Shut your mouth and save your life / by George Catlin.

  • George Catlin
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Shut your mouth and save your life / by George Catlin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    13/114 (page 5)
    tions, the numbers of premature deaths in those cities are much diminished, leaving the average proportions as first given, no doubt, very near the truth, at the pre- sent time; and still a lamentable statement for the contemplation of the world, by which is seen the fright- ful gauntlet that civilized man runs in his passage through life. The sanitary condition of the Savage Races of North and South America, a few instances of which I shall give, not by quoting a variety of authors, but from estimates carefully made by myself, whilst travelling among those people, will be found to present a striking contrast to those just mentioned, and so widely different as naturally, and very justly, to raise the inquiry into the causes leading to such dissimilar results. Several very respectable and credible modern writers have undertaken to show, from a host of authors, that premature mortality is greater amongst the Savage, than amongst the Civilized Races; which is by no means true, excepting amongst those communities of savages who have been corrupted, and their simple and temperate modes of life changed, by the dissipations and vices introduced among them by civilized people. In order to draw a fair contrast between the results of habits amongst the two Races, it is necessary to con- template the two people living in the uninvaded habits peculiar to each ; and it would be well also, for the