I soon became acquainted with all the planters in my division of the county, and found that a regular visit once a month to each estate, combined with the exigencies of a private practice, kept me busy, “week in, week out, from morn till night.”
The planter of those days I found an excellent type of colonist. He was generally a man of means, well educated, “a good fellow,” young, and drawn from the English upper middle class. In some few individual cases there might be a want of ballast, but colonial experience, soon gained, supplied the deficiency. My range of practice extended from the cotton company’s plantation at the Umhlali to Kennedy’s sugar estate on the Umgeni River, a district forty-five miles long, and extending inland, as a rule, about seven miles. Within this area I attended, as nearly as I can remember, twenty-five estates, employing on an average 1,600 indentured coolies. When, after a long absence, I visited Verulam this year, I found matters greatly altered. Hospitals had been built there and at Avoca, a village some twelve miles distant, to which any important cases from the surrounding estates were sent. My old district had been divided into three medical circles, with three doctors to do the work which I used to do single-handed.
CHAPTER II.
PREVAILING DISEASES IN NATAL.—INCIDENT AT MR. TOM MILNER’S, REDCLIFFE.—INTERESTING MEDICO-LEGAL CASE.—COFFEE PLANTING.—MARRIAGE.—REV. D. LINDLEY, D.D.—HIS EARLY WORK.—BISHOP COLENSO AND THE REV. W. A. ELDER.—OUTBREAK OF THE DIAMOND FEVER.—SAIL FOR INDIA.
The climate of Natal I found extremely healthy, the average death-rate being only 16 per 1000 among the white population, while among the natives, judging from all inquiries, I do not think it amounted to half that number, though this is more or less surmise, as unfortunately among the latter no official returns were kept.
During my practice in Victoria County, extending over six years, I do not think there were twenty deaths among the white population, and as for the coolies, the change from India seemed to give them a new lease of life.
Inflammation of the lungs, bronchitis and other chest complaints were rare, and when they did occur were seldom fatal, the principal diseases of importance being dysentery, low malarial fever (bilio-remittent) and a peculiar form of hœmaturia, due to a parasite named the Distoma hæmatobium, introduced into the system by the drinking of impure water. I must not forget also to mention that an outbreak of diphtheria took place before my arrival in 1859, which was the first time this disease was known in Natal, and also that every now and then a severe form of chicken-pox broke out among the Kafirs, which more than once gave occasion for alarm, the malady having been mistaken for small-pox. Asiatic cholera and hydrophobia have never been known.
Although not dangerous to life, yet as peculiar to this colony, I ought to mention the Natal sore, a species of inflammatory boil, of a low congestive nature, with which new arrivals were almost always troubled.
These sores were often produced by the irritating bite of an insect known under the name of the tick (ixodes), of which there are different species, and also by the bite of the mosquito.
Specimens of the larger species of tick having fastened upon animals in such places as the ear, mane, etc., where they could not be rubbed off, become gorged with blood to the size of haricot beans. Those which attack men are much smaller. Ticks have no wings, no eyes, no mouth, merely legs, a pair of sharp, delicate lancets, and a pipe or rostrum covered over externally with small reflexed teeth, which they plunge into the skin, and then suck away, holding on by their barbs. Dr. Mann, formerly superintendent of education in Natal, writes: “this much, however, must be said even for these blind, bloodthirsty insects, their reality is not so bad as their reputation;” so that again we have an instance of an enemy of man not being so black as he is painted.