Among the coast tribes of British Columbia Mr. Duncan “always found one or two nurses to an invalid, if the case was at all bad; the sympathy of the nurses, too, seemed very great.”[147] Beechey says of the wild Indians of Upper California:—“The very great care taken of all those who are affected with any disease ought not to be allowed to escape a remark. When any of their relations are indisposed, the greatest attention is paid to their wants.”[148] Keating noticed the kind and humane treatment which the Potawatomis extended even to the idiots.[149] The Koriaks “carefully attend those who are sick.”[150] The same is said of the Ainos of Japan,[151] and the Tagbanuas of the Philippine Islands.[152] In Sarawak no relative is abandoned because an injury or illness may have incapacitated him for work.[153] When a Dyak is ill at home, the women nurse the patient in turn.[154] In Samoa “the treatment of the sick was invariably humane.”[155] In Tana,[156] Humphrey’s Island,[157] Erromanga,[158] and Tasmania,[159] they were likewise kindly attended to; and the same is the case at least among many of the Australian tribes.[160] Concerning the aborigines of Herbert River, in Northern Queensland, Lumholtz writes:—“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 I discovered in the Australian natives.”[161] In various parts of Australia the blind, and especially the aged blind, are carefully tended; travellers on the northern coast of the continent have noticed that these are generally the fattest of the company, being supplied with the best of everything.[162] “No trait in the character of the Malagasy,” says Ellis, “is more creditable to their humanity, and more gratifying to our benevolent feelings, than the kind, patient, and affectionate manner in which they attend upon the sick.”[163] A similar praise is bestowed upon the Mandingoes[164] and Kafirs.[165] Among the Zulus, says Mr. J. Tyler, “work, however important, is at once suspended that they may help their afflicted friends.”[166]
[147] Duncan, quoted by Mayne, Four Years in British Columbia, p. 292 sq.
[148] Beechey, op. cit. ii. 402.
[149] Keating, Expedition to the Source of St. Peter’s River, i. 100.
[150] Krasheninnikoff, op. cit. p. 233.
[151] von Siebold, Die Aino auf der Insel Yesso, p. 11.
[152] Worcester, Philippine Islands, p. 494.
[153] St. John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, ii. 323.
[154] Bock, Head-Hunters of Borneo, p. 211.
[155] Turner, Samoa, p. 141. Cf. Pritchard, Polynesian Reminiscences, p. 146.