It is impossible to estimate the mortality directly due to yaws. In the yaws-hospitals of the West Indies the mortality amounted to less than the annual death-rate of the islands. When it occurs during the first year of childhood in Fiji it is almost invariably fatal. Indirectly, there can be no doubt that it is sapping the vitality of the whole native race. Some authorities—Hutchinson, for example—hold that it is possibly syphilis modified by race and climate. Syphilis is practically
unknown among the Fijians, but although there are many points of difference that prove the two diseases to be distinct, it is highly probable that, from its close relationship to syphilis, yaws has an enervating effect on the child-bearing functions of the native women.
Though it would now be extremely difficult to stamp out the disease, much might be done to keep it under if the natives could be convinced of its contagious nature. In the mountain districts of Tholo Tinea desquamans, or Tinea imbricata (Tokelau ringworm), which infected nearly 25 per cent. of the native population a few years ago, has now so far yielded to the efforts of the people themselves that it has been almost entirely stamped out in some of the provinces. As soon as they were convinced of its contagion, and understood that the Government would supply remedies to those who chose to pay for them, they buckled to the work in earnest, and needed little driving by European officials.
FOOTNOTES:
[99] A Voyage round the World in H.M.S. Pandora, by Mr. George Hamilton, surgeon. Berwick-on-Tweed, 1792.
CHAPTER XIX
TUBERCULOSIS[100]
The tubercular taint in the Fijians, though less marked than among some of the Polynesian races to the eastward, is sufficient to influence the vitality of the race by impairing its power of resistance to other diseases, both in children and adults. It is seen in the form of phthisis, strumous ulcerations, chronic bone diseases, and most commonly as strumous ulcerations of the face, nose, pharynx, or throat, which is named tubercular lupus. More rarely it appears as tabes mesenterica in infants, tubercular peritonitis, and tubercular disease of the internal organs.