Chapter C: P. LAYARD, Govt. Agent

[Sidenote: See Tables V. and W., pp. 50 and 51.]

The principal civil medical officer has prepared returns to show the diseases of the Singhalese and mixed races, and of the Malabars. The deaths among the latter are in the proportion of 20 per cent. against 8 per cent. among the former. This remarkable disproportion in the mortality may be accounted for by the starving condition in which the Malabar coolies generally arrive in this colony; their uncleanly habits; their abstinence from animal food, and, as a consequence, the low standard of their vital organization; and exposure without sufficient clothing in the cold climate of the hills. They sink rapidly under attacks of diarrhœa, dysentery, and anasarca.

The diseases which are most prevalent and fatal among the native races are such as are incidental to this climate, viz., fever, chiefly of the intermittent type, bowel complaints, and anasarca, while cases of scrofula and consumption, to which Miss Nightingale alludes as prevalent “among those converted to Christian civilization,” are happily seldom met with.

The Commission states, in reply to Miss Nightingale’s question, “Can we civilize these people without killing them?” that those diseases which are supposed to be attendant on European civilization are not common among the native inhabitants of the colony, and that, so far from the natives dying out before the march of civilization, the native population is on the increase in the neighbourhood of the larger towns, while it is only in the remote and less civilized districts that the population is decreasing, and this from causes which are being gradually removed by the spread of education.