It is a practice among the Indians never to drink before dinner, when they work or travel. Experience teaches, that filling the stomach with cold water in the forenoon, weakens the appetite, and makes the system more sensible of heat and fatigue. The state of society among the Indians excludes the influence of most of those passions which disorder the body. The turbulent effects of anger are concealed in deep and lasting resentments. Envy and ambition are excluded by their equality of power and property. Nor is it necessary that the perfections of the whole sex should be ascribed to one, to induce them to marry. "The weakness of love (says Dr. Adam Smith) which is so much indulged in ages of humanity and politeness, is regarded among savages as the most unpardonable effeminacy. A young man would think himself disgraced for ever, if he showed the least preference of one woman above another, or did not express the most complete indifference, both about the time when, and the person to whom, he was to be married[5]." Thus are they exempted from those violent or lasting diseases, which accompany the several stages of such passions in both sexes among civilized nations. [5] Theory of Moral Sentiments. It is remarkable that there are no deformed Indians. Some have suspected, from this circumstance, that they put their deformed children to death; but nature here acts the part of an unnatural mother. The severity of the Indian manners destroy them[6]. [6] Since the intercourse of the white people with the Indians, we find some of them deformed in their limbs. This deformity, upon inquiry, appears to be produced by those accidents, quarrels, &c. which have been introduced among them by spiritous liquors. From a review of the customs of the Indians, we need not be surprised at the stateliness, regularity of features, and dignity of aspect by which they are characterized. Where we observe these among ourselves, there is always a presumption of their being accompanied with health, and a strong constitution. The circulation of the blood is more languid in the Indians, than in persons who are in the constant exercise of the habits of civilized life. Out of eight Indian men whose pulses I once examined at the wrists, I did not meet with one in whom the artery beat more than sixty strokes in a minute. The marks of old age appear more early among Indian, than among civilized nations. Having finished our inquiry into the physical customs of the Indians, we shall now proceed to inquire into their diseases.