MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 August 1938, Page 9

MAORI MEMORIES

MEASLES. (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) The universal regret of the Maori people at the departure of Sir George Grey was greatly aggravated by the deadly epidemic of measles in 1854, when 4000 Maoris died from the disease. The abnormal death rate was accentuated by the fact that the virus of this disease was new to their blood, so that nature had not supplied her antidote, as with Europeans. Another cause of death was the practice of the Tohunga who prescribed iriringa (baptism) in a running stream of cold water for every case of Kiri Ka (fever) among men, women and children. Strangely enough, even in pronounced cases of fever, a quick dive in and out of ice cold water was an immediate cure in one case out of five, whereas the other four died of pneumonia. This was of course attributed to the influence of an evil spirit (Whiro). Those who survived this deadly scourge were seldom killed by the epidemic of scarlet fever, which followed so close upon its heels, and took its victims from among those who had escaped the measles. It was a dreadful thing in every village to see old and young and new born babes being tended by sick women covered with the eruption, all crying vengeance upon the Pakeha who had brought this curse upon a hitherto healthy people, who regarded sickness as a sin and disgrace, a punishment for some wrongdoing in the past. The Polynesian race are peculiarly susceptible to measles which killed the King and Queen of Hawaii during their visit to England in 1834.