Table S, p.[47].
These figures, so far as they go, show comparatively little liability to consumptive diseases among children in these colonies. But there is a native training institution in South Australia, in which a very large proportion of the mortality is due to tubercular diseases. Scrofula, phthisis, and hæmoptysis are returned as having occasioned 69·6 per cent. of the total mortality in the institution, among males, and 61·9 per cent. among females. When we cross over to Canada we find that, out of a total mortality of 27, 16 deaths arose from consumption and five from scrofula. Indeed all the specified deaths arose from tubercular disease except one solitary death from fever.
I will next describe shortly the method of the school education, with its probable influence on the children’s health.
pp. [30] to 39.
The facts under this head are given in the form of notes to each school return. I have had them thrown together, for the sake of comparison, in Table H., the general results of which are as follow.
Many of the school houses are described in the returns as of bad construction, and ill situated for health, and the ventilation very insufficient. Some of them are unfavourably situated for free external ventilation, or their local position is damp and subject to malaria, the results of which, as well as the results of general defective sanitary condition in their vicinity are evidenced by the great prevalence of miasmatic diseases, such as fevers, diarrhœa, dysentery, and even cholera, among the children.
The period of tuition varies considerably, from two up to ten or more years. The school instruction is generally five; in a few cases, six days a week. At a few stations {7} nearly half the year is allowed for holidays. But generally the holidays are from two to six or eight weeks.
In most of the schools there seem to be no play hours on school days. When play hours are allowed these are from half an hour to two hours. At about a dozen schools only is there any out-door work combined with instruction. The largest amount of this work is given in the Natal and Canadian schools. Out of the whole number there are only nine schools at which there is any attempt made at combining the elements of physical education with the school instruction, and even where this is done the measure is partial and inefficient, being confined to a few exercises or simply to bathing. The obvious physiological necessity of engrafting civilized habits on uncivilized races gradually through the means of systematic physical training appears to be nowhere recognized, except at New Norcia (Benedictine) school, Western Australia, on the return from which there is the following very important statement:—Gymnastics are stated to be necessary to prevent sickness, and the reporter proceeds, “The idea of bringing savages from their wild state at once to an advanced civilization serves no other purpose than that of murdering them.” And the result of the out-door training practised at this school is said to have been hitherto successful “in preventing the destructive effects of this error.”
Appendix II. p. [62].
Confinement appears to be peculiarly injurious to the aborigines of South Australia, for the Governor states that he “almost always finds it necessary to release prisoners before the expiration of their sentences, as death is apt to ensue from any prolonged confinement.” Even partial confinement in schools, he thinks, injuriously affects the native constitution.