ASHES TO ASHES. Can't We Save the Maori Baby?

Free Lance, Volume IV, Issue 194, 19 March 1904, Page 6

ASHES TO ASHES. Can't We Save the Maori Baby?

DR. Collins, President of the New Zealand Medical Association, whose conference opened here in Wellington on Monday last, has rendered a public service m suggesting a number of very desirable reforms. The first in importance was the necessity for a safe and more enlightened method of disposing of our dead. He pointed out substantially that, although a man's usefulness might be ended by death, the harm he might do after death was incalculable under the existing condition of things. * * * He advocated the establishment of crematoria in New Zealand in the interests of the public health. At present, the only means of disposing of the dead is by burial beneath six or seven feet of earth, and, although in many cases the corpse so buried may not be harmful to living persons, those who have succumbed to virulent diseases are a source of danger. A water wash-away might take place, releasing long-buried and still fruitful disease germs. Excavations for further burials might produce similar results , a disturbance of the ground by earthquake or natural subsidence would help in the same way * * * Mr. H. D Bell, during his term of office as Mayor of Wellington, advocated the establishment of a crematorium, and a plot of ground in trie cemetery was set aside, and is still available, for its erection. Ine question of the use of this site for the purpose for which it was set aside might very well form the subject of a discussion by the City Council in the near future. * * * Dr. Collins called attention also to a subject that has worried us for a long time — the saving of the Maori race. Romantic misses, who have a hunger for self-sacrifice, and consider

that the proper place to assuage it ia among the Boxers of China, the savages of Central Africa, or the cannibals of New Guinea, are reminded that as noble a work, and more necessary, lies neglected at their very doors. Every day we hear of, deaths in Maori camps for want of knowledge and attention in nursing. It is kinder to give a Maori baby a chance to live than to present a New Testament to a Boxer. * * * Also', our duty is to the Maori before the distant savage, however romantic a sojourn in his country may seem. It is heartrending to have tobelieve that, although Maori women shower the same maternal care on their offspring— according to their lights— as their white sisters, the lack of skilled assistance is the reason for the decimation of a race we are bound to protect. As everybody knows, the Maori is extremely adaptable and unusually intelligent and would readily welcome the advent of nurses who might help to minimise the infant mortality. We commend to the notice of girls who want to go abroad to attend to the spiritual needs of persons with whom they have no concern, this untried field of philanthropic work. Here i& an opening for practical Christianity.