MAORI MEMORIES.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 May 1938, Page 9

MAORI MEMORIES.

RUAKI—SICKNESS. (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) Despite their limited supply of nourishing food the Maori was far healthier than the average European, and the observation of this difference caused a medical officer of long experience among them in the very early days to say that most white emigrants who died under the age of seventy were the victims of a newly discovered disease which he named “Eatisis.” It was clearly established by the medical officer of a British regiment stationed at Auckland that in 1790 when a British ship first visited Mercury Bay a fatal epidemic of dysentry appeared. In 1795 a disease they named “Tingara,” fatal after three days, caused many deaths. Scrofula was first known in 1815, influenza in 1844, hooping cough in 1847, mumps in 1851. scarlet fever and measles in 1854. These were quite new to the Ariki and Tohunga who traced the origin of each to the coming of a foreign vessel. Despite their occasional orgies of cannibal feasts, indulged in only as a reprisal upon enemies who had wronged them, the Maoris regarded the post mortem dissection of a human body with abhorrence. Insanity was a rarity. Of nearly 5000 Maoris in one locality there was one case. In 1849 among the Quakers in England. three in every 1000 were in the mad house. Scrofula was the worst enemy of the Maori, and the tendency to it may be traced to people who originally came from the tropics. In later years their native food gave way to a diet of potatoes, which. far as nourishment is concerned, are the poorest kind of human food. A British medical review of 1854 says “Maoris who suffered from poison were often saved by immersion, and when their bodies were filled with water they were suspended head down over smoke, thus causing them to vomit.”