Goldie. — Maori Medical Lore. 87 



The Maori's Aversion to European Doctors 



Tohungas, Ancient and Modern. 



The natives still place great faith in their tohunga, and the 

 modern tohunga is a kind of quack doctor, a hybrid imposition, 

 a fraud, a despicable fellow, inferior in every way to his savage 

 ancestors, who were, at least, more honest in their professions. 



The Attitude of the Maori to European Doctors. 



A great distrust of European doctors is manifest in the 

 Tuhoe district. ' It is probable," says Best, " that this is not 

 due to any disbelief in the medical knowledge of the said pro- 

 fession, but that the natives have an instinctive fear that a 

 doctor will interfere with their state of tapu ; that the life- 

 principle will be endangered by the methods of the European 

 being employed. A middle-aged woman of this district was 

 taken seriously ill, and it was proposed that she be sent to the 

 hospital. Her people strongly objected, urging her to adhere 

 to native customs, saying they would rather see her die than be 

 operated upon by a European. However, she was taken to 

 the hospital by Europeans, was operated upon, and recovered. 

 When she returned here I heard an old woman ask her, ' In what 

 state are you now ? ' (i.e., ' Have you deserted our ringa tu 

 religion, are you noa ? ') The reply was, ' 0, every cooking- 

 vessel of the white man has been passed over me ' (her body had 

 been washed with water heated in a kitchen). Her tapu has gone, 

 and she is clinging with great earnestness to European ways and 

 customs, as a means of protecting her vitality. But this is a 

 rare case. There is another singular idea possessed of the native 

 mind. A native is ill, and you ask why he is not taken to the 

 doctor. The reply will very likely be, ' Oh, it is a native 

 complaint ; the doctors could not cure it,' although it be some- 

 thing as common as stomach-ache." 



When travelling in the Taranaki District many years ago 

 Sir George Grey found the natives very willing to take European 

 medicine. They fancied that every pakeha was by nature a 

 doctor, and never travelled without a medicine-chest, from 

 which their sick expected remedies almost as a matter of course. 

 Those whose maladies were relieved were seldom grateful for it, 

 whilst those who were not benefited went away grumbling, as 

 if they had been seriously injured. In Fiji the natives are even 

 more ungrateful, and in one instance a native asked the European 

 doctor for payment for the time expended in having his sores, 

 dressed by the medical man without expectation of fee or reward, 

 and also demanded a shilling for attending to the dressings him- 

 self when the doctor was necessarily absent. 



