Current Comment

AGAIN THE WHITE MAN IN THE TROPICS  At a meeting of the Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in London in October, Sir Havelock Charles, in a discussion of neurasthenia among northern peoples who go to India, made some interesting observations on the failure of such peoples to survive without admixture with the native races or without conforming to the necessities imposed by the climate. "Conforming to the climate," he says, "will probably mean the preservation of a percentage of strains defective in the primitive qualities, and with a liability to nervous weakness." The light-colored peoples are perfectly fitted to cold climates, but when they migrate to hot latitudes they are damaged by the conditions to which they are exposed. It is said that fresh waves of immigration are constantly necessary for the preservation of the purity and predominance of the white race in a tropical climate. Unless these occur,