One superior of these medical gobs had had rather a crude way of distributing benefits. If natives didn’t show up for treatment they were hauled out and given the get-well-damn-you orders. In case an inhabitant refused to be hauled out, lusty police came and hauled him properly. Education by force stopped a general yaws infection, which was good. But it dampened Samoan confidence in America’s kindly rule, which was bad.
There was an organized body of trained Samoan nurses; the regulation pay was fifteen dollars a month, increased by a monthly dollar for each year’s service. Good pay, but the tendency was to get married and go home. This wasn’t at all bad, since it brought new blood into the work, and those who retired formed an alumnae body and became health missionaries in their villages. Their training was excellent and included the all-important items, baby feeding and dietetics.
An acute conjunctivitis generally called “Samoan eye” was prevalent in both groups. One school of thought still maintains that it is a form of trachoma. When you say “Fa’a Samoa” down there you are saying “Samoan fashion,” and that style of treating the eyes isn’t so good. When natives go blind, as so many do, it is usually due to their inherited witch-doctoring. They use a Fa’a Samoa treatment, which consists in scrubbing the eyes with coco fiber soaked in salt water. After a good course of this the entire eyeball is destroyed. It was encouraging to see how the chief pharmacists’ mates, who ranked as District Officers, were going at the problem. Every newborn baby got its drop of argyrol, and school children had their daily treatment. Adults were harder to handle; they were apt to wander away and try Fa’a Samoa, then come back stone-blind.
Fa’a Samoa for deafness was another medical annoyance. It consisted in tucking small shells into the afflicted ear and, in most cases, destroying the drum. Commander Paul Crosby, then Senior Medical Officer, deserves high praise for his supervision of eye and ear cases, and for the improvement all around in native health.
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The Mau was shorter in American Samoa than on the other side, but it came to the Naval Administration before it reached New Zealand’s mandate. Part of our Mau was a sad story, and promptly hushed-up for the good of the Service. Trouble started among half-castes and traders. Then it was known that some of the Naval staff were in the conspiracy. Zealots even confined Governor Terhune in his house. I knew Terhune back in the days when I practised in Mexico, and remembered him as an upright officer and a square-shooter. But a Board of Inquiry came sailing down to Pago and would have called Terhune to account for something or other, if he had been alive. Over his dead body he was absolved of all blame. The guilty officer was punished; and I hope that tardy justice cleansed the memory of poor Terhune, who had decided to die like an officer and a gentleman.
But it was a curious finish for the ruler of what one colonial news lady headlined “A Kindly Despotism,” commenting on the Governor who happened to be in office, “With astonishing disregard of American constitutional principles he combines in his person executive, legislative and judicial authority.” The lady otherwise flattered our Naval Administration, and made allowances for the difficulties it had overcome. I make allowances too. It’s a bitter thing to be responsible for the work of colonial empire.
Along Miss Sadie Thompson’s haunted beach I was reassured by a fringe of modern privies, built firmly. Tourists might have been offended by this, but to me it was far more beautiful than if the beach had been left to pure romance and soil pollution, which have combined to destroy so many tribes.
I was glad to scribble in my notes:—
Medical conditions excellent—have never seen schools so clean as at Ofu and Olosenga under Chief Pharmacist’s Mate Campbell. Ta’u under Harris far better than the average, but not so good as Campbell’s work. Little or no ringworm and no conjunctivitis among 300 school children. Campbell and Harris had reached independent conclusion that eye manifestations in Samoa can be controlled by argyrol, therefore no trachoma. Teachers instill drops daily in children’s eyes. Scars on lids and cataracts are due to native treatment....