DAVID LAYTON.
In running over the diseases for the last five years, many cases of common occurrence, not of dangerous or severe nature, are omitted, from the fact that no particular inventory was required, so that the enclosed number of cases are merely taken at the time of attendance from their symptoms and necessity for peculiar or active treatment.
You are aware that the Savnia Indians are principally Christians, or call themselves such, although living in a half-civilized state. For one portion of the year they are living in warm comfortable houses, while provisions and the necessaries of life are easily procured by them; during this period they are happy and contented, little sickness prevailing. The other portion of the year, from a peculiar propensity, I suppose inherent in the race, they take to the bush, while their living in wigwams, scant of clothing, provisions hard to be obtained, exposed to all the vicissitudes of climate, wet feet, &c., as a natural consequence intermittents, remittent, and other fevers, rheumatism, laryngitis, bronchitis, pleurisy, pneumonia, phthisis pulmonalis, follow invariably.
Their diversity of diet and method of living has a most pernicious influence in causing dyspepsia, worms, and most other ills to which the alimentary canal is liable, while congestion of liver, lungs, and irritation of bladder are of very frequent occurrence in a mild form; from this cause the whole tribe suffer, even to children of a year old.
What may have been their ailments while in a heathen state I cannot say, not being in attendance on them, but from what I hear of the number of deaths at that period, from variola before the introduction of vaccination, exposure, scant clothing and diet, and changes of climate, &c., it must have been enormous; to draw any definite result or give an average of deaths from their former and present mode of living would be impossible on my part. The few families of {67} Christian Indians on the reserve who live as whites are just as healthy, and increase in numbers equally, while the whole tribe, as they are at present, increase yearly.
THOMAS W. JOHNSTON, M.D.,
Savnia, C. W.
NEW ZEALAND.
As to the sanitary state of the native population, I regret to state, not only from the information of several gentlemen with whom during my mission I had an opportunity of conversing, but also from personal observation and inquiry, that they are by no means in that healthy state which one would be led to expect when compared with the advance they have made in other respects. In the former it would appear that they are retrograding, and this decline is especially visible in and near the European towns, and easily attributable to causes, the prevalence of which is more or less detrimental to any body of persons, but felt in a greater degree in a mixed community of Europeans and natives. In illustration of this, I may mention the comparatively few births, while from the census it will be seen that a greater equality of the sexes prevails than was generally believed to be the case throughout the entire districts; and perhaps, therefore, the most favourable conclusion to form is, that the native population is not increasing, or, in other words, that, taking the deaths and births into account, it is likely to remain stationary for some time to come, unless swept off by some unusual and fatal disease.