The Solomon Islands and Their Natives

by H. B. Guppy

These ulcerous sores, if left exposed to the irritation of sand, dirt, and flies, may last for years and may ultimately cause death. Dr. Livingstone in his “Last Journals” (vol. ii. chaps. 2 and 3) speaks of the ulcers of the feet from which many of the slaves die in the region west of Tanganyika. They eat through everything muscle, tendon, and bone, and often lame permanently. “The wailing of slaves tortured with these sores is one of the night sounds of a slave camp.” These ulcers, however, as they affect the Solomon Islanders, have a natural tendency to heal. When staying with Bishop Selwyn at Gaeta in Florida, I accompanied him on his morning round of visits to his patients, most of them being the subjects of these large ulcerous sores on the feet and legs. He tells me that with rest and cleanliness they soon take on a healing action. Carbolic oil was the application he used, and it seemed well suited for these discharging, loathsome sores. Several of the men of the “Lark” were laid up with these ulcers of the feet for many weeks. The ulcers in their case assumed a circular form with raised callous edges and an irritable inflamed surface, being attended by much pain in the surrounding parts. The free application of lunar caustic every two or three days followed by poulticing, I found to be the most effectual treatment. Dr. Livingstone, who was himself laid up with these sores for eighty days in the interior of Africa, found the best of all topical applications to be malachite rubbed down with water on a stone and applied with a feather. The natives of Treasury Island in the Solomon Group use an application prepared by pounding the fruit of the Cycas circinalis, which grows near the edge of the cliffs on the south coast of the adjacent Stirling Island.

There is a loathsome skin disease very prevalent amongst the inhabitants of this group, which is generally known as the Solomon Island or Tokelau ringworm. I should estimate that two-fifths of the total population of these islands are thus affected. We found it more prevalent in some islands than in others. In Treasury, for instance, four-fifths of the people are the subjects of this disease, and half of the chief’s wives who number about thirty are almost covered with it. In the southern large island of the Florida Islands, it appears to affect quite one half of the population. It ranges from one end of the group to the other, neither sex nor age affording any immunity. The chiefs and their families, however, seem to be less liable to this disease. The skin of every man does not appear to afford a suitable nidus for the growth of the fungus which is the cause of the eruption; and this is evident from the circumstance that one parent may be covered with the disease while the other is entirely free from it. This skin-eruption, although so repulsive in appearance in the eyes of the European when he first visits the group, is not viewed with any feelings of disgust by the natives; and even the European after spending some time in the group learns to disregard its repulsiveness. Those affected show no anxiety to be quit of it and evince great indifference when any offer is made to them to cure it. It is to them only an inconvenience; and apparently causes no irritation except when the skin is hot and perspiring, as after exertion.

When this disease first came under my notice in the early part of 1882, I was unacquainted with what had been previously written on the subject. I accordingly made a microscopical examination of the affected skin and arrived at the conclusion, previously formed by those far more competent to express an opinion than myself, that the eruption was an inveterate form of body-ringworm. As it is to be seen affecting the skin of young children in the form of limited circular patches, which usually commence on the belly, it displays all the essential characters of Tinea circinata or body-ringworm. Spreading all over the trunk and limbs, the eruption assumes a chronic character and its typical characters become obscured. The whole skin, with the exception of that of the face and scalp which are not attacked by the disease, is covered by a great number of wavy desquamating lines partly concentric in their arrangement; and on account of the intervals between the lines being of a paler hue, the whole skin obtains a singular marbled appearance.

To such a degree is the skin implicated in some cases of the disease that the rapid desiccation and desquamation of the epidermal cells lead to a partial decoloration of the deeper parts of the cuticle, as though the rate of the production of pigment was less rapid than the rate of its removal in the desquamative process. This disease, in other words, tends to decolorize the skin. From this cause, one occasionally meets with a native whose skin as compared with that of his fellows is of a pale sickly hue. The tendency to produce a lighter colour by the too rapid destruction of the pigment is especially noticeable in those cases where the body is only partially covered with the eruption, there being a marked contrast between the paleness of the affected surfaces and the dark hue of the healthy skin. The influence of this cutaneous disease on the colour was remarked by Commodore Wilkes amongst the natives of the Depeyster Islands in the Ellice Group. He refers to the skin of those affected as much lighter than in any Polynesian race he had hitherto met with.[152] The same effect of this disease was noticed by Mr. Wilfred Powell amongst the natives of New Britain.[153]

[152] “Narrative of the U.S. Exploring Expedition,” London, 1845; vol. V. p. 40.

[153] “Three years amongst the Cannibals of New Britain,” London, 1883, p. 86.

I have entered somewhat at length into the subject of the partial decoloration produced by this eruption, because it has a bearing on that “quæstio vexata,” the causes of race-colour. Pathology, in fact, affords more than one instance of changes, almost of a permanent character, produced in the colour of the skin through the influence of abnormal action. Dr. Tylor in one of his lectures[154] alludes to “the morbid appearance of race-character” produced by the bronzing of the skin in Addison’s disease, which is shown to be immediately due to a deposit of pigment in the rete mucosum closely resembling that of the negro. “The importance of the comparison,” he says, “lies in its bridging over the physiological differences of race, by showing that morbid action may bring about in one race results more or less analogous to the normal type in another.” To the partial decoloration of the skin in Tokelau ringworm and to the bronzing of the skin in Addison’s disease, these remarks equally apply.

[154] Delivered at Oxford on Feb. 15th, 1883: (“Nature” vol. xxviii., p. 9). Vide also Topinard’s “Eléments d’Anthropologie générale:” Paris 1885, p. 325.

This disease has been variously spoken of by different authors and travellers as Leprosy, Icthyosis, Psoriasis, Pityriasis versicolor, and Tokelau Ringworm, of which it is needless to remark that the last is the only name which is correct. The medical officers of the United States Exploring Expedition, under Commodore Wilkes in 1841, were the first to recognise the nature of the eruption in the case of the inhabitants of the Depeyster Islands in the Ellice Group.[155] In 1874 Dr. Tilbury Fox, after having examined some scrapings of the skin which had been sent to him from Samoa, published in the “Lancet” (August 29th) a paper on “Tokelau Ringworm and its Fungus,” in which he established the true character of the disease, and disposed of a view held by the Rev. Dr. G. Turner of the Samoan Medical Mission and by Dr. Mullen, R.N. of H.M.S. “Cameleon,” that its origin may have been connected with the occurrence of numerous dipterous insects found in scrapings of the skin after the use of sulphur ointment. This last he showed to be only an accidental feature of the eruption. Two years afterwards, Dr. Fox in connection with Dr. Farquhar wrote an account of “Certain Endemic Skin and other Diseases in India and Hot Climates generally” (London 1876), in which further reference was made to this disease. It was there shown that Tokelau ringworm, Burmese ringworm, Chinese ringworm, and the Indian ringworms known familiarly as “dhobie itch,” “washerman’s itch,” “Malabar itch,” etc., are all of them forms of Tinea circinata tropica variously modified by such circumstances as the personal habits, the nature of the apparel, and the character of the climate. A proof of the correctness of this conclusion came under my observation in the Solomon Islands, where the white men in taking this disease from the natives suffer from it frequently in the form of “dhobie itch.” The parasitic disease Tinea circinata tropica to which, as above shown, all tropical ringworms should be referred is, as Dr. Fox remarks in his work on “Skin Diseases” (3rd edit., 1873, p. 451), “nothing more or less than ordinary ringworm of the body (tinea circinata), such as we have in Europe, determined in its occurrence to certain parts of the body by peculiar circumstances, and assuming characters somewhat different from those observed in the disease as it exists in colder climates, in consequence of the greater luxuriance of the parasite consequent upon the presence in one case of a greater amount of heat and moisture, which are favourable to the development and speed the growth of fungi.”