Excerpt from The Diseases of China: Their Causes, Conditions, and Prevalence Contrasted, With Those of Europe
The climate and physical features of a country, and the food and the diseases which depend thereupon and which destroy or impair vitality, are the principal influences directing the development of the permanent characters of a race, and the chief agents consequently by which race is propagated and type constituted. Physiological peculiarities are more acquired than primitively impressed. The acquired and transmitted qualities, with the existing social customs, are amply sufficient factors for the production of every variety or degree of vitality which may distinguish any race. These peculiarities affecting stature, health, and duration of life are more dependent upon the combined influences of food and customs, acting through many ages, than mere climate alone. Simple hygienic precautions which we find efficacious in one country are useful in others, and with proper attention to such rules the deadly effects of climate disappear. The cultivation of temperance in all things, general soberness of life, and all else that would prove useful to us in Europe in enabling us to remain vigorous to resist malign influences, is of equal value to us in the East. We are in the habit of speaking of a certain invariableness in the type of disease - like causes producing like effects - that disease retains this type in all forms of civilisation, in all climes and all ages. Very few diseases have appeared, very few have disappeared. Some have become graver in certain localities, countries, and civilisations than others, but sporadic cases of any disease assume the same type as the same disease in its epidemic or endemic form. Although this is undoubtedly -true, it is nevertheless also true that many diseases which were either rare or almost unknown have sprung into notoriety and have assumed severer forms, and have added greatly to our mortality bills.
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