A Yankee doctor in paradise

by S. M. Lambert

With Gordon White and Malakai I went to the leper colony at Quaibaita. I knew that leprosy, of comparatively recent importation, ran about one per cent on Malaita. Whenever colonists mentioned the Melanesian Mission doctors, they usually said, “Wonderful work!” I was not disappointed when I saw the mission colony, order in the midst of green chaos: a hospital and church built of concrete, and the leper institution set a little too near for safety. The Empire Leper Association subsidized them for drugs, the Protectorate furnished some medical supplies and a tiny dole for food. I was astonished at first when I found that two of their orderlies were arrested cases of leprosy; then I realized the stringent economy under which these devoted men and women must work in order to keep their mission enterprise on its feet. Educated and gently reared, they slaved out their lives in genuine Christian cheerfulness. Some of them, I fancied, had not had a square meal for years.

I had lunch with them. If they had been French priests they would have gathered a delicious meal somewhere out of the jungle, for that’s French genius. Here the missioners chatted gaily over the poor things that came on the table. I knew it was the very best they had, for we were their guests.

The doctors and the nursing sisters told me that it was hard to suit Malaitamen, when they got a notion in their heads—which was most of the time. The mission here was treating 73 lepers, but they had had as high as 147. Many of them were out-patients; that is to say they preferred to live in their own village, about a mile away. They dropped in for treatment about when they felt like it; or else just wandered away. The Melanesian Mission was trying to get a law passed that would compel lepers to stay put. Natives loved everything that was treated with the “needle,” but they couldn’t be cured with two or three injections, as they could for yaws. The leprosy treatment took a great deal of time, and after a couple of injections the Malaitaman would say to his brothers, “What the hell? This fellow’s magic isn’t working.”

All this was uphill for the brave medical missionaries. My only suggestion was that the leper establishment was too near the “clean” hospital, where they were treating a little of everything else. And it looked tricky to me, having a leper acting as head warder. The obvious thing to say was: Round them up and send them to Mokogai. But that would have been out of the question for a government whose finances were already strained. Without going into figures, it would have cost the Protectorate a large share of its revenue, if they had gone to the expense of shipping away an estimated 950 lepers. Add to that the physical impossibility of taking the sick away from regions so wild that the Government itself did not dare to penetrate; regions where fierce savages were warring, tribe against tribe, and the white man an hereditary enemy. It was just another tragedy of European rule over a native race.

Around the Quaibaita Mission Station I wish to put a bright red mark of approval. Striving against heavy odds, it has done the Lord’s work in a practical way, and every year it has shown improvement. Its workers, keeping body and soul together on forty pounds a year, reveal the missionary at his classic best: a civilizer, a healer and a defender of the helpless.

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We had been injecting around Tai Harbor, and our technique was so popular that it drew wild men from the hills many miles away. Our needles wore out and our fingers grew stiff from puncturing the skin of hundreds who applied, clamoring for “neela” (needle). A tuberculin test, to prove anything, required two applications and two inspections, five days in all. The difficulty was to get the people back for the second injection and the last inspection, and I was fascinated by Gordon White’s orations in lively pidgin. “This big fellow doctor along Fiji, him he come dis time for giving nother kind neela. Now dis nother kind neela, him for stop dis sick along coughie where some fellow he spit blut....” And in the elaborate roundabouts he was telling them that they’d had their two injections, but must be back at the “house takis” (tax house) for the third inspection on Tuesday. The heavy rate of tuberculosis, shown in fierce reactions, made it quite obvious that Malaita needed a tuberculosis sanitarium. That, considering the Protectorate’s finances, would have been no more available than a general roundup of lepers.

Our investigations, I hope, threw some light on the prevalence of tuberculosis. Those we examined on Tai Lagoon ran over 77 per cent infection. Those we were able to get from the bush village showed 60 per cent. The very unpopular officials who had gone out to collect the head tax reported that taxpayers on Malaita had fallen from 14,000 to 10,000 in a decade. Since the Solomon Islands plantations relied on Malaita for nearly three quarters of their plantation labor, this falling off was disastrous. Run the gamut of diseases, from tuberculosis to ringworm, and you have the medical problem that faced the land-poor Protectorate. The only salvation—I must repeat myself—would be to send the largest possible number of native students to study medicine in Suva. That time was coming, I felt sure, for my School was beginning to draw a deep breath.

While we worked ashore Templeton Crocker remained a true sportsman, enjoying himself as best a temporary cripple could. For weeks he sat on deck, his sore foot propped up on a chair, and had the vicarious pleasure of hearing what the doctors and anthropologists and other -ologists had been doing on their expeditions. For an active and adventurous man it must have been torment. The foot was improving, very slowly as a neglected infection must in a damp, hot climate. Now and then, when British residents invited us for tea or cocktails, Crocker would get himself into the sedan chair Dr. Hetherington had given him, and be carried ashore. Sitting aloft with four black men lifting the poles, Crocker looked for all the world like a Roman proconsul on his way to a banquet or a temple, or wherever proconsuls went.

For hours he would sit on deck, listening to Buia’s descriptions of Rennell Island and his reasons for not liking Adventist missionaries. “Fish he tabu; meat he tabu; walk about he tabu; tobacco he tabu; altogether along dis fellow he tabu.” Crocker, a confirmed hater of tabus, was sympathetic, and liked to hear Buia declare that Mr. Borgas, who had tacked “M.V.” on the arms of Tahua and Taupangi, might have fooled those old men, but he hadn’t fooled Buia for a second. He well remembered what Mr. Hamlin and Dr. Lambert had said about them: “That mission he altogether no good along Mungava.”