Temperance, The
Calm Of Passions, Frugality, And Continual Exercise, Keep Them
Healthy, And Preserve Unimpaired That Constitution Which They Have
Received From Parents As Healthy As Themselves; Who In The
Unpolluted Embraces Of The Earliest And Chastest Love, Conveyed To
Them The Soundest Bodily Frame Which Nature Could Give.
But as no
habitable part of this globe is exempt from some diseases,
proceeding either from climate or modes of living; here they are
sometimes subject to consumptions and to fevers.
Since the
foundation of that town no epidemical distempers have appeared,
which at times cause such depopulations in other countries; many of
them are extremely well acquainted with the Indian methods of curing
simple diseases, and practise them with success. You will hardly
find anywhere a community, composed of the same number of
individuals, possessing such uninterrupted health, and exhibiting so
many green old men, who show their advanced age by the maturity of
their wisdom, rather than by the wrinkles of their faces; and this
is indeed one of the principal blessings of the island, which richly
compensates their want of the richer soils of the south; where iliac
complaints and bilious fevers, grow by the side of the sugar cane,
the ambrosial ananas, etc. The situation of this island, the purity
of the air, the nature of their marine occupations, their virtue and
moderation, are the causes of that vigour and health which they
possess. The poverty of their soil has placed them, I hope, beyond
the danger of conquest, or the wanton desire of extirpation.
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