I have previously remarked that in these islands the duties of the sorcerer and the medicine-man are frequently combined. The same man, who can remove a disease by exorcism and by ill-wishing can bring sickness and death upon any obnoxious individual, may also be able in the estimation of the people to procure a fair wind for an intended voyage, or to bring about rain in a season of drought. I had more than one opportunity of satisfying myself of the fact that the medicine-man often trades upon the credulity of his patients, and that he is himself aware that all his charms and incantations are mere trickery. In Santa Anna his services are often employed to procure the recovery of a sick man, and by some form of incantation he pretends to appease the anger of the offended spirit to whom the illness is attributed. Captain Macdonald, who has long resided in this island, informed me that when on one occasion he had relieved by medicine the sufferings of a native who had in vain employed the exorcisms of the village physician to effect his cure, the success of his treatment did not detract in any way from the reputation of the medicine-man, who, having informed himself of the progress of the patient, after Captain Macdonald had given his remedy, foretold his recovery and took to himself the whole credit of the cure.

In the island of Ugi chunam (burnt lime) is one of the domestic remedies employed in sickness, being rubbed into the skin of the patient by his friends. The chunam of some men is supposed to be more efficacious than that of others, and messengers may be sent from one end of the island to the other to procure it. One of our Treasury natives, who was employed on board, had a reputation as medicine-man. His method of treatment in the case of one of his own comrades consisted in tying a particular leaf around the limbs and joints to localize the pain, and in striking the affected part with the same leaf. On one occasion this man was himself laid up with a large abscess in the buttock, which he attempted to cure by tying a strip of the leaf around the thigh and by placing another for a few moments over the seat of the abscess. He would not let me do much for him; and from absorption of the purulent matter into the blood, a number of abscesses began to form in other parts of the body which brought him into a serious hectic condition. The poor fellow’s cries of “Agai” “Agai,” corresponding to our exclamations of pain, made me feel acutely for him; but he placed little faith in our offices, his great desire, as intimated by his frequent cries of “Feli” (Fire), was to be placed beside a large wood fire. He was sent on shore and given in charge of his wife on our arrival off Treasury. When I landed to see him a few hours after, I found him with his wish at last gratified; there he lay beside a roasting fire, the very last condition that seemed likely to promote his recovery. However he slowly regained his health, and I did what I could for him in buying sago and other articles of food from his own people who were not very ready with their supplies for the sick man.

This brings me to the subject of the indifference often displayed towards the sick and invalids. The natives view these things in a very matter-of-fact way. On more than one occasion when in the house of sickness, the son or the brother of the sick man has remarked to me, in the coolest manner, “Him too much sick. I think by-and-by finish;” and it is astonishing to hear of the manner in which they allow the sick to shift for themselves. In the islands of Bougainville Straits the very aged, who are unable to get about or to be of any service to themselves, are placed in a house in which they are left alone although supplied with food; and there they remain until they die. Two old and decrepit men, who were both fast hastening to their ends, being the subjects of chronic lung affections, were placed together in a house in Treasury where they were supplied with food but rarely if ever visited. They were placed there to die as the relations informed us; and there they remained day after day until the end arrived. Mr. Stephens told me that in his island of Ugi, if a cocoa-nut is placed by the side of the sick man, his friends consider they have done all in their power. No attempt is made to alleviate pain, or to soothe by companionship the tedious hours of the sick. He lies deserted on his roughly plaited mat of palm-leaves, in his wretched home where the sunlight rarely enters; and there he awaits, perhaps without regret, his approaching death. When consciousness leaves him, his friends regard him as already dead, attributing the spasmodic breathing and the convulsive efforts of the dying man to the agency of some evil spirit.

The influence of superstition probably explains the indifference which prevails as to the welfare of the sick and aged. Those afflicted with such an infirmity as blindness are kindly treated by their fellows. I was particularly struck, whilst looking on at a feast in the village of Treasury, by the attention that was paid to the wants of a young blind man who sat aloof from the rest. He was blind from his birth, and I particularly pleased him by sitting down beside him and giving him a stick of tobacco.

In the case of those who have received some severe injury, such as a gunshot wound, considerable care is shown by the friends in their welfare. I saw much of the natives who were wounded during the hostilities carried on between the natives of Treasury and the Shortlands, and was astonished at the ease with which they recovered from apparently hopeless injuries. My experience goes to support the opinion laid down by Professor Waitz in his “Anthropology of Primitive Peoples,”[149] that the healing power of nature is greater among savage than among civilized races. The principle of non-interference was literally carried out in defiance of the laws of hygiene and of the experience of modern surgery. After the unfortunate conflict on the islet of Tuluba, off the west coast of Alu, I visited the wounded man and woman who had been brought back to their homes. I found the woman lying in a dingy little house in which I had to stand still for a few minutes before I could see my patient. Five days had elapsed since the fight; and the condition of a wound, which has been left alone for this period in a tropical climate, may be well imagined. She had received a severe tomahawk wound just above the right knee, smashing the bone and implicating the joint. The parts were much swollen and there was profuse suppuration. No attempt had been made to wash the wound, and in consequence it stunk horribly. A few pieces of split bamboo, less than a foot in length, were lashed in a slack fashion around the joint by means of rattan; but they could have given little or no support. Under the couch, which was merely a layer of poles raised about a foot from the ground, were placed hot stones wrapped up in leaves, from which the warmth ascended to the injured limb which was left uncovered and exposed to the flies and other insects. The poor woman was moaning terribly; and her cries of “Agai” were painful to listen to, especially as I was permitted to do but little. They would neither wash nor cover the wound, and persisted in keeping up the hot air treatment by means of the hot stones wrapped in leaves, which were placed under the couch. I pronounced her recovery as hopeless; and was after a time obliged to discontinue my visits, upon being told by one of the medicine-men that as he could make her well, my presence was not required. I never saw the woman again, but sometime after I learned that she was nearly well.

The man who was wounded at the same time had received a rifle-bullet through the thigh without injuring the bone, and another through the groin. I found his wounds in the same horrible condition, with the wound of exit in the thigh as large as my fist. Nothing whatever had been done except placing hot stones in leaves under the limb on the ground beneath; and nothing more was done. There the man lay for several weeks with his wounds unwashed and exposed to the air. In course of time he recovered. One of the Treasury natives had been shot by one of his own party, the rifle-bullet passing through the right elbow from behind, and apparently disorganising the joint. I saw him a month after he had received the injury, lying in a very emaciated condition on his couch, with the wounded limb stretched out beside him quite unprotected and displaying an extensive flesh-wound in front of the joint. The hot-stone treatment had been the only one employed. In another month or five weeks he was up and about, but of course with a useless elbow. One of the Alu natives, who had been shot through the left shoulder from behind by the Treasury chief, had nearly recovered when I saw him six or seven weeks after, although the arm was useless.

Reflecting on the hot-stone treatment which the natives employed for these severe injuries, I came to think that it was really efficacious. They said themselves that the hot air eased the pain, and this was probably effected, as I hold, by the warmth relaxing the parts after suppuration had begun and thus assisting the escape of the purulent discharges. The surgeon of our own time may take a hint from this practice of the Solomon Islander. It would certainly scarcely accord with the principles of modern surgery if a gunshot injury of one of the larger joints was to be treated in one of our general hospitals by being constantly kept in a current of heated air, uncovered and even unwashed. The experiment, however, would be worth a trial in cases where amputation is unpracticable and where death is the probable result.

It is a common saying amongst white men who have had to deal with these natives, that when a man makes up his mind to die he assuredly will, even although apparently in robust health. Such cases are not unusual on board labour-ships on their way to the Queensland and Fiji plantations, and they may be regarded as of the nature of nostalgic melancholy or home-sickness. It is in truth hard to imagine the train of thoughts which must pass through the simple mind of a native when his island-home disappears below the horizon, and he is borne away to a strange land from which, it may be, some of his acquaintances have never returned. Even the attractions of the box of trade that his servitude will earn may be insufficient to keep down the undefined apprehensions which fill his breast; and the knowledge of the impossibility of seeking his friends or his island again for what must appear to him an indefinite period may only serve to strengthen his longing for home. Here we have that disease with which the army surgeons of Europe were familiar, and which has been most recently exhibited amongst the Italian troops stationed at Masowah on the coast of the Red Sea. It is that “strange disease” which Dr. Livingstone so pathetically describes in his “Last Journals,” as affecting the victims of the slave-trade in the lake region of Africa. I remember on one occasion, when visiting a labour-vessel that had arrived in Treasury Harbour, my attention was drawn by the mate to a native of New Ireland who had eaten little for some days and was looking over the side of the ship towards the shore in a depressed and moody manner. I saw that the thoughts of the poor fellow were in reality far away; and I passed on to see some of the other sick men. The next morning this New Ireland native was missing, and in the evening his body was found washed up on the beach. ... I would refer my readers to some interesting remarks on this subject from the pen of Mr. Romilly,[150] whose official experience in the Western Pacific enables him to write with authority. The Solomon Islanders, according to this author, are less affected by this disease than those of other groups; whilst the New Hebrides natives appear to be most subject to it. Not only do natives often die of nostalgia before they are landed, but many die from this cause after their arrival in Fiji; and the only way to cure those affected is the one least likely to be followed, that is, “to send them home.”

In the eastern part of the Solomon Group, one commonly meets natives limping along with large ulcerous sores on the soles of the feet, seated usually near the base of the toes. They are often caused by stepping on the sharp corals when fishing on the reefs, or by splinters of wood piercing the skin of the soles of the feet when walking in the bush. As a rule, the native pays no attention to these sores, and from neglect the ulceration extends both on the surface and to the deeper tissues, exposing the tendons and the metatarsal bones. Ultimately some or all the toes may be lost, and an unshapely clubbed foot arises from the subsequent contraction of the cicatrised surface. At other times, where the ulceration has been superficial but has extended between the toes, adhesion and perfect union of the lateral surfaces of the toes ensue, and a continuous covering of skin bridges over the intervening spaces. Mr. Nisbet, the government agent of the labour-schooner “Redcoat” from Fiji, showed me a Solomon Island native with a foot of perfect form but with apparently no toes. A continuous covering of skin covered the whole foot like a thin sock, and the toes were only recognisable by the touch. The man appeared to be but little incommoded by this obliteration of the toes. Among the natives of New Britain, as we learn from Mr. Romilly,[151] “the toes are not unfrequently joined together by a tough membrane,” a defect which does “not seem to impair their activity.” This evidently results from superficial ulceration in the manner I have above described.

These ulcerous sores, if left exposed to the irritation of sand, dirt, and flies, may last for years and may ultimately cause death. Dr. Livingstone in his “Last Journals” (vol. ii. chaps. 2 and 3) speaks of the ulcers of the feet from which many of the slaves die in the region west of Tanganyika. They eat through everything muscle, tendon, and bone, and often lame permanently. “The wailing of slaves tortured with these sores is one of the night sounds of a slave camp.” These ulcers, however, as they affect the Solomon Islanders, have a natural tendency to heal. When staying with Bishop Selwyn at Gaeta in Florida, I accompanied him on his morning round of visits to his patients, most of them being the subjects of these large ulcerous sores on the feet and legs. He tells me that with rest and cleanliness they soon take on a healing action. Carbolic oil was the application he used, and it seemed well suited for these discharging, loathsome sores. Several of the men of the “Lark” were laid up with these ulcers of the feet for many weeks. The ulcers in their case assumed a circular form with raised callous edges and an irritable inflamed surface, being attended by much pain in the surrounding parts. The free application of lunar caustic every two or three days followed by poulticing, I found to be the most effectual treatment. Dr. Livingstone, who was himself laid up with these sores for eighty days in the interior of Africa, found the best of all topical applications to be malachite rubbed down with water on a stone and applied with a feather. The natives of Treasury Island in the Solomon Group use an application prepared by pounding the fruit of the Cycas circinalis, which grows near the edge of the cliffs on the south coast of the adjacent Stirling Island.

There is a loathsome skin disease very prevalent amongst the inhabitants of this group, which is generally known as the Solomon Island or Tokelau ringworm. I should estimate that two-fifths of the total population of these islands are thus affected. We found it more prevalent in some islands than in others. In Treasury, for instance, four-fifths of the people are the subjects of this disease, and half of the chief’s wives who number about thirty are almost covered with it. In the southern large island of the Florida Islands, it appears to affect quite one half of the population. It ranges from one end of the group to the other, neither sex nor age affording any immunity. The chiefs and their families, however, seem to be less liable to this disease. The skin of every man does not appear to afford a suitable nidus for the growth of the fungus which is the cause of the eruption; and this is evident from the circumstance that one parent may be covered with the disease while the other is entirely free from it. This skin-eruption, although so repulsive in appearance in the eyes of the European when he first visits the group, is not viewed with any feelings of disgust by the natives; and even the European after spending some time in the group learns to disregard its repulsiveness. Those affected show no anxiety to be quit of it and evince great indifference when any offer is made to them to cure it. It is to them only an inconvenience; and apparently causes no irritation except when the skin is hot and perspiring, as after exertion.

When this disease first came under my notice in the early part of 1882, I was unacquainted with what had been previously written on the subject. I accordingly made a microscopical examination of the affected skin and arrived at the conclusion, previously formed by those far more competent to express an opinion than myself, that the eruption was an inveterate form of body-ringworm. As it is to be seen affecting the skin of young children in the form of limited circular patches, which usually commence on the belly, it displays all the essential characters of Tinea circinata or body-ringworm. Spreading all over the trunk and limbs, the eruption assumes a chronic character and its typical characters become obscured. The whole skin, with the exception of that of the face and scalp which are not attacked by the disease, is covered by a great number of wavy desquamating lines partly concentric in their arrangement; and on account of the intervals between the lines being of a paler hue, the whole skin obtains a singular marbled appearance.

To such a degree is the skin implicated in some cases of the disease that the rapid desiccation and desquamation of the epidermal cells lead to a partial decoloration of the deeper parts of the cuticle, as though the rate of the production of pigment was less rapid than the rate of its removal in the desquamative process. This disease, in other words, tends to decolorize the skin. From this cause, one occasionally meets with a native whose skin as compared with that of his fellows is of a pale sickly hue. The tendency to produce a lighter colour by the too rapid destruction of the pigment is especially noticeable in those cases where the body is only partially covered with the eruption, there being a marked contrast between the paleness of the affected surfaces and the dark hue of the healthy skin. The influence of this cutaneous disease on the colour was remarked by Commodore Wilkes amongst the natives of the Depeyster Islands in the Ellice Group. He refers to the skin of those affected as much lighter than in any Polynesian race he had hitherto met with.[152] The same effect of this disease was noticed by Mr. Wilfred Powell amongst the natives of New Britain.[153]

I have entered somewhat at length into the subject of the partial decoloration produced by this eruption, because it has a bearing on that “quÆstio vexata,” the causes of race-colour. Pathology, in fact, affords more than one instance of changes, almost of a permanent character, produced in the colour of the skin through the influence of abnormal action. Dr. Tylor in one of his lectures[154] alludes to “the morbid appearance of race-character” produced by the bronzing of the skin in Addison’s disease, which is shown to be immediately due to a deposit of pigment in the rete mucosum closely resembling that of the negro. “The importance of the comparison,” he says, “lies in its bridging over the physiological differences of race, by showing that morbid action may bring about in one race results more or less analogous to the normal type in another.” To the partial decoloration of the skin in Tokelau ringworm and to the bronzing of the skin in Addison’s disease, these remarks equally apply.

This disease has been variously spoken of by different authors and travellers as Leprosy, Icthyosis, Psoriasis, Pityriasis versicolor, and Tokelau Ringworm, of which it is needless to remark that the last is the only name which is correct. The medical officers of the United States Exploring Expedition, under Commodore Wilkes in 1841, were the first to recognise the nature of the eruption in the case of the inhabitants of the Depeyster Islands in the Ellice Group.[155] In 1874 Dr. Tilbury Fox, after having examined some scrapings of the skin which had been sent to him from Samoa, published in the “Lancet” (August 29th) a paper on “Tokelau Ringworm and its Fungus,” in which he established the true character of the disease, and disposed of a view held by the Rev. Dr. G. Turner of the Samoan Medical Mission and by Dr. Mullen, R.N. of H.M.S. “Cameleon,” that its origin may have been connected with the occurrence of numerous dipterous insects found in scrapings of the skin after the use of sulphur ointment. This last he showed to be only an accidental feature of the eruption. Two years afterwards, Dr. Fox in connection with Dr. Farquhar wrote an account of “Certain Endemic Skin and other Diseases in India and Hot Climates generally” (London 1876), in which further reference was made to this disease. It was there shown that Tokelau ringworm, Burmese ringworm, Chinese ringworm, and the Indian ringworms known familiarly as “dhobie itch,” “washerman’s itch,” “Malabar itch,” etc., are all of them forms of Tinea circinata tropica variously modified by such circumstances as the personal habits, the nature of the apparel, and the character of the climate. A proof of the correctness of this conclusion came under my observation in the Solomon Islands, where the white men in taking this disease from the natives suffer from it frequently in the form of “dhobie itch.” The parasitic disease Tinea circinata tropica to which, as above shown, all tropical ringworms should be referred is, as Dr. Fox remarks in his work on “Skin Diseases” (3rd edit., 1873, p. 451), “nothing more or less than ordinary ringworm of the body (tinea circinata), such as we have in Europe, determined in its occurrence to certain parts of the body by peculiar circumstances, and assuming characters somewhat different from those observed in the disease as it exists in colder climates, in consequence of the greater luxuriance of the parasite consequent upon the presence in one case of a greater amount of heat and moisture, which are favourable to the development and speed the growth of fungi.”

The particular form of the disease to which the name Tokelau Ringworm should be applied has a very wide distribution. Mr. G. W. Earl in his work on “The Papuans” (London, 1853; p. 37) speaks of this disease under the name of “icthyosis” as being very prevalent amongst all the coast tribes of the Indian Archipelago: but I gather from some references made by Mr. Wallace to this affection in his account of the Malay Archipelago (3rd edit., 1872, p. 449) that it is not to be found so much amongst the pure Malays as amongst the tribes of mixed origin. Mr. Marsden in his “History of Sumatra” (London 1811, p. 190) refers to it as being very common amongst the inhabitants of Pulo Nias, an island which lies off the west coast of Sumatra. His description of the disease leaves no doubt as to its true character, but he himself is uncertain as to whether it is an “impetigo” indicating a mild type of leprosy, or whether it is not ordinary “shingles” or a confirmed stage of ringworm. The same disease was recently observed by Mr. H. O. Forbes amongst the natives of Timor-laut and of the island of Buru, islands which lie at the opposite end of the Indian Archipelago.[156] Two centuries since, Dampier well described this disease in the case of the inhabitants of Mindanao in the Philippines and of those of Guam in the Ladrones.[157]

Coming to New Guinea, I find that this disease prevails all along its coasts and in many of the off-lying islands, such as the Ki and Aru Islands, Teste Island, Woodlark Island, etc. The authorities on which I have founded this general statement are numerous and include, Modera, Bruijn Kops, Wallace, Mosely, Miklouho-Maclay, Comrie, W. Turner, Chalmers, Wyatt Gill, Romilly, Lyne, and others, whose descriptions, though they often did not recognise the true character of the eruption, leave no reasonable doubt on the matter.

This disease was observed by Mr. Wilfred Powell to be very frequent amongst the natives of New Britain and the Duke of York Islands, where it is called “buckwar.”[158] Dr. Comrie, R.N., when serving in H.M.S. “Dido,” found it to be very frequent amongst the natives of New Ireland.[159] Through the islands of the Solomon Group it is widely spread, as I have already shown: and from them it has extended to the different groups to the eastward, reaching the Gilbert, Ellice, Tonga and Samoa Groups.

In the Western Pacific we are able in some instances to trace the eastward extension of this disease during the last half century. Dr. G. Turner in his annual report of the Samoan Medical Mission, dated October, 1869, refers to the recent introduction of the Tokelau Ringworm amongst the Samoan Islanders as the introduction of a new disease. It was brought to Samoa from Bowditch or Tokelau Island where it had been also unknown until about ten years before, when it was introduced by a native of the Gilbert Group who had been landed by a whaler. The Gilbert or Kingsmill Islanders, according to the narrative of Commodore Wilkes, believed that the disease came from the south-west, and called it the “south-west gune,” the nearest islands in that direction being those of the Solomon and Santa Cruz groups, between 800 and 900 miles away. Commodore Wilkes, however, was of opinion that this disease had reached the Kingsmill Group from the Depeyster Islands in the Ellice Group to the south-south-east; and he refers to the circumstance that the disease was most prevalent in the southern islands of the Kingsmill Group, being apparently absent from Makin the northernmost island;[160] but this distribution of the disease may be also urged in support of the more probable view of the natives that it came from the south-west. We are thus able to trace one probable track of this disease from the Solomon Islands, or one of the groups immediately adjacent to them, across a wide tract of sea to the Gilbert and Ellice Groups, and from there to Tokelau Island, and thence to Samoa. The French navigator, Dentrecasteaux,[161] found the same disease to be very prevalent amongst the inhabitants of the Tonga Islands towards the end of last century; and it seems strange that it did not reach the Samoa Group until about seventy years after. The Tonga natives, however, may have derived it by another and more direct course from the westward, namely through the New Hebrides and the Fiji Groups.

I may appear to have entered with unnecessary detail into this subject, but it is apparent that this fungoid skin disease, disseminated as it is by personal contact and other similar agencies, would have reached these sub-central Pacific Groups long ago if they had been occupied through ages by their present inhabitants. The same evidence, therefore, which can be brought forward to prove the recent appearance of this disease amongst the natives of these groups may also be advanced in support of the recent occupation of these islands by the eastern Polynesians.

From the previous remarks on the distribution of Tokelau Ringworm it may be inferred that in New Guinea and in the islands of the Malay Archipelago we have the home of the disease. From this region it has spread eastward towards the centre of the Pacific; and we may also infer that this eastward extension of the disease has occurred within the last three hundred years, since in the accounts which Gallego and Quiros give of the natives of the Solomon, Santa Cruz, and New Hebrides Groups at the time of their first discovery by the Spaniards, there is no reference to the prevalence of any cutaneous disease, which, if it had existed, would most certainly have attracted the notice of these early navigators.

I only had one opportunity of treating this affection, and that was in the person of a native of Guadalcanar, who was shipped on board as an interpreter, and who had been the subject of the disease for about five months. Partly from its obstinacy, and partly from the difficulty of ensuring that the remedies were regularly and thoroughly employed, my experience was not very satisfactory. Sulphur ointment, mercurial ointment, tincture of iodine, and a lotion of hyposulphite of soda (1 in 12) were severally used, and after about three weeks the skin was almost clean. Some weeks afterwards, the eruption re-appeared on the forearms in the form of the characteristic small circumscribed patches of body-ringworm. The local remedy, which I found most rapid in its effect as a parasiticide in the treatment of this case, was the tincture of iodine of which two applications completely removed the disease from the fore-arms. The lotion of the hyposulphite of soda and the mercurial ointment had apparently but little influence on the disease. The sulphur ointment, however, had a gradual curative action. To many of the vessels which leave Queensland and Fiji to recruit labour in the Solomon and New Hebrides groups, sulphur ointment is supplied; and the government-agents are instructed to use it in all cases of this disease amongst the natives recruited. I learned from some of these gentlemen that, when the remedy is applied thoroughly, and under superintendence, they usually succeed in thoroughly cleansing the skin from the eruption before the ships return to the colonies.

A pustular eruptive disease peculiar to children, which has been referred to by various authors as prevalent in the New Hebrides, Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa groups, affects many of the young children of the Solomon Islands, usually occurring about the age of five. A number of large papules, twice the size of a split pea, which subsequently become filled with a pustular fluid, appear on the face. These pustules by rupturing tend to unite and form unhealthy-looking sores of the size of a florin. The disease pursues a regular course of papule, pustule, and sore; and is said never to recur. As far as I could learn, the natives interfere but little with its progress; and, as in Fiji where it is known as coko,[162] they regard the disease as having a salutary influence on the future health of the child.

That peculiar spinal disease, which produces so many hunch-backs in the Society and Samoan groups, and which is so well described by Mr. Ellis in his “Polynesian Researches” (2nd edit., 1831, vol. iii. pp. 39, 40), does not prevail among the Solomon Islanders. I can only recall one instance of spinal deformity which came under my observation. It was in the person of a little boy about ten or eleven years old, who was the subject of lateral and posterior curvature of the spine. The little fellow, who was a native of Simbo, apparently experienced no inconvenience from the deformity, since a firm ankylosis had occurred. He was able to accompany me in my ascents to the summit of his island, which is elevated about 1,100 feet above the sea.

An epidemic catarrhal disease, which is allied to influenza, is very prevalent amongst the natives of these islands. It is commonly followed by lung-complications, which not infrequently cause the death of the sufferer. Such an epidemic in running through a village sometimes carries off several of the inhabitants. The elderly natives are, in fact, very liable to pulmonary affections; such diseases usually terminate their lives.

From the occurrence of an epidemic of this catarrhal disease, a village often obtains an unhealthy reputation; and the natives abandon it for some other situation, which is selected rather for the convenience of its position than for its freedom from unhealthy influences. A generation ago, one of the principal villages in the island of Ugi was situated on the level summit of a hill overlooking Selwyn Bay on the west coast, a site which would have at once been chosen both for its salubrity and for its capability of defence. However, a number of deaths occurred in the village from epidemic catarrhal disease; and the inhabitants shifted their homes to the low-lying unhealthy situation where the village of Ete-ete now stands.

Epidemics of mumps occur occasionally amongst these islanders. In October, 1882, whilst we were taking to Ugi the crew of the “Pioneer,” a schooner which had been wrecked off the coast of Guadalcanar, some cases of this disease appeared among the natives belonging to that ship, affecting ten out of the twenty on board, and pursuing its usual course. It was evident that the disease had been originally brought from Brisbane, as the ship which was engaged in returning natives from the Queensland plantations, had had three cases previously, the first having occurred on her arrival at Makira harbour, just a week after she left Brisbane. That mumps is sometimes a fatal disease amongst these races, there is no reason to doubt. Mr. Stephens of Ugi informed me that a few years since, some natives of Lord Howe Islands, whom he was employing on his premises, rapidly succumbed to this disease.

Men who were the subjects of Elephantiasis arabum were occasionally seen in the different islands we visited. Instances of “lymph-scrotum” most frequently typify this disease, but now and then cases of “swollen leg” occur. In the island of Faro or Fauro in Bougainville Straits, the natives attribute this disease to the water of particular streams. There is a stream on the west side of the island, the water of which when drunk is said to produce “swollen legs.” For this reason the water is never employed; and the ban is even extended to the cocoa-nut trees on its banks.

Natives, who are the subjects of such congenital deformities as “hare-lip,” are rarely seen. Very probably in such cases life is destroyed by the parents soon after birth. I only observed one instance of “hare-lip” which occurred in the case of a man of Simbo. This malformation, which was of the single character, was associated with abnormal development of crisp hair on the body and more particularly on the back. As an instance of another kind of congenital deformity, which however came but rarely under my observation, I may refer to a man of Ugi who had six perfect toes on the right foot, both fifth and sixth toes being provided with nails and apparently arising from a common metatarsal bone. None of his family had the same deformity, which in his case was probably inconvenient in more ways than one, as the print of his foot was familiar to every native in the island.[163]

Strabismus is not uncommon amongst the natives of these islands, and appears to occur with the same relative frequency as amongst more civilised people.

Venereal diseases, both constitutional and local, are said by traders to be very frequent in certain islands, as in Ugi, which have had most intercourse with the outer world. I rarely however came upon unequivocal evidence of the constitutional form of these diseases, those cases which came under my immediate observation being of the non-constitutional types which, as in other tropical regions, are often of a rapidly destructive character. The natives of Ugi assert that these diseases have not been introduced within the memory of any living man, and no tradition prevails with reference to their origin. I shall scarcely enter into the question of the introduction of these diseases into the more central groups of the Pacific, a subject which is discussed in most of the narratives of the early expeditions to those regions, but in a spirit of unfairness and mutual recrimination which goes far to invalidate the conclusions arrived at. Negative evidence, however, must be of a very exhaustive character before it would warrant the inference that to the licence, so freely permitted to the crews of the English and French expeditions during the latter half of the last century, must be attributed the presence of these diseases among the Polynesian races. M. Rollin, who, as surgeon of the frigate “Boussole,” accompanied La PÉrouse on his ill-fated voyage, adduces evidence to show the probability of these diseases having existed in the Pacific before the discoveries of the French and English navigators in that region;[164] and La PÉrouse himself approaches very near the truth when he suggests that the free intercourse, which prevailed between the natives and the crews during those expeditions, may have increased the activity and destructive tendency of the pre-existing diseases.[165] For, not only has M. Parrot of Paris demonstrated from an examination of the skulls of some South American aborigines the existence of Syphilis in the New World before Columbus set foot on its shores, but he affirms without hesitation, after examining three fragments of infant skulls from a dolmen in central France, that this disease existed in prehistoric times (“Lancet,” May 10th, 1879). We are not therefore surprised at finding references to venereal diseases in the ancient literature of China, India, Arabia, Greece and Rome (Aitken’s “Medicine,” 6th edit, 1872, vol i. p. 859); and having regard to the ethnological past of the Pacific, we can with some confidence assume that the original stock, derived in the first place from the Asiatic continent, brought with them these diseases.

The susceptibility of these islanders to comparatively small falls of temperature is an element in their predisposition to disease which should not be disregarded. This susceptibility was strikingly shown to me on one occasion, at the end of August 1882, when I was following up the course of a stream at Sulagina on the north coast of St. Christoval. Accompanied by a party of natives, I was wading up the stream for several hours, the water often reaching the waist, whilst a steady deluge of rain completed the wetting. Although the air was merely comparatively cool for this latitude (10° 30´ S.), the thermometer in the shade standing at 80° Fahr, my natives were shivering with the cold; whilst I myself felt only the inconvenience of having been soaked through for so many hours. As soon as we returned to the coast, all my party huddled themselves together around their wood-fires in a little hut and warmed their hands and feet as eagerly as we should in winter-time at home. As I stood in the hut looking comfortably on at my naked companions who, shivering and with their teeth chattering, were endeavouring to warm themselves around the fires, I recalled to my mind an incident which Mr. Darwin relates in his “Journal of the Beagle” (p. 220), which although analogous, illustrates the converse of these conditions. “A small family of Fuegians”—he writes—“soon joined our party round a blazing fire. We were well clothed, and though sitting close to the fire were far from too warm; yet these naked savages, though further off, were observed, to our great surprise, to be streaming with perspiration at undergoing such a roasting.”

Instances of mental weakness or of insanity amongst the natives of these islands rarely came under my notice. However, more than one of the chiefs whom we met had a half-witted individual on his staff, who made himself generally useful to his master. The chief’s fool, as we called him, was frequently my guide in the island of Santa Anna. He was the general butt of the village; and I was told the girls would sometimes seize hold of him and roll him about in the sand. Insanity would appear to be of uncommon occurrence amongst these islanders; but I suspect that such individuals are not permitted to live. Whilst the “Lark” was engaged in the survey of Faro Island in Bougainville Straits, I learned that there was a madman, who was partially dumb, living in the bush in the interior of the island. Having murdered his wife about five months before our visit, he had taken to the forest where he led a solitary life at enmity with his fellow-islanders, who would have killed him, as they told me, if they found him. He frequently used to steal from the plantations; and during our stay in the island he was observed by a woman near one of the yam patches. The chief’s son came up to me one afternoon, after I had returned to the coast from an ascent of one of the principal summits, to advise me to shoot this unfortunate being if ever I saw him; and he added that if this madman should see me, unobserved, he would either run away or take his opportunity of killing me. However, I made several excursions into the interior afterwards; but I never fell in with him.