THE COLONIST. NELSON, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1859.

Colonist, Volume III, Issue 211, 28 October 1859, Page 2

THE COLONIST. NELSON, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1859.

We have received a request from the General Government at Auckland, forwarded through our- own provincial officers, to call public attention to the very important subject of Vaccination. Accompanying that request, we have a pamphlet, printed by their order, and containing most valuable statistics' with regard to the disease for which it is a preventive. Such a missive, we presume, would not have been circulated to the Press of New Zealand if there was not some reason more urgent than a mere dissemination of medical research. At present we have not amongst us any symptoms of an approach of the disorder, and we may not for some time, we may say for ever, expect to receive our correspondence punctured and smelling of sulphur. Our Rabbit Island may yet be a source of amusement to our townsmen, and the more ungrateful office which it holds of Quarantine Ground may, we hope, be only prophesied. At the same time we may say that however sanguine our hopes may be o r escaping a contagion, when we have in such undeniable terms a warning, we are bound to exercise discretion, and consider the amount of disease which »©glee* might

entail. An extract from the pamphlet tells us—and it is there marked in italics— that it is " fatal to a very large proportion of those whom it attacks." It proceeds to say that in 156£ (according to De La Condamine), it destroyed in North America alone upwards of 100,000 Indians. T<;e pamphlet >efore us professes to give only a history of vaccination; but we think that if for general information, it should have cone farther back. The writer, whose name is not attached, should have gone into a description of the means which were used.previously to check the progress of that most contagious disease—small-pox. When cities were built, as in .olden days, with streets not wider than those of Seville at the present day, allowing room only for the passing of two mules, and the houses bo overhanging that the sunlight scarce ever shone upon the pavement, we cannot wonder that occasion was given to Mr. Hallam to write, since re-published by the Sydenham Society, a volume upon the Contagions of the Middle Ages. In the wisdom of those days, ventilation seems never to have been regarded as necessary, and a house, so long as it was a shelter, was sufficient. We find still in the refec^ tpriesof two schools—Westmihster and chester— that the fire is made updn'a hearth (in«tiie centre of a hall, richly decorated with carving, it is true; but-the lantern m the roof being the only adit for the smoke, andthoughexistingamongstacivilised nation we have'an exact representation of a Maori whare. With such Carelessness of oxygen, if we may so speak, our forefathers lived, and the Black Death of Edward the Third s time, and the plague which required the conflagration of a city in Charles the Second's time to burn out, have given a lesson which all can read. If, and we know that auch is the case, that the epidemics of a former age have become lost to us, there has in more modern days arisen amongst us a disease which, once in power, defies the efforts of the most skilful mediciner. Where that disease arose we cannot say; but we must recognise its existence as one of the great scourges of human kind. In the cities of the East, Gonstantinople^and Grand Cairo, it raged most fearfully, and the Mussulmen were taught how, if not to prevent, to lessen its effects. They found that by inoculation it could be transmitted and suffered by the patient, if otherwise healthy, without any serious inconvenience ; they discovered the one remarkable fact, that a person, once attacked and recovering, held an almost charmed life against future contagion. This, the great fact upon which rests the value both of inoculation and vaccination, was learnt by the wife of the English^ Ambassador of Queen Anne, and she introduced, on her return, inoculation in England. Though more celebrated for her beauty and wit, Lady Mary H Wortley Montague was remarkable for the passionate love she bore through life to a eon who but ill-rewarded it; yet upotrthat son was her first experiment tried, and; like most all bther discoverers of any great fact of medicine, she had to suffer a torrent of abuse. E*/en the pulpit thundered out its declamations on the unnatural mother; and if there is on^ science which has a better right,than another to decry bigotry, it is medicine. Her students have met with priestly ridicule at every turn. Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood, was called an Atheist. Quinine, or, as it was called, Jesuits' bark, because introduced by the confessor of the Count de Cuichona, was publioly preached against. In France, excommunication was the.portion of any who should dare to use antimony, and now hundreds owe their recovery from fever to James' powder. Arsenic, a medicine now in daily use, was by royal edict interdicted, and the physician using it liable to perpetual imprisonment. With such as the history of discoveries, it required no little moral courage for Dr. Edward Jenner to make known to the world the remarkable fact which has since immortalised his name, and saved thousands of lives—viz., that when the disease had passed through the system of the cow, it became so ameliorated as to be undergone without danger, and with but little inconvenience; 'giving at the same time that defence against future attacks which the most violent natural attack could. - To him, then, we owe vaccination, and it has since spread through nearly the entire world. In India, it is true, the word equination is more correct, for the first matter forwarded there had passed through the system of a horse, and acted with equal effect. Legislation in England has lately passed an enactment making vaccination compulsory, and the importance of it cannot, b* too warmly advocated. There'has been great neglect amongst ourselves to use /that -safeguard which has been, we might almost say/the saviour of Europe, To judge of; the power of the disease unchecked, we havVbut to quote the words of Catlin,. in his work entitled,. " Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of: the North American Indians." At vol. 1., p. 6, he says: —"Thirty millions of white men are now scuffling for the goods and luxuries of life over the bones and ashes of twelve millions of red men., six millions of whom have fallen victims to the smallpox." We subjoin below another extract from the Government pamphlet:— . Mri Lloyd, the translator of Prince Maximilian's Travels .in the ioteripr of North America, quotes1 in the preface to bis work the following description of an epidemic of small-po^ which befel the Indians twenty years ago, adding that the general correctness of the details had been confirmed to him by several travellers who had subsequently visited those nations:—"The.disease first broke put about the Isth of June, 1837, in .the. village of Mandans, a few'miles below the American fort Leaven worth, from which it spread iri all directions with unexampled fury. The character of the disease was as appalling as the rapidity of the propagation. Among the remotest tribes of the Assiniboins from 50 to 100 diqd daily; The patient, when first seized, complains of dread-. ful pains in the head and backhand in a few hours h**U dead; the body igu»«djatdy turns black

and swells :to'thrice its natural size. In vain were hospitals fitted tip in Fort Union, and the whole stock of medicines exhausted. For many weeks together our workmen did nothing but collect the dead bodies and bury them in large pits; but since the ground is frozen we are obliged to throw them into the river. The ravages of the disorder were the mPst frightful among the Mandans, where it "first broke, out. That pnee powerful tribe which, by accutnnlated disasters had already been reduced to 1500 souls, was exterminated, with the exception of thirty persons. Their neighbors, the Big-bellied Indians arid the Ricarees, were out on a hunting excursion at the time of the breaking out of the disorder,' so that it did not reach them till a month later; yet half the tribe was already destroyed on the Ist of October and the disease continued to spread. Very few of those who were attacked recovered their health; but when they saw all their relations buried, and the pestilence still raging with unabated fury among the remainder of their countrymen, life became a burden to them, and they put an end to their wretched existence, either with their knives and muskets, er by precipitating themselves from the summit of the rock near their settlement. The prairie all around is a vast fielil pf death cpvered, with uriburied corpses, and spreading for miles pestilence and infection. The Big-bellied Indians and the Ricareeß, lately amounting to 4000 souls, were reduced to less than the half. The Assiniboins, 9000 in number, roarinng over a hunting territory to the north of the Missouri as far as the trading posts of^ the Hudson's Bay Company, are, in the literary sense of the express sipn, nearly exterminated. They, as well as the ; Crows and Blackfeet, endeavored tp £ fly in all ■directions, but the disease, everywhere pursued .•them. At last every feeling pff'thtitual cqmpassion and tenderness seems to have dissappeared. -Every one avoided the others. Women and children wondered about the prairie seeking for a scanty subsistence. The accpunts of the situation of the Blackfeet are awful. The inmates of abpve 1000 of their tents are already swept away. They are the bravest and most crafty of all the Indians, dangerous and implacable to their enemies, but faithful and. kind to their friefids; But very lately we apprehended that a terrible war with them was at hand, and that they would unite the whole of their remaining strength; against the whites. Every day brought accounts of new armaments, and of a loudly expressed spirit of vengeance tpwards the whites, but the small-pox cast them down, the brave as well ajs the feeble, and those who were ence seized by this infection never recovered. It is affirmed tnat several bands of warriors who were on their march to attack the fort, all perished by the way, so that not one survived to convey the intelligence to their tribe, Thus, i in the course of a few weeks, their strength and their courage were broken, and nothing was to be heard j but the frightful wailings of death in their camp, j Every thought of war was dispelled-, and the few, that are left are aa humble as famished dogs. No language can picture the scene of desolationwhich the country presents.. In whatever direction we go, we see nothing but melancholy wrecks of human life. The tents are still standing on every hill, but no rising ampke announces the presence of a human being, and no sounds but" the croaking of the raven and the howling of ,the wolf interrupt the fearful silence. The above accounts do not complete the terrible intelligence we receive. There is scarcely a doubt that the peptilerice will spread to the tribes in and beyond Rocky Mountains, as well a? to the Indians in the direction of Santa Fe and Mexico. It seems to be irrevocably written in the book of fate, that th« race of red men shall be wholly extirpated in the land in which they ruled the undisputed masters till the rapacity of the whites brought to their shores the raurdero.us fire-arms, the enervating ardent spirits, and the all-destructive pestilence of the small pox. According to the most recent accounts, jthenptuber pf Indians whp have been swept away by small-pox, pn tl|e W^terp frontier of the United States, amounts to 1 more than 60,000. ••.■■:• -■ ■ For us it is sufficient to call attention to this malter;. \ye Have, fulfilled pur part in so dping, Jeavd, the much inor^ important duty .of acting and taking precautionary measures in the bands of individuals. . . .- ——*♦-•——— .■.-, ■ An advertisement which -appeared for the first time in the columns of pur contemporary last Wednesday, announcing the resignation of the member for Waimea West, throws open another s at for competition. We have seen the results of yesterday'selection, but have tojook forward to the next. As it is more than probable that active canvassing will take place in the districts at once, and not unlikely on the part of that candiclate who resigned pretensions at Richmond, before any of our readers give a pledge, we ask them to. pause, as there will probably be announced the name of a gentleman, also an exmember, and whose recognised abilities, combined with high social position, render him in every way worthy of the support of Waimea West. No doubt by this time our readers can pretty well guess who we mean, but for the present we decline publishing his name.