Note 26 — AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE AMONG THE INDIANS OF NORTH-AMERICA; AND A COMPARATIVE VIEW OF THEIR DISEASES AND REMEDIES WITH THOSE OF CIVILIZED NATIONS. Read before the American Philosophical Society, held at Philadelphia, on the 4th of February, 1774.
Reading edition
It has been urged against the state of longevity in America, that the Europeans, who settle among us, generally arrive to a greater age than the Americans. This is not occasioned so much by a peculiar firmness in their stamina, as by an increase of vigour which the constitution acquires by a change of climate. A Frenchman (cæteris paribus) outlives an Englishman in England. A Hollander prolongs his life by removing to the Cape of Good Hope. A Portuguese gains fifteen or twenty years by removing to Brazil. And there are good reasons to believe, that a North-American would derive the same advantages, in point of health and longevity, by removing to Europe, which a European derives from coming to this country.
From a calculation made by an ingenious foreigner, it appears, that a greater proportion of old people are to be found in Connecticut, than in any colony in North-America. This colony contains 180,000 inhabitants. They have no public hospitals or poor-houses; nor is a beggar to be seen among them. There cannot be more striking proofs than these facts of the simplicity of their manners.