As I have already suggested, the failure of the slave populations of the West Indies to increase by natural means was not the result of low fertility, but rather the consequence of a blending of genetic, cultural, immunological, and especially nutritional factors, which quickly converted so many birth statistics into death statistics that natural population growth was impossible. By examining the major causes of infant and child mortality it is possible to glean some idea of the magnitude of their destructiveness and also in some cases to see them begin to fade as nutritional circumstances gradually improved for Caribbean blacks, first as slaves and then as freemen. For convenience, as well as coherence, the diseases to be examined are presented in the chronological order that West Indian slave infants and children would have most likely encountered them as they struggled for life during their first, most hazardous, years.

Tetanus/Tetany

According to West Indian physicians and planters alike, the most important cause of infant death during the first week or two of life was the illness called “jawfall,” “trismus,” or “locked jaw” in the British Islands, mocezuelo in Puerto Rico, and tetanos neonatorum in Cuba. It was also referred to colloquially as the “nine-day fits,” for generally it claimed the infant within the first nine days of life.