A Yankee doctor in paradise

by S. M. Lambert

That night our bird hunters brought in some ducks, which we ate half raw, because the natives only knew how to scorch them. Themselves, they never ate ducks; ducks were unclean feeders, the people said. Thinking that we might protect ourselves from the sociability of the house, we set up a tent. In fifteen minutes our tent was jammed with self-invited guests. The frail canvas came down two or three times during the night from the pressure of those inside getting out and those outside getting in. In the weary, dreary morning, plagued with thirst, I tried drinking water from the Lake, where the natives seemed to get theirs. On the coral-jagged march back to the beach, I found to my embarrassment that the Lake was quite unfriendly to a white man’s digestion.

When we reached the White Sands some interesting gossip was going the rounds. It was about Tekita, who had been substituting for Taupangi. By all the rules a substitute was supposed to be very tabu during that period, especially for women. But when God got back into Taupangi’s head he told on Tekita, who had broken his tabu with a certain village maiden. So God visited his punishment on Taupangi, not Tekita, and told him that he could not go down to the France while she was in the bay. Somehow the Almighty must have reversed himself, for Taupangi visited us a few days later.

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While I was at the Lake I never for a moment overlooked the problem of hookworm examinations, nor did I fail to put in a great deal of time making a census of the people for apparent diseases. Since Buia had warned me not to mention hookworms to the Big Master, I was still searching for a way to go ahead. Then Buia fixed it. My guess was that he spoke to Mua, son of Taupangi; for both the Lord of the Lake and his son had first class minds. Tahua, Lord of the White Sands, was reputed to have less “power” than Taupangi; that is to say, he was unable to go into a “sweating trance” as the chief of Lake Tenggano could, they said. Mua told me that Taupangi could kill by wishing, through his closer connection with the Grandson God.

At any rate, when we were back on the beach Buia told me that if I could give him and Mua the specimen tins, and would make examinations before the two Big Masters came, maybe it would be all right. I had offered a large fishhook and a small fishhook for every specimen, which may have been why we got a few. We found a light infection, but under such adverse conditions we were unable to determine whether the hookworms were ancient, modern or what. It was interesting to observe the watchful care with which our tin containers were returned. Each man would squat in front of our worktable and never take his eyes off the specimen until we had finished and thrown it into a hole in the sand. They were taking no chances on our being witch doctors, come to make black magic.

If I had been given the ghost of an opportunity I might have reached some conclusion; I might have washed out their specimens according to the regulation field technique and studied the parasites under the microscope. This might have added important clues in the search for Rennell Island’s history, for the hookworm contents of a race may tell a great deal about the origins and migrations of a people. Dr. S. T. Darling, eminent in tropical medicine, had developed theories on this parasite, which he collected all over the globe. He demonstrated that the original habitat of the Ankylostoma duodenale was north of twenty degrees north latitude, while the Necator americanus stemmed from a region south of that line. This is a point which has not been given due weight by anthropologists. All my work over the Pacific added validity to Darling’s theory. Certainly I found that both Melanesians and Polynesians living south of twenty degrees north latitude—provided that they had not been contaminated by Asiatics—carried only the Necator americanus—an evidence that their origin and migration must have been from south of this latitude.

You can imagine my disappointment in learning so little from the tabu-haunted Rennellese, to whom the intimate details of a worm-count would have been a capital offense. On all the island there was nothing like a latrine; like the followers of Moses, these primitives dug holes in the sand and carefully covered “that which they had done”—this as a precaution against some witch’s charm. Sand, however, is far too porous to hold down the enterprising larvae, especially when the hole is only a surface scratch. We devoted much time to examining blood for filariasis, which was conspicuous for its absence. Our spleen examinations revealed no malaria, either on Rennell or its little neighboring sister, Bellona, although both were definitely in the malaria belt. Neither did we find an anopheline mosquito.

The complete absence of dysentery was interesting, because it had once been brought there by an apparently clean ship, and had decimated the population. It had died out, probably because the Rennell flies, although they flew in swarms, did not seem to light on human beings; also there was no water supply to be contaminated—the beach natives drew water from holes at the bottom of the cliffs, the interior natives drank out of the Lake. Food was no carrier, for it was cooked in the skins.

There was little sign of past devastations, although there was evidence that the few visiting ships had brought them influenza and an infection of gonorrhea, from which they had recovered.

Wandering about, I finally came upon a few miserable beings, hidden away from intruders. They were suffering from yaws. The people had not talked about yaws. They seemed to be ashamed of it. It was quite evident that they had kept the disease from spreading by an age-old, self-taught practice of segregation.