A few Remarks on Art Perspective.

Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Volume 12, 1879, Page 432

7. “A few Remarks on Art Perspective,” by R. T. Holmes. Annual General Meeting. 21st February, 1880. A. K. Newman, M.B., President, in the chair. Minutes of last Annual General Meeting read and confirmed. New Member.—J. L. Moffitt. Abstract Report of Council. There have been ten general meetings of the Society held during the past year, the attendance at which has been rather above the average, and at which forty-two papers were read. Twenty-nine additional Members have been added to the roll, making a total of 281 names. The Council arranged for a series of popular lectures, but only two were delivered—one by Dr. Newman, on “The Brain in relation to Mind,” and one by Mr. S. H. Cox, on “Combustion.” They were well attended; and the Council are of opinion that another trial should be made in this direction. A list of works added to the library, either as donations or by purchase, is attached, and it will be seen from the statement of accounts that a large portion of the funds of the Society has been expended during the year in the purchase of new and useful works of reference. The statement of accounts showed that the total receipts of the year were ·323 15s. 9d. and that there is a balance in hand of ·4 2s. 7d., while ·36 14s. 2d. (being one-sixth of the nett income) had been handed to the New Zealand Institute in compliance with the statute, and a further sum of ·27 had also been paid to the Institute as a contribution towards the expenses of printing Volume XI. of the Transactions. Election of Officers for 1880:—President—Martin Chapman; Vice-presidents—Dr. Hector, C.M.G., F.R.S., Dr. Buller, C.M.G., F.R.S.; Council—F. W. Frankland, S. H. Cox, F.G.S., F.C.S., Hon. G. Randall

Johnson, M.L.C., W. T. L. Travers, F.L.S., T. Kirk, F.L.S., A. K. Newman, M.B., M.R.C.P., J. P. Maxwell, A.I.C.E; Secretary and Treasurer—R. B. Gore; Auditor—Arthur Baker. A vote of thanks was passed to the retiring office-bearers. Dr. Newman, the retiring President, then delivered the following Anniversary Address. When looking over the “Transactions of the New Zealand Institute” searching for ideas for an address, I was struck by the fact that though geology, botany, zoology, meteorology, and chemistry had each been carefully and diligently studied by many persons, and though the volumes contained many valuable and able monographs on these and kindred subjects, yet that one subject had rarely been discussed, indeed, I may say, had been almost entirely neglected; that subject is—medicine. With one or two trifling exceptions, there has been almost nothing done in the way of monographs on medical subjects in New Zealand. A few surgeons have described cases of poisoning from the bite of the katipo, and one or two have written scraps on the medicinal uses of three or four indigenous plants. After ruminating over the subject for a time, it occurred to me that I would take as the topic of my address “New Zealand, from a Physician's point of view.” This colony has been studied from most points of view, e.g.,—geologist, botanist, zoologist, politician, agriculturalist, and so forth, and it seemed to me that it would not perhaps be wasting the time of this Society if I were, for this once, to regard New Zealand in its medical aspect; because, after all, though usually ignored, the subject of disease is one of more or less importance to all of us. I have often thought that a physician might write a very interesting work on the difference in the diseases suffered by civilized and savage races of man, and the physician in New Zealand has the opportunity of so doing, in addition to which he can notice the effect resulting from the diseases of one attacking members of the other race. People are apt to consider disease as some weird mysterious terrible thing, something like the ogres and hobgoblins and giants of our childhood; and before science had gone probing everywhere, this was not only the popular, it was the universal conception of the nature of diseases. Now, however, we are wiser, and we define disease as anything wrong in a part or the whole of the body. We obtain the clearest idea of disease when we regard the human body as an exceedingly complex machine. We all know that in any machinery, the more elaborate it is, the more likely it is to get out of order; and the more intricate and numerous the kinds of work to be performed by any machine, so much the more likely is it to get out of order. Savages like the ancient Maoris, led simple monotonous lives, and the duties which they had to perform were few and simple. With civilized people on the contrary the lives led by all are much more varied, the struggle for existence is keener and more varied, and hence they are liable to, and suffer from, a great number of diseases which never have existed among the savages. You can easily see that an untutored savage, who never held a pen in his hand, could not suffer from writer's cramp, or scrivener's palsy. Clearly a race of savages who painted their houses with red or yellow ochre because their land contained no lead, could never suffer from painter's colic or lead palsy. Savages who lit their fires by the slow but harmless method of rubbing two sticks together, could not have disease of their jaw-bones from the manufacture of matches. No Maori maiden ever committed slow suicide by tight lacing; or damaged her health by eating slate and drinking vinegar; and no Maori dandy was ever poisoned by gaudy socks. No Maori child ever killed itself by sucking green toys (arsenic).

No Maori milkman ever distributed typhoid fever with his milk. In fact, even did space permit, we could fill many a page recounting the diseases from which Maoris could never have suffered. Here is a striking fact. No old Maori ever had delirium tremens; no old rangatira ever had the “horrors”—not even “hot coppers;” no old Maori ever called his friend a “drunken sot,” or “brainless idiot.” Unfortunately, as they were all teetotallers, there was no special class of men who could clearly prove that if it were not for the use of strong drinks, there would be no lunatics and no criminals, and scarcely any disease. As a matter of fact there were plenty of all these evils. Not one of all the descendants of the canoes that came from Hawaiki ever suffered from gout. In England one family held an estate for 400 years, and as each man succeeded to the inheritance, so surely did he also inherit severe gout. Imagine an old Maori chief suffering from rich gout, when he had for food irregular and often scanty allowances of fern-root, dried eels, and an occasional slice of man or woman; his favourite tipple being a mild infusion of tutu-berries, or perchance a little pure water, weakly flavoured with the juice of flax-flowers. Of course no genuine old Maori ever had gout. No young Maori lad or lass ever broke down reading for honours, or became crooked in the spine from sitting for hours on a backless bench; nor of any Maori child could a local poet sing—“with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books.” The Maoris, like all the races of men, suffered from insanity. Idiots were not uncommon. Insanity was usually of a melancholic nature. Two things combine to make insanity little visible among savages: in the first place the amount of brain power required in the struggle for existence is far less among the savage than among the civilized races, and therefore deficiency in intellect is not so marked; and, secondly, savages use their brains but little, their lives are monotonous, they never suffer from commercial panics, and their brains are never over-worked. If one went carefully through the 1,600 and odd diseases mentioned in the Royal College of Physicians' work on Nomenclature of Disease, one could pick out a great number arising from the complexities of life in civilized countries, and from which the Maoris never suffered; it might from this be inferred that the Maoris were a particularly healthy race. Such, however, was not the case. They had few distinct diseases, but those were so common that the aggregate illness was great. Undoubtedly in the wake of civilization there do follow and arise many diseases, but judging from the longevity of the civilized men and their rapid rate of increase there can be no doubt that civilized people are, on the whole, healthier, suffer less pain, and live longer than do savages. Then, too, look how carefully we nurse our invalids, and how much the Maoris neglected their sick friends. Why, I have seen a well-to-do old chief apparently crying bitterly over his dying wife, and yet, rather than go to the expense of burning her bed, which he must have done had she died on it, as it would have been tapu, he put the stricken woman on the bare hard floor to die. In sickness they had no comforts, and only injurious treatment. Many Darwinians hold that physicians really help to deteriorate the race by prolonging the existence of the sickly, who would otherwise be weeded out in the struggle for existence, and that these sicklier persons propagate a sickly race; but a comparison will show that we civilized whites, with physicians, are a stronger, longer-lived, healthier, more capable race than the Maoris, with only their harmless medicine men. The fact is, though it would take a long essay to demonstrate it, that modern healing art benefits not only the individual but also the race.

From a medical point of view the Maoris are a singularly uninteresting race. As far as is yet known, they could not boast of one single new disease, unless it were a form of leprosy called ngerengere, and even that can scarcely be called a special disease, for it, or some species near akin, is very common in Fiji and in Polynesia generally. This ngerengere was first accurately described by Dr. Thompson in an article which appeared many years ago in the “British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review.” It is a species of Elephantiasis græcorum. Ngerengere, or leprosy, was at one time frequent among the Maoris, probably being most frequent among the poorest tribes. As with leprosy everywhere else in the world, it has almost disappeared before the march of civilization. Half-putrid eels and maize, and miserable fern-root and herbs and filth, all favoured its spread; whereas good, well-cooked, nutritious diet, with cleaner habits, have largely caused it to disappear. Maori lepers were strictly quarantined. The disease is now very rare; and any existing case will rapidly improve for a time under improved food and care. I have not heard that any European ever suffered from it. As in all other things temporal and spiritual, we have given diseases to the Maoris and received nothing in return. To them we have given measles, scarlet fever, typhoid, small-pox, and many others, and probably, as time rolls on, we shall give them more. Maoris suffered from very few diseases, but those few were very rife. They had strange theories about diseases, attributing them as a rule to the action of evil spirits (atua). They thought that for every disease there was a special atua. Thus, Rongomai and Tuparitapua were gods of phthisis and atrophy of the legs and arms. Tonga was the god of headaches, and Hi-tangata god of the stomach; whilst Koro-kio-ewe presided over women in childbirth, and inflicted many evils. Hine-te-iwaiwa was the goddess of midwifery, according to another account. By some tribes lizards (ngarara) were supposed to cause all diseases, and in the afflicted part a lizard was supposed to exist; thus, a pain in the chest was due to lizard, and so with pains in the head and elsewhere. They believed that lizards actually existed in those organs and wilfully caused these evils. A little green lizard (Lacerta viridis) was held especially baneful. A similar notion prevails among the people of many savage and semi-civilized nations. The chief diseases from which the Maoris suffered were rheumatism in all its forms, consumption, and scrofula. Consumption was with them, as it is with us, the most frequent cause of death. This disease is especially disastrous to half-castes. In the Maoris phthisis ran its course exactly as it does with us, and varied in no way, except that the Maoris as a rule succumb very quickly, and seem to have very scant power of resisting its ravages. This, however, may be due to the fact that they have no idea of care or nursing. Consumption was very largely induced by the unhealthy lives led, by the hot steamy air of their whares, and by an utter disregard of the simplest conditions of hygiene. Hæmoptysis was regarded as a sure sign of impending death. Scrofula was very common, as might have been expected, when we reflect how ill-cooked and innutritious was the diet of the Maoris, and how specially unsuitable it was for infants and young children. One of the consequences of this want of proper nourishment was seen in the frequency of cases of humpback, due to caries of the spine—often with cure by anchylosis at right angles. Colenso ingenuously accounts for the frequency of crooked spines by stating that it arises from the carelessness of the women, who carry-

ing their infants on their backs were apt to strike them against the lintels of the doors. Since the arrival of the Europeans, and in consequence of their civilizing tendencies, and better and more regularly acquired diet, this disease is tending to become less. It would appear that the children were, as a rule, born healthy and well made; but few being deaf and dumb, or deformed. Hare-lip was known, and instances of children with six fingers and six toes on each limb were not uncommon. Albinos were not rare. Colenso says that the flax was often carelessly applied to the umbilical cord and sometimes slipped, giving rise to umbilical hernia. This can scarcely be correct. Owing to the badness of the food most Maori children were pot-bellied, shrunken-limbed, wizen-faced looking wretches who improved wonderfully under a generous diet. Maori women flattened their infants' noses, and Colenso describes a curious plan for making handsome the lower limbs of their children: they rubbed the knees, and the inner side of those joints were squeezed to attain this object. He also says that they half disjointed the thumbs of female children to make them better able to hold and scrape flax. Maoris pierced their ears with sharp flints, and shaved themselves with sharp shells. Tattooing was often attended by great pain and inflammatory swelling; if the entire body were done at any one time it was apt to produce death. Chinese of rank allow their finger-nails to grow very long, to show they are rich and need not do manual labour; a few rangatiras' daughters about Poverty Bay did the same thing, allowing their left thumb-nail to grow. I have seen the same thing in Rio Janeiro. Remembering the physiological law that organs little used have little tendency to disease, one is not surprized at finding that the Maoris suffered very little from any forms of brain disease. Insanity usually assumed a melancholic type. Epilepsy was known. Apoplexy and hemyplegia were rare; nor is this to be wondered at when we remember that alcoholines never existed, gout was unknown, and rigid arteries were of doubtful existence. Sunstroke was rare. In summer they got a fever from haunting swamps. Goitre exists among the hill-abiding Ureweras, and, Dr. Hector tells me, among the white residents of Bealey. Most of the diseases among the Maoris were due to their dirty habits—their whares, and filthy ragged mats were the chief sources of distribution; and to their bad, irregularly supplied food: hence the abundance of skin affections, and indigestion, and diseases arising therefrom. Treatment.—The Maori treatment of disease was partly the result of their belief in the nature of disease, and partly based on practical experience. Believing that disease arose through the agency of spirits—“atua,” they naturally appealed to their priests (tohungas) to relieve them, either by propitiating or exorcising the evil spirits, and, just as amongst nearly all savages, the office of priest and physician was combined. Tohungas, by their incantations, were believed to cure diseases; and now and then, a tohunga would get a great name—his mana was great for a time, and he became the fashionable physician of the day, to whom flocked patients from far and near. These tohungas, like other “medicine men,” only resorted to prayers, when they did not know what else to do. They used to treat rheumatism by blisters (caused by hot stones), by scarification, by embrocation with pigeons' oil, by poultices made of hot leaves, and by ordering a course of warm baths at Waiwera or Rotomahana, or elsewhere. I am not aware that they had any special line of treatment for phthisis. They found out by practical experience, like Prince Bladud of Bath, that certain springs were good for skin and other diseases, but they never made the further discovery that on Ruapehu they might found a second Engadine, as a sanatorium for consumptives.

Working on a wrong hypothesis, they arrived at a right method of treatment for certain diseases. This treatment was change of climate; but they changed their residence not because of the air, but, finding beneficial results, they believed these were due to the fact that when they moved they left their “atua” behind. Of course the uncivilized Maori medicine men knew nothing of such means of restraint as straight-jackets or padded-rooms for maniacal or strongly-convulsed patients. However, they very ingeniously adopted another line of treatment. If a patient ate karaka berries, he was sure to be violently convulsed; so they dug a hole, lashed his arms to his side, tied his arms, put him up to his chin in the hole, filled up with earth—then let him have his fits.—(Colenso.) He sometimes got well. Abscesses were opened long before they were ripe by means of thorns or shells, and were then violently squeezed, causing great pain. They also used hot poultices of leaves. To stop bleeding, they used the old housewifes' common remedy—cobwebs. In cases of suspended animation from drowning, they held a man upside down to let the water run out, and then hung him (heels still up) over a smoking fire. There are no trustworthy statistics showing the results of this plan. If they wished to excite vomiting, they held the patient under water till his stomach was full, and then rolled him on the ground and squeezed him. Certain tribes believed they could squeeze out diseases, and the tohungas used to lay their patients on the ground, and pile on weights. This plan sometimes produced ill results when carried very far, because the patient's life was squeezed out. Very learned London surgeons recently tried to cure cancer in the same foolish fashion. From the habit of cannibalism arose one good, it taught them something roughly of human anatomy, and they could sometimes reduce a dislocation (Colenso), and use splinters for broken bones. Occasionally they amputated fingers and joints, but this was the limit of their achievements in surgery. They used a few plants medicinally, e.g., the shoots of the koromiko. The tohungas practised much on the credulity of their patients, and are said to have used ventriloquism as an aid. They got certain offerings (fees), and, when they did not in the least know what was the matter, could look as solemn and as wise as a leading London physician. They suffered indigestion, the result of ill-cooked semi-putrid eels, half-rotten maize, and other like food. They much frequented the hot-springs; one near Tolaga Bay is much celebrated in skin diseases, and at times the natives make pilgrimages there, especially when afflicted with venereal affections. The Maoris have acquired all our contagious diseases, and doubtless in time will acquire those which are the direct products of civilization. Scarlet fever, measles, small-pox, and typhoid fever, have all at times done much mischief. Syphilis and other venereal affections have been introduced. Syphilis does not seem to commit great ravages; but gonorrhœa and all its attendant evils are very rife, and are much aggravated by dirt and neglect. They seldom apply for treatment to European doctors. Perhaps the frequency of discharges in the women may account for part of the large amount of infertility, and be one among the many facts leading to extinguish the race. From a medical point of view there is little to interest the physician who studies his fellow-colonists. With the rare exception of a person bitten by the katipo, who as a rule does not die though he suffers a good deal, and the occasional illness and still rarer death of some child, from eating poisonous berries, there is not one single disease which colonists acquire from the Maoris; not one single disease arising from change in the soil, or climate,

or diet, or anything whatever in the environment. Any emigrant from the mother-country, on landing here, is absolutely free from the danger of incurring any disease from which at home he would be exempt. In every other quarter of the globe our roving fellow-countrymen are liable to some new and special disease. Here the colonists suffer from no one single disease which they have not themselves imported. They have given many to the natives, but have taken not one in return. We have imported a great many of the 1600 and odd diseases named by the Royal College of Physicians, and probably in time we shall import all the rest. It is a singular thing that, spite of the numerous undrained marshes, we have no such thing as ague, or other malarious fevers; and as our population is well-nourished and well-to-do, scurvy, purpura, and kindred diseases are rare. Remittent, or famine fever, is unknown. True typhus has, I believe, never been seen in this country, though, unfortunately, typhoid, that disgrace of civilization, is everywhere. Diphtheria and influenza are very common. Cholera has not yet made its appearance on our shores, and from all such diseases as the plague, yellow fever, true dysentery, yaws, and beriberi, no New Zealand colonist has ever suffered. In many countries the manufacture of flax has been attended with severe septicemia fever, arising from the heaps of decaying organic material, but I am not aware that this has ever appeared here. A strange fact is the absence of hydrophobia in dogs. In England, rats suffer from a parasitic disease; cats eat the rats and suffer, and children playing with the cats acquire it (favus): quite unknown here. It is my impression that skin diseases are rare here, perhaps owing to the scantiness and the well-to-do character of the people. Sunstrokes are rare. Human beings who mix much with dogs, are apt to suffer from internal parasites, a disease called hydatoids. In Iceland, where the dogs live in-doors all the winter with their masters, it is exceedingly common, being one of the most fertile sources of death. In Australia it is also very common, but in New Zealand appears to be exceedingly rare. As in Victoria, phthisis is very prevalent. The immigrants from Home suffering from phthisis improve here; but the young New Zealand born suffer severely, and when attacked have little power of resistance. Of New Zealand remedies we know but little—in fact we may say nothing. Probably a careful search will discover a few valuable remedies amongst the flora; but by far the most powerful remedy will always be our mineral springs. And some day there may be fashionable resorts for consumptive persons high up amid the peaks of the Ruahine, or amid the glaciers of Mount Cook. Perhaps there will come a time when consumptives from Australia will resort to them in shoals, as they undoubtedly will to our mineral waters. Dr. Hector then proposed a vote of thanks to Dr. Newman, not only for his able address, but for the manner in which he had performed the duties of President for the past year. Dr. Newman had always been most energetic, and had done all in his power to promote the interests of the Society. Dr. Buller had great pleasure in seconding the vote, which was carried unanimously. This concluded the business of the annual meeting.