The breast is situated a little more laterally in the aboriginal than in the European; and in the former case it is also lower and more nearly mid-way between shoulder level and umbilicus. One often finds the breasts of one and the same individual unsymmetrically developed ([Plate IV], 1).
In connection with the female breast, I have a somewhat remarkable case of artificially induced lactation to record from the Alligator Rivers district. The mother of an infant of tender years having died, a younger sister of the deceased, who had no children, volunteered to adopt the helpless mite. The foster-mother diligently treated her breasts with a pulp she made by mashing Eugenia leaves with ashes and sufficient water to make a paste; and heated stones were placed over the breasts at frequent intervals. The mammary glands and their surrounding tissues were at every opportunity plied with the fingers, and the babe’s lips were as often put to the nipples. Within a short time, fluid formed in the breasts; and the child was suckled. The fluid was said to have been more watery than milk, but, nevertheless, made good nourishment for the child. This case is by no means unique. A number of records are available from different parts of the world, the most classical among which is perhaps that mentioned by Alexander von Humboldt of a South American man who sustained a child on his breast for five months during the illness of his wife.
In the Australian, the belly is flatter, the pudendum if anything, slightly more anterior, and the inguinal folds decidedly steeper than in the European.
One frequently has an opportunity, however, of observing a youngster with a remarkably big abdomen, a condition known in the bush by the name of “pot-belly.” Such a picture might point to either plenty or to want. In good seasons, when animal and vegetable diet is to be had in abundance, the younger children soon acquire a “pot-belly” in consequence of ample feeding and gorging. But, on the other hand, a distended abdomen is more often found in consequence of malnutrition and starvation, which the children have to suffer during bad seasons of drought. The distention in this case is due to the swelling of some of the large abdominal glands.
The same sufferings manifest themselves similarly in the adults, and particularly in the aged. Among the latter one only too often finds hungering creatures whose flesh has wasted away to a mere parchment wrapped around the bones, living skeletons in fact. In these cases, too, enlarged glands give rise to an unhealthy nodular protuberance in the epigastric region.
Can one wonder if, under such conditions, a kindly club, wielded by a more robust relative, puts the sufferer out of his misery? It is during these trying times, too, that parents are obliged to resort to extreme measures, so that they might sustain the lives of their children. Driven to the verge of despair, and visibly moved at the thought of it, a father must occasionally make the pathetic and gruesome decision to slay one child in order that another may be saved.
On account of his acting thus, when dire need compels him, people, who should know better, often call the Australian aboriginal a cannibal! Is this cannibalism? Have not shipwrecked people of our own colour, when in a similar plight, often been compelled to kill and eat one of their friends to save themselves from starvation?