DISEASES OF TAHITIBefore the Europeans came to Tahiti, the beautiful little island was a sanatorium. The natives were temperate, frugal in their habits, subsisting almost exclusively on fish, fruit and vegetables, and lived practically an outdoor life even in their bamboo huts. They were unencumbered by useless clothing and spent, as they do now, much of their time in sea and fresh-water bathing. They were almost exempt from acute destructive diseases. They were free from the most fatal of acute contagious and infectious diseases, such as smallpox, measles, scarlatina, cholera, etc. Tuberculosis and venereal diseases were unknown before the white man invaded the island. The immediate effect of the European civilization on the health and lives of the natives was frightful. On this subject I will let Ariitaimai speak:When England and France began to show us the advantages of their civilization, we were, as races then went, a great people. Hawaii, Tahiti, the Marquesas, Tonga, Samoa and New Zealand made a respectable figure on the earth's surface, and contained a population of no small size, better fitted than any other possible community for the condition in which they lived. Tahiti, being the first to come in close contact with the foreigners, was first to suffer. The people, who numbered, according to Cook, two hundred thousand in 1767, numbered less than twenty thousand in 1797, according to the missionaries, and only about five thousand in 1803. This frightful mortality has been often doubted, because Europeans have naturally shrunk from admit ting the horrors of their own work, but no one doubts it who belongs to the native race. Tahiti did not stand alone in misery; what happened there happened everywhere, not only in the great groups of high islands, like Hawaii with three or four hundred thousand people, but in little coral atolls which could only support a few score.FISHERMEN'S HOMEFISHERMEN'S HOMEMoerenhout, who was the most familiar of all travelers with the islands in our part of the ocean, told the same story about all. He was in the Austral group in 1834. At Raivave he found ninety or one hundred native rapidly dying, where fully twelve hundred had been living only twelve or fourteen years before. At Tubuai he found less than two hundred people among the ruins of houses, temples and tombs. At Rurutu and Rimitava, where a thousand or twelve hundred people had occupied each, hardly two hundred were left, while nearly all the women had been swept away at Rurutu. Tlie story of the Easter Islanders is famous. That of the Marquesas is about as pathetic as that of Tahiti or Hawaii. Everywhere the Polynesian perished, and to him it mattered little whether he died of some new disease or from some new weapon, like the musket, or from misgovernment, caused by the foreign intervention.No doubt the new diseases were most fatal. Almost all of them took some form of fever, and comparatively harmless epidemics, like measles, became frightfully fatal when the native, to allay the fever, insisted on bathing in cold water. Dysentery and ordinary colds, which the people were too ignorant and too indolent to nurse, took the proportions of plagues. For forty generations these people had been isolated in this ocean, as though they were in a modern sanatorium, protected from contact with new forms of disease, and living on vegetables and fish. The virulent diseases which had been developed among the struggling masses of Asia and Europe found a rich field for destruction when they were brought to the South Seas. Just as such pests as lantana, the mimosa or sensitive plant, and the guava have overrun many of the islands, where the field for them was open, so diseases ran through the people. For this, perhaps, the foreigners were not wholly responsible, although their civilization certainly was; but for the political misery the foreigner was wholly to blame, and for the social and moral degradation he was the active cause. No doubt the ancient society of Tahiti had plenty of vices and was a sort of Paris in its refinements of wickedness, but these had not prevented the islanders from leading as happy lives as had ever been known among men.These are strong words, but they are nevertheless only too true. Civilization brings to savage races curses as well as blessings. The primitive people are more receptive of new vices than new virtues.In 1880 the number of inhabitants had again increased to thirteen thousand five hundred, but since that time it has been reduced to eleven thousand, as shown by the last census. When Captain Cook visited the island he emphasized particularly the absence of acute diseases. In speaking of chronic diseases he remarks:They only reckon five or six which might be called chronic, or national disorders, amongst which are the dropsy and thefefai, or indolent swellings before mentioned as frequent at Tongataboo.The fearful, swift depopulation of the island was caused by the introduction of new acute infectious and contagious diseases, such as smallpox, measles, whooping-cough, la grippe, etc., which among these people was attended by a frightful mortality. It was only three years ago that an epidemic of measles, a trifling disease with us, claimed several hundred lives, including many adults, and extended to nearly all of the islands of the entire group. The disease that is now threatening the extinction of the race in a short time is pulmonary tuberculosis. The natives are extremely susceptible to this disease, and the small native houses, crowded with large families, are the breeding stations for infection.The French government has at last recognized the need of taking active measures to improve the sanitary conditions of their colony and protect the natives against the spread of infectious diseases. A corps of three physicians, sent by the French government on this mission, made the voyage from San Francisco to the island on the steamerMariposawith me. The names of these physicians are: Dr. Grosfillez, surgeon-major of the first class of the colonial troops; Dr. H. Rowan, a graduate of the Pasteur Institute, and Dr. F. Cassiau, of the clinic of Marseilles. The military surgeon receives an annual salary of fifteen hundred dollars, the two civil doctors twelve hundred dollars each. They are under contract for five years. They have been given judicial power to enforce all sanitary regulations they see fit to institute. They will be stationed at different points and will establish a requisite number of lazarettos, something which will fill a long-felt and pressing need.NATIVE SETTLEMENTNATIVE SETTLEMENT
DISEASES OF TAHITIBefore the Europeans came to Tahiti, the beautiful little island was a sanatorium. The natives were temperate, frugal in their habits, subsisting almost exclusively on fish, fruit and vegetables, and lived practically an outdoor life even in their bamboo huts. They were unencumbered by useless clothing and spent, as they do now, much of their time in sea and fresh-water bathing. They were almost exempt from acute destructive diseases. They were free from the most fatal of acute contagious and infectious diseases, such as smallpox, measles, scarlatina, cholera, etc. Tuberculosis and venereal diseases were unknown before the white man invaded the island. The immediate effect of the European civilization on the health and lives of the natives was frightful. On this subject I will let Ariitaimai speak:When England and France began to show us the advantages of their civilization, we were, as races then went, a great people. Hawaii, Tahiti, the Marquesas, Tonga, Samoa and New Zealand made a respectable figure on the earth's surface, and contained a population of no small size, better fitted than any other possible community for the condition in which they lived. Tahiti, being the first to come in close contact with the foreigners, was first to suffer. The people, who numbered, according to Cook, two hundred thousand in 1767, numbered less than twenty thousand in 1797, according to the missionaries, and only about five thousand in 1803. This frightful mortality has been often doubted, because Europeans have naturally shrunk from admit ting the horrors of their own work, but no one doubts it who belongs to the native race. Tahiti did not stand alone in misery; what happened there happened everywhere, not only in the great groups of high islands, like Hawaii with three or four hundred thousand people, but in little coral atolls which could only support a few score.FISHERMEN'S HOMEFISHERMEN'S HOMEMoerenhout, who was the most familiar of all travelers with the islands in our part of the ocean, told the same story about all. He was in the Austral group in 1834. At Raivave he found ninety or one hundred native rapidly dying, where fully twelve hundred had been living only twelve or fourteen years before. At Tubuai he found less than two hundred people among the ruins of houses, temples and tombs. At Rurutu and Rimitava, where a thousand or twelve hundred people had occupied each, hardly two hundred were left, while nearly all the women had been swept away at Rurutu. Tlie story of the Easter Islanders is famous. That of the Marquesas is about as pathetic as that of Tahiti or Hawaii. Everywhere the Polynesian perished, and to him it mattered little whether he died of some new disease or from some new weapon, like the musket, or from misgovernment, caused by the foreign intervention.No doubt the new diseases were most fatal. Almost all of them took some form of fever, and comparatively harmless epidemics, like measles, became frightfully fatal when the native, to allay the fever, insisted on bathing in cold water. Dysentery and ordinary colds, which the people were too ignorant and too indolent to nurse, took the proportions of plagues. For forty generations these people had been isolated in this ocean, as though they were in a modern sanatorium, protected from contact with new forms of disease, and living on vegetables and fish. The virulent diseases which had been developed among the struggling masses of Asia and Europe found a rich field for destruction when they were brought to the South Seas. Just as such pests as lantana, the mimosa or sensitive plant, and the guava have overrun many of the islands, where the field for them was open, so diseases ran through the people. For this, perhaps, the foreigners were not wholly responsible, although their civilization certainly was; but for the political misery the foreigner was wholly to blame, and for the social and moral degradation he was the active cause. No doubt the ancient society of Tahiti had plenty of vices and was a sort of Paris in its refinements of wickedness, but these had not prevented the islanders from leading as happy lives as had ever been known among men.These are strong words, but they are nevertheless only too true. Civilization brings to savage races curses as well as blessings. The primitive people are more receptive of new vices than new virtues.In 1880 the number of inhabitants had again increased to thirteen thousand five hundred, but since that time it has been reduced to eleven thousand, as shown by the last census. When Captain Cook visited the island he emphasized particularly the absence of acute diseases. In speaking of chronic diseases he remarks:They only reckon five or six which might be called chronic, or national disorders, amongst which are the dropsy and thefefai, or indolent swellings before mentioned as frequent at Tongataboo.The fearful, swift depopulation of the island was caused by the introduction of new acute infectious and contagious diseases, such as smallpox, measles, whooping-cough, la grippe, etc., which among these people was attended by a frightful mortality. It was only three years ago that an epidemic of measles, a trifling disease with us, claimed several hundred lives, including many adults, and extended to nearly all of the islands of the entire group. The disease that is now threatening the extinction of the race in a short time is pulmonary tuberculosis. The natives are extremely susceptible to this disease, and the small native houses, crowded with large families, are the breeding stations for infection.The French government has at last recognized the need of taking active measures to improve the sanitary conditions of their colony and protect the natives against the spread of infectious diseases. A corps of three physicians, sent by the French government on this mission, made the voyage from San Francisco to the island on the steamerMariposawith me. The names of these physicians are: Dr. Grosfillez, surgeon-major of the first class of the colonial troops; Dr. H. Rowan, a graduate of the Pasteur Institute, and Dr. F. Cassiau, of the clinic of Marseilles. The military surgeon receives an annual salary of fifteen hundred dollars, the two civil doctors twelve hundred dollars each. They are under contract for five years. They have been given judicial power to enforce all sanitary regulations they see fit to institute. They will be stationed at different points and will establish a requisite number of lazarettos, something which will fill a long-felt and pressing need.NATIVE SETTLEMENTNATIVE SETTLEMENT
Before the Europeans came to Tahiti, the beautiful little island was a sanatorium. The natives were temperate, frugal in their habits, subsisting almost exclusively on fish, fruit and vegetables, and lived practically an outdoor life even in their bamboo huts. They were unencumbered by useless clothing and spent, as they do now, much of their time in sea and fresh-water bathing. They were almost exempt from acute destructive diseases. They were free from the most fatal of acute contagious and infectious diseases, such as smallpox, measles, scarlatina, cholera, etc. Tuberculosis and venereal diseases were unknown before the white man invaded the island. The immediate effect of the European civilization on the health and lives of the natives was frightful. On this subject I will let Ariitaimai speak:
When England and France began to show us the advantages of their civilization, we were, as races then went, a great people. Hawaii, Tahiti, the Marquesas, Tonga, Samoa and New Zealand made a respectable figure on the earth's surface, and contained a population of no small size, better fitted than any other possible community for the condition in which they lived. Tahiti, being the first to come in close contact with the foreigners, was first to suffer. The people, who numbered, according to Cook, two hundred thousand in 1767, numbered less than twenty thousand in 1797, according to the missionaries, and only about five thousand in 1803. This frightful mortality has been often doubted, because Europeans have naturally shrunk from admit ting the horrors of their own work, but no one doubts it who belongs to the native race. Tahiti did not stand alone in misery; what happened there happened everywhere, not only in the great groups of high islands, like Hawaii with three or four hundred thousand people, but in little coral atolls which could only support a few score.
FISHERMEN'S HOMEFISHERMEN'S HOMEMoerenhout, who was the most familiar of all travelers with the islands in our part of the ocean, told the same story about all. He was in the Austral group in 1834. At Raivave he found ninety or one hundred native rapidly dying, where fully twelve hundred had been living only twelve or fourteen years before. At Tubuai he found less than two hundred people among the ruins of houses, temples and tombs. At Rurutu and Rimitava, where a thousand or twelve hundred people had occupied each, hardly two hundred were left, while nearly all the women had been swept away at Rurutu. Tlie story of the Easter Islanders is famous. That of the Marquesas is about as pathetic as that of Tahiti or Hawaii. Everywhere the Polynesian perished, and to him it mattered little whether he died of some new disease or from some new weapon, like the musket, or from misgovernment, caused by the foreign intervention.No doubt the new diseases were most fatal. Almost all of them took some form of fever, and comparatively harmless epidemics, like measles, became frightfully fatal when the native, to allay the fever, insisted on bathing in cold water. Dysentery and ordinary colds, which the people were too ignorant and too indolent to nurse, took the proportions of plagues. For forty generations these people had been isolated in this ocean, as though they were in a modern sanatorium, protected from contact with new forms of disease, and living on vegetables and fish. The virulent diseases which had been developed among the struggling masses of Asia and Europe found a rich field for destruction when they were brought to the South Seas. Just as such pests as lantana, the mimosa or sensitive plant, and the guava have overrun many of the islands, where the field for them was open, so diseases ran through the people. For this, perhaps, the foreigners were not wholly responsible, although their civilization certainly was; but for the political misery the foreigner was wholly to blame, and for the social and moral degradation he was the active cause. No doubt the ancient society of Tahiti had plenty of vices and was a sort of Paris in its refinements of wickedness, but these had not prevented the islanders from leading as happy lives as had ever been known among men.
FISHERMEN'S HOME
Moerenhout, who was the most familiar of all travelers with the islands in our part of the ocean, told the same story about all. He was in the Austral group in 1834. At Raivave he found ninety or one hundred native rapidly dying, where fully twelve hundred had been living only twelve or fourteen years before. At Tubuai he found less than two hundred people among the ruins of houses, temples and tombs. At Rurutu and Rimitava, where a thousand or twelve hundred people had occupied each, hardly two hundred were left, while nearly all the women had been swept away at Rurutu. Tlie story of the Easter Islanders is famous. That of the Marquesas is about as pathetic as that of Tahiti or Hawaii. Everywhere the Polynesian perished, and to him it mattered little whether he died of some new disease or from some new weapon, like the musket, or from misgovernment, caused by the foreign intervention.No doubt the new diseases were most fatal. Almost all of them took some form of fever, and comparatively harmless epidemics, like measles, became frightfully fatal when the native, to allay the fever, insisted on bathing in cold water. Dysentery and ordinary colds, which the people were too ignorant and too indolent to nurse, took the proportions of plagues. For forty generations these people had been isolated in this ocean, as though they were in a modern sanatorium, protected from contact with new forms of disease, and living on vegetables and fish. The virulent diseases which had been developed among the struggling masses of Asia and Europe found a rich field for destruction when they were brought to the South Seas. Just as such pests as lantana, the mimosa or sensitive plant, and the guava have overrun many of the islands, where the field for them was open, so diseases ran through the people. For this, perhaps, the foreigners were not wholly responsible, although their civilization certainly was; but for the political misery the foreigner was wholly to blame, and for the social and moral degradation he was the active cause. No doubt the ancient society of Tahiti had plenty of vices and was a sort of Paris in its refinements of wickedness, but these had not prevented the islanders from leading as happy lives as had ever been known among men.
Moerenhout, who was the most familiar of all travelers with the islands in our part of the ocean, told the same story about all. He was in the Austral group in 1834. At Raivave he found ninety or one hundred native rapidly dying, where fully twelve hundred had been living only twelve or fourteen years before. At Tubuai he found less than two hundred people among the ruins of houses, temples and tombs. At Rurutu and Rimitava, where a thousand or twelve hundred people had occupied each, hardly two hundred were left, while nearly all the women had been swept away at Rurutu. Tlie story of the Easter Islanders is famous. That of the Marquesas is about as pathetic as that of Tahiti or Hawaii. Everywhere the Polynesian perished, and to him it mattered little whether he died of some new disease or from some new weapon, like the musket, or from misgovernment, caused by the foreign intervention.No doubt the new diseases were most fatal. Almost all of them took some form of fever, and comparatively harmless epidemics, like measles, became frightfully fatal when the native, to allay the fever, insisted on bathing in cold water. Dysentery and ordinary colds, which the people were too ignorant and too indolent to nurse, took the proportions of plagues. For forty generations these people had been isolated in this ocean, as though they were in a modern sanatorium, protected from contact with new forms of disease, and living on vegetables and fish. The virulent diseases which had been developed among the struggling masses of Asia and Europe found a rich field for destruction when they were brought to the South Seas. Just as such pests as lantana, the mimosa or sensitive plant, and the guava have overrun many of the islands, where the field for them was open, so diseases ran through the people. For this, perhaps, the foreigners were not wholly responsible, although their civilization certainly was; but for the political misery the foreigner was wholly to blame, and for the social and moral degradation he was the active cause. No doubt the ancient society of Tahiti had plenty of vices and was a sort of Paris in its refinements of wickedness, but these had not prevented the islanders from leading as happy lives as had ever been known among men.
Moerenhout, who was the most familiar of all travelers with the islands in our part of the ocean, told the same story about all. He was in the Austral group in 1834. At Raivave he found ninety or one hundred native rapidly dying, where fully twelve hundred had been living only twelve or fourteen years before. At Tubuai he found less than two hundred people among the ruins of houses, temples and tombs. At Rurutu and Rimitava, where a thousand or twelve hundred people had occupied each, hardly two hundred were left, while nearly all the women had been swept away at Rurutu. Tlie story of the Easter Islanders is famous. That of the Marquesas is about as pathetic as that of Tahiti or Hawaii. Everywhere the Polynesian perished, and to him it mattered little whether he died of some new disease or from some new weapon, like the musket, or from misgovernment, caused by the foreign intervention.
No doubt the new diseases were most fatal. Almost all of them took some form of fever, and comparatively harmless epidemics, like measles, became frightfully fatal when the native, to allay the fever, insisted on bathing in cold water. Dysentery and ordinary colds, which the people were too ignorant and too indolent to nurse, took the proportions of plagues. For forty generations these people had been isolated in this ocean, as though they were in a modern sanatorium, protected from contact with new forms of disease, and living on vegetables and fish. The virulent diseases which had been developed among the struggling masses of Asia and Europe found a rich field for destruction when they were brought to the South Seas. Just as such pests as lantana, the mimosa or sensitive plant, and the guava have overrun many of the islands, where the field for them was open, so diseases ran through the people. For this, perhaps, the foreigners were not wholly responsible, although their civilization certainly was; but for the political misery the foreigner was wholly to blame, and for the social and moral degradation he was the active cause. No doubt the ancient society of Tahiti had plenty of vices and was a sort of Paris in its refinements of wickedness, but these had not prevented the islanders from leading as happy lives as had ever been known among men.
These are strong words, but they are nevertheless only too true. Civilization brings to savage races curses as well as blessings. The primitive people are more receptive of new vices than new virtues.
In 1880 the number of inhabitants had again increased to thirteen thousand five hundred, but since that time it has been reduced to eleven thousand, as shown by the last census. When Captain Cook visited the island he emphasized particularly the absence of acute diseases. In speaking of chronic diseases he remarks:
They only reckon five or six which might be called chronic, or national disorders, amongst which are the dropsy and thefefai, or indolent swellings before mentioned as frequent at Tongataboo.
The fearful, swift depopulation of the island was caused by the introduction of new acute infectious and contagious diseases, such as smallpox, measles, whooping-cough, la grippe, etc., which among these people was attended by a frightful mortality. It was only three years ago that an epidemic of measles, a trifling disease with us, claimed several hundred lives, including many adults, and extended to nearly all of the islands of the entire group. The disease that is now threatening the extinction of the race in a short time is pulmonary tuberculosis. The natives are extremely susceptible to this disease, and the small native houses, crowded with large families, are the breeding stations for infection.
The French government has at last recognized the need of taking active measures to improve the sanitary conditions of their colony and protect the natives against the spread of infectious diseases. A corps of three physicians, sent by the French government on this mission, made the voyage from San Francisco to the island on the steamerMariposawith me. The names of these physicians are: Dr. Grosfillez, surgeon-major of the first class of the colonial troops; Dr. H. Rowan, a graduate of the Pasteur Institute, and Dr. F. Cassiau, of the clinic of Marseilles. The military surgeon receives an annual salary of fifteen hundred dollars, the two civil doctors twelve hundred dollars each. They are under contract for five years. They have been given judicial power to enforce all sanitary regulations they see fit to institute. They will be stationed at different points and will establish a requisite number of lazarettos, something which will fill a long-felt and pressing need.
NATIVE SETTLEMENTNATIVE SETTLEMENT
NATIVE SETTLEMENT