86 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



plaint was raging in all the Australian colonies, as well as in the 

 various settlements of New Zealand." Dieffenbach, writing in 

 1843, says, " Epidemics of influenza are still common. The 

 disease is a bad form of influenza, a malignant catarrh of the 

 bronchi, with congestion of the lungs, affection of the heart, 

 accompanied by fever and great prostration of strength." At 

 this period, it is interesting to note that immense numbers of 

 dead fish were thrown up on the shores, and in a later epidemic 

 the illness first attacked poultry and pigs and dogs, later causing 

 many deaths in the native villages — which always swarmed with 

 dogs and poultry. Breathlessness and severe headache were 

 two of the most pronounced symptoms of the disease among the 

 Maoris, as with Polynesians generally, and it was commonlv 

 called " the head-splitting disease." When influenza was very 

 prevalent in the north, one of the Maori tohungas declared that 

 he had found a cure for " the head-splitting disease." It was; 

 composed of roots, bark, and leaves of trees, with certain shrubs, 

 burned together, the ashes being mixed into a paste with hogs' 

 lard. This mess he sold to his patients in balls the size of 

 a marble, charging £1 10s. each. They were bought with 

 avidity by timid persons, who, when they felt the least pain in 

 any part of the body, made an incision in that part and rubbed a 

 portion of the compound into it. '' It w r as astonishing," says 

 White, " to see how many cures were affected by it amongst 

 those nervous persons in whose imagination alone the disease 

 had existed." 



About the end of the eighteenth century the Kauarapaoa 

 Pa on the Whanganui River was held by about eight hundred 

 natives when the devastating rewharewha epidemic broke out 

 among them. An old native thus described it to Mr. Best : 

 ' Friend, I will now tell you of the first sign of the white man 

 which came to us. It was the rewharewha, the disease that 

 slaughtered the Maori people, until thousands were represented 

 by hundreds, and hundreds by tens. When attacked by that 

 disease, for one night and one day might man look upon the 

 world of life : then death came. Men did not die singly, but 

 in tens, and twenties, and thirties. Day by day and day by 

 day they died. No effort was made by the survivors to mourn 

 for the dead, or to carry out our ancient burial customs, for a 

 great fear was upon them. And the hearts of the living breathed 



not as they looked upon the multitude of the dead. So the 

 children of Paerangi went down to Hades. Then the survivors 

 tied to the ranges, and a war party which came to attack the fort 

 found only the dead therein, many of whom they ate." 



