5 OCTOBER 1878, Page 3

Professor Garrod, in his introductory lecture at King's College Hospital,

on the opening of the Medical Session, offered one singularly suggestive question to the Faculty. In almost every country there are complaints from which the natives do not suffer, but strangers or immigrants do. Consequently, as the climatic conditions are equal for all, some liability must in the course of ages have been weeded out by the early death of those liabla And what is it that is weeded out? What structural change, for example, has exempted the Negro on the Sea Islands of South Carolina from the effects of the malaria whioh so grievously prostrates or kills the visitor ? Clearly, if we could find that out, we might also find out the method of inducing such change, and learn, as it were, to inoculate men against the effect of climate. We actually do that, in fact, already in dangerously malarious districts, like the delta of the Amazon or the West- African coast ; where quinine, which was disa -ered by accident, gives to the visitor the immunity which the native has obtained by "acclimatisation,"—that is, the killing-out of those liable t6 die from the bad air.