Thibodaux minerva. [volume] (Thibodaux, La.) 18??-1858, 1855-01-27
Is not our Race Deteriorating ?

Is not our Race Deteriorating
[ hold it to be morally impossible for God to
have created, in the beginning, such men and
women as we find the human race, IN their ply
| steal condition, now to be. Examine the book
of Genesis, which contains the earliest annals OF
the human family. AS is commonly supposed,
it comprises the first twenty-three hundred and
sixty-nine years of human history: With child
like simplicity, this book describes the infancy
of mankind. Unlike modern histories, it details
the minutest circumstances Of social and lndl-
vdual life Indeed, it is rather series Of
biographies than q history. The false decacy
of modern times did not forbid the mention of
whatever was done or suffered. And yet over
all that expanse of time-for more than one
third part Of the duration of the human race
not single instance is recorded of q child born
blind, or deaf, or dumb, or idotic, or malformed
in any way? During the whole period, not a
single case of natural death in infancy, or
childhood, or early manhood, or even of middle
manhood, is to be found. Not one man or wo-
man died of disease. The simple record is and
he died, or, he died in a good old age, and full
of years, or, he was old and full of days. No
epidemic disease prevailed, showing that they
died the natural death of dstempered ones.
Through all this time, Except in the single case
of Jacob, in his old age, and then only for a
day or two before his death,) it does not appear
that any man was i'll, or that any old lady or
young lady ever tainted. Bodily pain from
disease is nowhere mentioned. No cholera in
fantum. scarlatine. measles. small pox-not
even toothache! So extraordinary thing
was it for son to die before his father that an
instance of it is deemed worthy of special
notice: and this first case of the reversal of
| low, two Oft fho
creation of Adam. See how this reversal Of
natures law has for us become the law for how
rare is it now for all the children of family to
survive the parents! Rechael died at the birth Of
Benjamin but this is the only case of puerpe-
raj death mentioned in the first twenty-four
hundred years of the sacred history, and even
this happened during the fatigues of a patriar-
chal journey, when passengers were not waited
along in the saloons CT railcar or steamboat.
Had Adam, think you, tuberculous lungs?
Was Eve fiat-chested qEdid she cultivate the
serpentine line of grace II curved spine Did
! Nimrod get up in the morning with furred
tongue, or was he tormented with the dyspepsia?
Had Esau the govt or hepatitis Imagine how
the tough old Patriarch would have looked at
being asked to subscribe for a.lying-in hospital,
or an asylum for lunates, or an eye infrm-
airy, or a school for idiots or deaf-mutes.
What would their eagle-visiop and swift-footed-
ness have said to the project of blind asylum
or an othopedic establishment? Did they suffer
any of these revenges of nature against false
civilization. No! Man came from the hand of
God so perfect in his bodily organs. so defiant
of cold and heat of draught and humanity, SO
surcharged with vital force, that it took more
than two thousand years Of the combined abom-
nations of appetite and ignorance; it took sue
cessive ages Of outrageous excess and debau-
cherry, to drain of his electric energies and make
| him accessible to disease; and then it took
ages more to breed all these vile distempers
which now nestle, like vermin, in every organ
and fibre of our bodies!
During all this time, however, the fatal
causes were at work which wore away and
finally exhausted the glorious and Astounding
vigor of the pristine race At least as early as
the third generation from Adam, polygamy
began. Intermarriages were all along the order
of the day. Even Abraham married his half
sister. The basest harlotry was not beneath
one of the Patriarchs Whole people, like the
Moabtes and Amorites, were the direct fruit of
combined drunkenness and incest between
father and daughters. The highest pleasure
and forces Of the race gradually narrowed down
into appetite and incontinence. A length, its
history becomes almost too shocking to be
referred to- If its greatest men, its wisest men
| it's God-favored men, like David, could be guilty
of murder for the sake of adultry, or like Solo
mon, could keep seragio of thousand wives
and concubines, what blackness can be black
enough to paint the portrait Of the people they
ruled, and the children they begat?
After the Exodus, excuses rapidly developed
into diseases. First came cutaneous distempers
-leprosy, boils, elephantiasis, &C., the common
effort of nature to throw visceral impurities to
the surface. AS early as King Asa that right
royal malady, the gout, had been invented.
Then came consumptions, and the burning ague
and disorders of the visceral organs, and pesti-
lences, or, as the Bible expresses it, great
plaques and of long continuance, and sore sick
nessess and Of long continuance; until, in the
time of Christ, we see how diseases of all kinds
had become the common lot of mankind. by the
crowds that focked to him to be healed. And
so frightfully, SO disgracefully numerous have
Diseases now become, that if we were to write
down their names, in the smallest legible hand
on the smallest bits of paper, there would not
be room enough on the human body to paste
the labels.
"CoURT HOUSE TAKEN FOR GROCERY