A Yankee doctor in paradise

by S. M. Lambert

When I had audience with Black Daniel I found him a big, smiling fellow with a boil on his nose. Several Sikiana girls were fanning away the flies; these light-skinned damsels had the look of trained nurses who didn’t much care for their assignment. Daniel had something of a Father Divine technique, a way of bursting into ecstatic patter, then coming down to practical affairs. Quite an able man, I thought. He had a record of births and deaths by age and sex, which he had kept since he came there three years ago. Also he had kept a census, very useful to me when I started to work.

Arcady had vanished under the heel of religio-totalitarianism. I wondered if the dark-browed missioners were “taking advantage” of the pretty girls around them. But I found that this was not so. The girls were looking out for that. They were too Polynesian not to shrink in disdain from black-skinned lovers. Not that their hearts were as pure as the Bishop of Melanesia might have wished. They cast yearning eyes toward our good-looking sailors; those were white men, and quite a different matter. I heard one sailor speak softly to a pretty girl named Ana, who looked nervously toward the mission. “Master,” she said, “me fright too much come along you. Big Master Stop along Top he look along night too.”

Our sailor learned, however, that these affairs could be arranged through special dispensation from Black Daniel. If he liked you, and the girl was a heathen, the church would bless the temporary mating. Daniel liked the sailor, so that was a granted privilege. However, the romance fell unripened. When the couple decided that their love was sanctified they were discouraged by a crowd which followed them constantly. It was all very funny, and tragic. I wondered how long these people would remain purely Polynesian. Their Melanesian teachers had the Supernatural on their side, and the time would come, I thought, when the breed would become very mixed.

Poor Old Number One, how his bearded ghost must have worried! A year before our visit a fanatical trader named Buchanan had run amuck and burned down all the heathen temples. Not only that, but a crew of Japanese pearl fishers had insisted on coming ashore. When the people told them that they were not welcome, they turned a machine gun on a village and forced a landing. Machine-gunning islands seemed to be a Japanese habit. They stayed long enough to fish all the shell out of the lagoon and quartered themselves in Lautaua’s house. When they left they became generous, gave Lautaua 1,500 cigarettes, a toothbrush and an old pair of swimming goggles. He was clever enough to imitate the glasses with wood and scraps of windowpanes.

Pukena, the cook whom Malakai had discharged forthwith, but who remained as humble helper, told about Tuana, the misappointed chief. Tuana was a grafter, and like many grafters, lazy. The Administration had entrusted him with medicine for the people. When the sick applied for help, Tuana would reply that his stock had all run out. In short, he was keeping the good stuff for himself and his henchmen. Lautaua, being obviously the superior man on Sikiana, should have been entrusted with these things.

We were there four days, all of us very busy except Crocker, who had a badly infected foot.

I had been carrying on wholesale injections of tuberculin, and had found that the prevalence of tuberculosis was alarmingly high. On my first visit I had had only time to make sketchy tests, but certainly the disease had gained great headway. Gordon White and I went over the whole population. Lautaua, the religious rebel, blamed the missionaries for the disease. Yet the population had made a satisfactory increase in the past twenty years; and that was hard to understand. There was plenty of malaria, and we were finding acute, unguarded pulmonary tuberculosis. Possibly the change in custom, brought in by the missions, possibly added infections which may have resulted from contact with them, or with the Japanese, might have resulted in the many acute chests we saw. Or possibly it was due to the small amount of additional clothing which had come in with the new way of living.

There had been almost no traders, and few foreign vessels came that way. But the very isolation of these atolls, plus Black Daniel’s scientific inadequacy, added to the weight of native ills. Among the plentiful mosquitoes we found the malaria carriers. One afternoon Malakai held out his bare arm and showed me a probing little insect. “She stands on her head when she feeds,” he said, “and she has spotted wings.” Anopheles punctulatus, sure little poisoner, conveying disease from the sick to the well. It was impossible to get anything like an adequate supply of quinine from Tulagi.

Lautaua in his own way described the symptoms and testified that malaria was an old inhabitant. Did the sickness begin with a chill? “Oh, master, plenty too much.” Realistically he acted out a malaria chill. Had it been here long? “Yes, master, fader belong me, fader belong him, all same.” Did the children have it too? “Small fellow, my wort! Him shake too much all same dis.” More synthetic chills. “Behind (after) him he hot too much; now water he come out all same rain.”

Their light contact with trading ships and their habit of using the tidewater for toilet purposes had saved them from hookworm. There were only two cases of yaws, secondary and in children. The people called it matona instead of tona, the usual Polynesian name. They said that tona was an old-timer, but had died down. I saw no evidences of it among the adults.