectory of Western history. They may even tell you that Africa kidnapped them and forced them to set up colonies.
If the reaction is volatile enough, White people also feel free to break their own rules. Common casualties include the White institution of proper spelling as well as the White grammatical injunction against comma splices.
As a White person, I've spent a lot of time around other White people and can tell you, this kind of reaction is common.
You know, I think that to me the most amusing part of all this is the assumption that I am not white. Apparently you have to be a "chinko-mongolo-turkoid" (odd that he left out 'negroid') to discuss racism.
I'm revisiting this post due to new information that I just discovered.
The racist troll said,
But the keyboard, P.C. and internet which you use to moderate this ''wonderfull'' blog of yours all inventions of the white man
But not so fast! Cue Mark Dean. From his Wiki page:
He holds three of the nine original IBM patents upon which the IBM PC personal computers were based. He led the team that developed the ISA bus, and he led the design team responsible for creating the first one-gigahertz computer processor chip.
So the assertion that the PC is an "invention of the white man" is just. plain. wrong. One of the principal inventors was, in fact, an African-American.
The belief otherwise is nothing but ignorance and a racist assumption that everything had to be invented by white people, reality and research be damned.
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