Men who were the subjects of Elephantiasis arabum were occasionally seen in the different islands we visited. Instances of “lymph-scrotum” most frequently typify this disease, but now and then cases of “swollen leg” occur. In the island of Faro or Fauro in Bougainville Straits, the natives attribute this disease to the water of particular streams. There is a stream on the west side of the island, the water of which when drunk is said to produce “swollen legs.” For this reason the water is never employed; and the ban is even extended to the cocoa-nut trees on its banks.
Natives, who are the subjects of such congenital deformities as “hare-lip,” are rarely seen. Very probably in such cases life is destroyed by the parents soon after birth. I only observed one instance of “hare-lip” which occurred in the case of a man of Simbo. This malformation, which was of the single character, was associated with abnormal development of crisp hair on the body and more particularly on the back. As an instance of another kind of congenital deformity, which however came but rarely under my observation, I may refer to a man of Ugi who had six perfect toes on the right foot, both fifth and sixth toes being provided with nails and apparently arising from a common metatarsal bone. None of his family had the same deformity, which in his case was probably inconvenient in more ways than one, as the print of his foot was familiar to every native in the island.[163]
[163] Mr. Romilly, in the work referred to on [page 168], alludes to the strange prevalence of these congenital deformities of the hands and feet in New Britain.
Strabismus is not uncommon amongst the natives of these islands, and appears to occur with the same relative frequency as amongst more civilised people.
Venereal diseases, both constitutional and local, are said by traders to be very frequent in certain islands, as in Ugi, which have had most intercourse with the outer world. I rarely however came upon unequivocal evidence of the constitutional form of these diseases, those cases which came under my immediate observation being of the non-constitutional types which, as in other tropical regions, are often of a rapidly destructive character. The natives of Ugi assert that these diseases have not been introduced within the memory of any living man, and no tradition prevails with reference to their origin. I shall scarcely enter into the question of the introduction of these diseases into the more central groups of the Pacific, a subject which is discussed in most of the narratives of the early expeditions to those regions, but in a spirit of unfairness and mutual recrimination which goes far to invalidate the conclusions arrived at. Negative evidence, however, must be of a very exhaustive character before it would warrant the inference that to the licence, so freely permitted to the crews of the English and French expeditions during the latter half of the last century, must be attributed the presence of these diseases among the Polynesian races. M. Rollin, who, as surgeon of the frigate “Boussole,” accompanied La Pérouse on his ill-fated voyage, adduces evidence to show the probability of these diseases having existed in the Pacific before the discoveries of the French and English navigators in that region;[164] and La Pérouse himself approaches very near the truth when he suggests that the free intercourse, which prevailed between the natives and the crews during those expeditions, may have increased the activity and destructive tendency of the pre-existing diseases.[165] For, not only has M. Parrot of Paris demonstrated from an examination of the skulls of some South American aborigines the existence of Syphilis in the New World before Columbus set foot on its shores, but he affirms without hesitation, after examining three fragments of infant skulls from a dolmen in central France, that this disease existed in prehistoric times (“Lancet,” May 10th, 1879). We are not therefore surprised at finding references to venereal diseases in the ancient literature of China, India, Arabia, Greece and Rome (Aitken’s “Medicine,” 6th edit, 1872, vol i. p. 859); and having regard to the ethnological past of the Pacific, we can with some confidence assume that the original stock, derived in the first place from the Asiatic continent, brought with them these diseases.
[164] “Voyage round the World, by La Pérouse,” edit. by Milet-Mureau: London: vol. iii., p. 180.
[165] Ibid. vol. ii. p. 52.
The susceptibility of these islanders to comparatively small falls of temperature is an element in their predisposition to disease which should not be disregarded. This susceptibility was strikingly shown to me on one occasion, at the end of August 1882, when I was following up the course of a stream at Sulagina on the north coast of St. Christoval. Accompanied by a party of natives, I was wading up the stream for several hours, the water often reaching the waist, whilst a steady deluge of rain completed the wetting. Although the air was merely comparatively cool for this latitude (10° 30´ S.), the thermometer in the shade standing at 80° Fahr, my natives were shivering with the cold; whilst I myself felt only the inconvenience of having been soaked through for so many hours. As soon as we returned to the coast, all my party huddled themselves together around their wood-fires in a little hut and warmed their hands and feet as eagerly as we should in winter-time at home. As I stood in the hut looking comfortably on at my naked companions who, shivering and with their teeth chattering, were endeavouring to warm themselves around the fires, I recalled to my mind an incident which Mr. Darwin relates in his “Journal of the Beagle” (p. 220), which although analogous, illustrates the converse of these conditions. “A small family of Fuegians”—he writes—“soon joined our party round a blazing fire. We were well clothed, and though sitting close to the fire were far from too warm; yet these naked savages, though further off, were observed, to our great surprise, to be streaming with perspiration at undergoing such a roasting.”
Instances of mental weakness or of insanity amongst the natives of these islands rarely came under my notice. However, more than one of the chiefs whom we met had a half-witted individual on his staff, who made himself generally useful to his master. The chief’s fool, as we called him, was frequently my guide in the island of Santa Anna. He was the general butt of the village; and I was told the girls would sometimes seize hold of him and roll him about in the sand. Insanity would appear to be of uncommon occurrence amongst these islanders; but I suspect that such individuals are not permitted to live. Whilst the “Lark” was engaged in the survey of Faro Island in Bougainville Straits, I learned that there was a madman, who was partially dumb, living in the bush in the interior of the island. Having murdered his wife about five months before our visit, he had taken to the forest where he led a solitary life at enmity with his fellow-islanders, who would have killed him, as they told me, if they found him. He frequently used to steal from the plantations; and during our stay in the island he was observed by a woman near one of the yam patches. The chief’s son came up to me one afternoon, after I had returned to the coast from an ascent of one of the principal summits, to advise me to shoot this unfortunate being if ever I saw him; and he added that if this madman should see me, unobserved, he would either run away or take his opportunity of killing me. However, I made several excursions into the interior afterwards; but I never fell in with him.