Rectal Pathology in the Negro

The physician of the South inherits the health problem of the Southern negro as he does his religion and his Democratic affiliation. The obligation to concern himself constantly with the question of disease in the more or less indolent, often dependent race, which makes up one tenth of our population and crowds our dispensaries, is mandatory—humanity impels and the safety of the adjacent Caucasian race demands. This obligation is becoming nation wide in its extent, as well as more definitely an urban problem. The fourteenth census 1 shows that 17.4 per cent, of our 10,500,000 negroes are found in the Northern states, as against 11.6 per cent, ten years previously, while in the South, the race continues to concentrate in the cities. 2 This discussion must be predicated on two admissions —the heritability of diatheses and the possibility of the presence of distinct characteristics in the dark skinned races. While