184 ST. KILDA FROM WITHOUT 



dependent for his Gannets and Fulmars on the good- 

 will of privileged families as any country parson on the 

 squire for a brace of Pheasants. 



For doctors to investigate there is the cnatan-na-gall 

 the feverish epidemic cold, in some of its symptoms very 

 like influenza supposed to be peculiar to the island, 

 described again and again for more than two hundred 

 years : laughed at by travellers from Dr. Johnson down- 

 wards, but none the less believed by the natives to 

 follow almost invariably the arrival of strangers. 



A more terrible mystery, still unexplained, is the 

 'eight-day sickness,' the infantile lock-jaw, which for 

 many years carried off more than half the children 

 born in St. Kilda, commonly, as the name given to the 

 disease implies, on the eighth day after birth. 



The late Miss MacLeod, of Dunvegan, the good spirit 

 of St. Kilda, thinking that unscientific nursing might 

 be the true explanation, sent over a trained nurse. 

 Great things were hoped from her services, and Mr. 

 Connell, who soon after visited the island, wrote on his 

 return that things ' looked as if a rift in the cloud had 

 really made its appearance, and that the high rate of 

 infant mortality was to be a thing of the past.' Recent 

 returns, sad to say, have not justified the hope. In the 

 first six months of 1891 three babies were born. Two 

 of them died of the ' eight-day sickness.' During the 

 ten years 1891-1900, four children died not more than 

 fifteen days old. Of these two died on the eighth day 

 of lock-jaw. 



But many as are the other interests touched, it is for 



