cured with a dozen sardines and afterwards always prescribed these
fish at every rise in temperature that he discovered in his patients.

We shall proceed otherwise. Before proposing a remedy we shall examine
the causes, and even though strictly speaking a predisposition is not
a cause, let us, however, study at its true value this predisposition
due to nature.

The predisposition exists? Why shouldn't it?

A hot, climate requires of the individual quiet and rest, just as
cold incites to labor and action. For this reason the Spaniard is
more indolent than the Frenchman; the Frenchman more so than the
German. The Europeans themselves who reproach the residents of the
colonies so much (and I am not now speaking of the Spaniards but of
the Germans and English themselves), how do they live in tropical
countries? Surrounded by a numerous train of servants, never going
afoot but riding in a carriage, needing servants not only to take
off their shoes for them but even to fan them! And yet they live and
eat better, they work for themselves to get rich, with the hope of
a future, free and respected, while the poor colonist, the indolent
colonist, is badly nourished, has no hope, toils for others, and
works under force and compulsion! Perhaps the reply to this will be
that white men are not made to stand the severity of the climate. A
mistake! A man can live in any climate, if he will only adapt himself
to its requirements and conditions. What kills the European in hot
countries is the abuse of liquors, the attempt to live according to
the nature of his own country under another sky and another sun. We
inhabitants of hot countries live well in northern Europe whenever
we take the precautions the people there do. Europeans can also stand