Medical ethnology / by Chas. E. Woodruff.

  • Woodruff, Charles E. (Charles Edward), 1860-1915.
Date:
[1915?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Medical ethnology / by Chas. E. Woodruff. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    242/344 (page 230)
    Brown, of the University of New Zealand, reports blue-eyed, yellow-haired Europeans of the fifth generation in the Isl- and of Kissa, descendants of Dutch soldiers. They, too, show weakness of constitution, erroneously blamed on in- breeding. They have forgotten Dutch and speak the native language, though three-fourths are of pure Dutch descent. /. H. F. Kohlbrugge 15 states that the fair people of Kis- ser (Kissa?), are of mixed blood, and that the “blond” Europeans of Pitcairn are half-breeds of Tahiti women. He thinks that long survival is dependent on race mix- ture. He says that “other whites have been living on Saba Island (Dutch West Indies), and have not mixed with the natives, but are degenerating in a remarkable manner. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries many French aristocratic families resided in Guadaloupe and Martinique, but as soon as immigration stopped they died out or degenerated. A number of Dutch farmers settled in Surinam with their families about the middle of the last century; of these, only a few have survived and are fertile without race mixture. The same can be said of the German families settled on the coast of Queensland, but the period has been too short to form a definite opinion. Dark- haired Europeans have fared far better. For the last two centuries several Portuguese-Jewish families have been liv- ing in Surinam, and Spaniards have successfully persisted in high-lying plains, not, however, without race-mixture.” Italians seem to stand Queensland the best, and the Por- tuguese the tropical north of Australia. He also says that the fair inhabitants of Pitcairn, Kisser and Saba are of a low intellectual level. It is almost a biological axiom that half-breeds between widely separated races cannot persist because of physical un- fitness to the climate of either parent. They are actually people without a place on earth suited to their physique, men without a country. Mulattoes, for instance, are unfit for the tropics because they are too light, and unfit for cold countries because the nostril is so large, hence they are dam- 16 Archiv. fur Rassen und Gesellschafts Bxologie, vol. vii, No. 5, 1910.