In Central Queensland, about 300 miles west of Rockhampton, an epidemic of erysipelas is said to have raged about fifty years ago. The manager of a station in that district told me that there were caves on the property in which there were hundreds of skeletons, indicating that there must have been an epidemic among the natives. The blacks had informed him that a great many had died at the same time, being “sick in their mouths and noses.” Smallpox has also been known among the Australian natives, for example, near Murrumbidgee in New South Wales, as reported by Beveridge.
I did not think lung diseases possible among the savages of Australia before I saw these pale faces on Sea-View Range. They certainly looked as if they had consumption. But as I had no other symptoms to go by than their exterior, my assumption is not of course of much value.
Strange to say, the natives on Herbert river never complained of rheumatism. They were to some extent troubled with venereal diseases, against which they know no remedy; but these diseases do not appear in their most violent forms in Australia. The blacks who came in to Herbert Vale used to rub their wounds with tar, which they procured at the station. Apart from this, they let the disease run its course.
When the Australian becomes “civilised” and begins to wear clothes he becomes more subject to disease. He regards clothes simply as ornaments that he may wear or not as he pleases. He will perspire during the whole day in a woollen jacket, but in the evening, when he really might need it on account of the cool temperature, he is sure to take it off and sleep in his old-fashioned way. On a hunt he lays aside all clothes for the sake of convenience, no matter how “civilised” he may be, for he wants to be naked when he climbs trees and pursues animals. But this thoughtless way of wearing clothes brings on colds, and as a result rheumatic fevers and lung diseases. I never found fever and ague among the Australian savages, except in the solitary case of a well-dressed civilised black on Herbert river.
As the hard and tough vegetables eaten by the blacks are a severe tax on their teeth, which they also constantly use for making their implements, the older members of the tribe have their fore-teeth worn down to the gums, which therefore become very tender. I have also seen blacks troubled with toothache. In such cases they make one of their comrades suck the cheek until the blood flows, very much as we use leeches. Toothache in one of the front teeth is sometimes radically cured by placing a stick against the tooth, whereupon the “dentist” with a violent blow knocks the tooth into the mouth.
The Herbert river blacks have no medicines. The only remedies used are to suck out the blood over the spot where the pain is felt, or to rub the sore place with saliva. The sick are treated by the “doctor,” who as a rule is the most cunning man in the tribe and a great humbug. When he has sucked blood from a spot where the patient feels pain, he usually shows to the latter a piece of bone or a little stone, which he pretends he has sucked out, and which he declares to be the cause of the illness. In other parts of Australia, where diseases must be more common, the blacks are said to know healing herbs, and in many places they have peculiar ways of treating diseases.
On Herbert river no remedy is known against snake bites. The victim simply lays himself down to die. In New South Wales, on the other hand, snake bites are cured in a very interesting manner. The wound is squeezed between the thumb nails until the blood flows; then a piece of warm opossum skin is laid on the wound, which is sucked as soon as the skin becomes cold. The opossum is warmed a second time, and the process is repeated until the patient is out of danger. The operation usually lasts about forty-five minutes. It is a remarkable fact that the Herbert river natives attribute a healing virtue to the sweat of the armpits, to which they attach supernatural qualities, putting it under the nose of the patient to make him well.
Wounds and scratches on the blacks heal with remarkable rapidity. Two natives near a station, having borrowed knives from white men, fought. One cut numerous gashes in his opponent’s back, while the other continually inflicted wounds right down to the hip-bone of the former. The combatants were separated and brought into the camp in a miserable condition. All their comrades did was to strew ashes in the wounds, and after three weeks’ time the victims were perfectly restored.
The natives are very kind and sympathetic towards those who are ill, and they carry them from camp to camp. This is the only noble trait that I discovered in the Australian natives.
After having borrowed Gongola’s dog in return for a large piece of damper, I rambled about for a few days before I returned to Herbert Vale. The chief result of the hunt was a kind of bandicoot (Perameles nasuta), which utters a peculiar sound which the natives imitate in order to coax it out.