INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 2734, 21 January 1890, Page 2

INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC

[BY BLETBIC TELEGRAPH— COPYHIGHT.J London, J.muary 17. From advices to hand from Paris and New York, the mortality from influenza dons not appear to be increasing. The Princess Maud, who has been suffering from an attack of influenza, is now recovering. TO THK EDITOR. Sin,—At a lime when influenza, in an epidemic form is raging in Europe, :tnd wo in Now Zealand may rw.on.-ibly expect a visitation from it, the following extract from an article pnblished in the Monthly Review, on tlif Longevity of the M.niii peopSu may ha of interest to some of your readers : " Ttic iinniiinity from which I have spoken did not last long after the Europeans arrived in the country, for about the year 1790 (according to Mr C. O. Davis) the Maoris were smitten with a terrible disease, which they have called the rowharewha. What the nature of this post may have been Ido not know, but it is the name they now give to influenza. It was probably a fever, and of a moat malignant type, for it appears to have destroyed nearly one-third of the Maoris tben living. In some few places its fcffects were more serious, An old Maori, expatiating on thn past glory of the Ngatihau tribe, and the deserted pa of Pukehika, tnld me that its garrison waR 700 men during bis father's lifetime. I naturally :\sked, " How has your tribe become eo reduced in numbers ?" He replied : " They died when we were afflicted with the rewharewha. When first the disease allowed itself among us we nursed the sick, and every person who did so caught the disease in his turn, and died, and therefore, after a trine, we were struck with terror, und the survivors left the dead and dying in the whare, and fled t>> the forest, living apart from one another in deadly fear of the pestilnce." And so a, remnant of the once powerful Ngatihau were saved, but at only the expense of their dead and dying relative?, whom they left lying in the' dserted pa." Whether the fatal malady above chronicled was or was not a severe form of influenza. I leave your readers to judge for themselves. I think in all probability it was, and that the pathogenic microbes from which it originated were imported in ono of the few ships which visited New Zealand in those early days. The year 1790 cannot be accepted as exactly correct, for it is a well-known fact that Maoris are incapable of furnishing accurately, date 3 of events long past It is more probable that tho memorableyear of rewharewha was 1781, when this visitation would be distinctly referable to the influenza epidemic, which visited Europe in 1872, If the year 1790 be correct, then, 1 presume the disease must have been endemic.—l am, youre etc., W. Macqrkgor Hay.