The Solomon Islands and Their Natives

by H. B. Guppy

This brings me to the subject of the indifference often displayed towards the sick and invalids. The natives view these things in a very matter-of-fact way. On more than one occasion when in the house of sickness, the son or the brother of the sick man has remarked to me, in the coolest manner, “Him too much sick. I think by-and-by finish;” and it is astonishing to hear of the manner in which they allow the sick to shift for themselves. In the islands of Bougainville Straits the very aged, who are unable to get about or to be of any service to themselves, are placed in a house in which they are left alone although supplied with food; and there they remain until they die. Two old and decrepit men, who were both fast hastening to their ends, being the subjects of chronic lung affections, were placed together in a house in Treasury where they were supplied with food but rarely if ever visited. They were placed there to die as the relations informed us; and there they remained day after day until the end arrived. Mr. Stephens told me that in his island of Ugi, if a cocoa-nut is placed by the side of the sick man, his friends consider they have done all in their power. No attempt is made to alleviate pain, or to soothe by companionship the tedious hours of the sick. He lies deserted on his roughly plaited mat of palm-leaves, in his wretched home where the sunlight rarely enters; and there he awaits, perhaps without regret, his approaching death. When consciousness leaves him, his friends regard him as already dead, attributing the spasmodic breathing and the convulsive efforts of the dying man to the agency of some evil spirit.

The influence of superstition probably explains the indifference which prevails as to the welfare of the sick and aged. Those afflicted with such an infirmity as blindness are kindly treated by their fellows. I was particularly struck, whilst looking on at a feast in the village of Treasury, by the attention that was paid to the wants of a young blind man who sat aloof from the rest. He was blind from his birth, and I particularly pleased him by sitting down beside him and giving him a stick of tobacco.

In the case of those who have received some severe injury, such as a gunshot wound, considerable care is shown by the friends in their welfare. I saw much of the natives who were wounded during the hostilities carried on between the natives of Treasury and the Shortlands, and was astonished at the ease with which they recovered from apparently hopeless injuries. My experience goes to support the opinion laid down by Professor Waitz in his “Anthropology of Primitive Peoples,”[149] that the healing power of nature is greater among savage than among civilized races. The principle of non-interference was literally carried out in defiance of the laws of hygiene and of the experience of modern surgery. After the unfortunate conflict on the islet of Tuluba, off the west coast of Alu, I visited the wounded man and woman who had been brought back to their homes. I found the woman lying in a dingy little house in which I had to stand still for a few minutes before I could see my patient. Five days had elapsed since the fight; and the condition of a wound, which has been left alone for this period in a tropical climate, may be well imagined. She had received a severe tomahawk wound just above the right knee, smashing the bone and implicating the joint. The parts were much swollen and there was profuse suppuration. No attempt had been made to wash the wound, and in consequence it stunk horribly. A few pieces of split bamboo, less than a foot in length, were lashed in a slack fashion around the joint by means of rattan; but they could have given little or no support. Under the couch, which was merely a layer of poles raised about a foot from the ground, were placed hot stones wrapped up in leaves, from which the warmth ascended to the injured limb which was left uncovered and exposed to the flies and other insects. The poor woman was moaning terribly; and her cries of “Agai” were painful to listen to, especially as I was permitted to do but little. They would neither wash nor cover the wound, and persisted in keeping up the hot air treatment by means of the hot stones wrapped in leaves, which were placed under the couch. I pronounced her recovery as hopeless; and was after a time obliged to discontinue my visits, upon being told by one of the medicine-men that as he could make her well, my presence was not required. I never saw the woman again, but sometime after I learned that she was nearly well.

[149] English edition: translated by J. F. Collingwood: London, 1863: p. 126.

The man who was wounded at the same time had received a rifle-bullet through the thigh without injuring the bone, and another through the groin. I found his wounds in the same horrible condition, with the wound of exit in the thigh as large as my fist. Nothing whatever had been done except placing hot stones in leaves under the limb on the ground beneath; and nothing more was done. There the man lay for several weeks with his wounds unwashed and exposed to the air. In course of time he recovered. One of the Treasury natives had been shot by one of his own party, the rifle-bullet passing through the right elbow from behind, and apparently disorganising the joint. I saw him a month after he had received the injury, lying in a very emaciated condition on his couch, with the wounded limb stretched out beside him quite unprotected and displaying an extensive flesh-wound in front of the joint. The hot-stone treatment had been the only one employed. In another month or five weeks he was up and about, but of course with a useless elbow. One of the Alu natives, who had been shot through the left shoulder from behind by the Treasury chief, had nearly recovered when I saw him six or seven weeks after, although the arm was useless.

Reflecting on the hot-stone treatment which the natives employed for these severe injuries, I came to think that it was really efficacious. They said themselves that the hot air eased the pain, and this was probably effected, as I hold, by the warmth relaxing the parts after suppuration had begun and thus assisting the escape of the purulent discharges. The surgeon of our own time may take a hint from this practice of the Solomon Islander. It would certainly scarcely accord with the principles of modern surgery if a gunshot injury of one of the larger joints was to be treated in one of our general hospitals by being constantly kept in a current of heated air, uncovered and even unwashed. The experiment, however, would be worth a trial in cases where amputation is unpracticable and where death is the probable result.

It is a common saying amongst white men who have had to deal with these natives, that when a man makes up his mind to die he assuredly will, even although apparently in robust health. Such cases are not unusual on board labour-ships on their way to the Queensland and Fiji plantations, and they may be regarded as of the nature of nostalgic melancholy or home-sickness. It is in truth hard to imagine the train of thoughts which must pass through the simple mind of a native when his island-home disappears below the horizon, and he is borne away to a strange land from which, it may be, some of his acquaintances have never returned. Even the attractions of the box of trade that his servitude will earn may be insufficient to keep down the undefined apprehensions which fill his breast; and the knowledge of the impossibility of seeking his friends or his island again for what must appear to him an indefinite period may only serve to strengthen his longing for home. Here we have that disease with which the army surgeons of Europe were familiar, and which has been most recently exhibited amongst the Italian troops stationed at Masowah on the coast of the Red Sea. It is that “strange disease” which Dr. Livingstone so pathetically describes in his “Last Journals,” as affecting the victims of the slave-trade in the lake region of Africa. I remember on one occasion, when visiting a labour-vessel that had arrived in Treasury Harbour, my attention was drawn by the mate to a native of New Ireland who had eaten little for some days and was looking over the side of the ship towards the shore in a depressed and moody manner. I saw that the thoughts of the poor fellow were in reality far away; and I passed on to see some of the other sick men. The next morning this New Ireland native was missing, and in the evening his body was found washed up on the beach. . . . I would refer my readers to some interesting remarks on this subject from the pen of Mr. Romilly,[150] whose official experience in the Western Pacific enables him to write with authority. The Solomon Islanders, according to this author, are less affected by this disease than those of other groups; whilst the New Hebrides natives appear to be most subject to it. Not only do natives often die of nostalgia before they are landed, but many die from this cause after their arrival in Fiji; and the only way to cure those affected is the one least likely to be followed, that is, “to send them home.”

[150] “The Western Pacific and New Guinea.” London, 1886: pp. 16,177.

In the eastern part of the Solomon Group, one commonly meets natives limping along with large ulcerous sores on the soles of the feet, seated usually near the base of the toes. They are often caused by stepping on the sharp corals when fishing on the reefs, or by splinters of wood piercing the skin of the soles of the feet when walking in the bush. As a rule, the native pays no attention to these sores, and from neglect the ulceration extends both on the surface and to the deeper tissues, exposing the tendons and the metatarsal bones. Ultimately some or all the toes may be lost, and an unshapely clubbed foot arises from the subsequent contraction of the cicatrised surface. At other times, where the ulceration has been superficial but has extended between the toes, adhesion and perfect union of the lateral surfaces of the toes ensue, and a continuous covering of skin bridges over the intervening spaces. Mr. Nisbet, the government agent of the labour-schooner “Redcoat” from Fiji, showed me a Solomon Island native with a foot of perfect form but with apparently no toes. A continuous covering of skin covered the whole foot like a thin sock, and the toes were only recognisable by the touch. The man appeared to be but little incommoded by this obliteration of the toes. Among the natives of New Britain, as we learn from Mr. Romilly,[151] “the toes are not unfrequently joined together by a tough membrane,” a defect which does “not seem to impair their activity.” This evidently results from superficial ulceration in the manner I have above described.

[151] “The Western Pacific and New Guinea.” London, 1886, p. 21.