The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1900-05-29
CAROLINA DOCTOR ON THE
NEGRO.

DR.. j. Allison Hodges, u native of
North Carolina, now d medical pro-
fessor IN Richmond, Va. delivered an
address on Wednesday before the
members of the American Medico-Psy-
Geological Association in session in
that city. His subject was THE Effect
Of Freedom Upon the Physical and
Psychological Development of. the Ne
gro 1t was a candid, clear, intelligent
discussion and was warmly applauded
by the association. 1t was the view of
a southern man, educated physician, a
man of science. His conclusion was elo-
quent and very impressive. We quote
from The Richmond Dispatches report:
DIR. Hodges declared il as mis- unbi-
ased, firm belief, after due elaboration,
tina the future welfare OF the negro
lies IN his REIMBURSEMENT OF the full
rights OF citizenship, AMI in his en-
trusting his education to the better
class OF whites.
Consumption and insanity, he de-
clared, are wrecking the negro as a
race. Without restraint, a %creatur of
passions and appetites, degeneracy is
returning him to a primitive state of
savagery. A nation of a day, with the
heritage of bondage, savagery, and
fifty generations of barbarity, free
dom had proved how unequal he was
TO the independent struggle for exist
ence in the civilization in which his
lot has been cast"
Such sentiments will shock the the
orizers and ignorant enthusiasts up
north who have no knowledge of the
negro, cannot understand the situation
in the south, and blindly believe that
the millions of negroes have made a
great advance since 1865. They take
the better, more respectable, more
progressive class as a sample Of the
whole. We can not follow u North
Carolina physician, who, like DR.. Paul
B. Barringer, another native here"
has a proper knowledge of conditions
and a studied the negro in his hab-
itat and environments. He discusses
the subject with elaboration and thor
oughness. He goes back $50 years aud
comes up to the present. He contrasts
the condition of the negro in slavery in
1860, and his condition in liberty in
1900. He shows that unknown diseases
are now preying upon the race. He
quotes from census and hospital re
ports. We quote this informing state
ment:
Freedom removed all hygienic re-
straints, and they were no longer ODE
dient to the inexorable laws of health.
plunging into all sorts of excuses and
vices, leading irregular lives, and hav-
ing apparently little or no control over
their appetiteS and passions. 1t is very
manifest that these morbid tendencies
and susceptibilitieS have been growlng
and taking deeper root for the past
thirty years; hence their unstable con-
dition and their susceptibility to, and
inability to resist, attacks 81 disease
hat were formerly almost unknown
among them. (Powell.)
I'm the wholesale violation of these
hygienic laws after the war, as pre-
yiously stated, was laid the foundation
of the degeneration of the physical and
mental constitution of the negro. Licen-
tiousness left its Shiny trail of some
times ~ineradicable disease upon his
physical being, n neglected bronchi-
tbs. pneumonia, and plurisy lent their
helping hand toward lung ~degenera-
ton"
Other writer's through a decade ave
taken this view. The late DIR. Thomas
F. Wood, then editing the North Caro-
linz Medical Journal with so much of
benefit to the state, told US ten or
twelve years ago that the negro was
d~eterioating physically and diseases OF
a deadly nature were developing ana
destroying the race. We postpone d
reference to what DR.. Hodges SAID as
TO the ability and education OF the ne
gro.