298 THE PKESENT EVOLUTION OF MAN — PHYSICAL 



able mortality, it could be shown that reactionary 

 dietetic and therapeutic practices gave the epidemic its 

 malignant character. Tlie importance of that factor 

 in the causation comes out in the clearest way in those 

 epidemics of measles which, springing up among 

 uncivilized peoples, have run a disastrous course in the 

 absence of all rational treatment of the sick, 



*' Classical examples of this are furnished by the epi- 

 demic of 1749 among the natives on the banks of the 

 Amazon, where the number of those that died of the 

 sickness was reckoned at 30,000, whole tribes having 

 been cut off; also in Astoria in 1829, where nearly one- 

 half of the natives fell victims to the disease ; among 

 the Indians of Hudson's Bay Territory in 1846 ; among 

 the Hottentots at the Cape in 1852 ; among the natives of 

 Tasmania in 1854 and 1861 ; and in Mauritius and the 

 Fiji Islands in 1874. Concerning the two last-men- 

 tioned epidemics, both of them disastrous, it is stated in 

 the Report — ' The great mortality has been in large 

 measure due to the fact tliat the sick were exposed to 

 the most unfavourable conditions. Unprotected from 

 exposure, unattended and untreated, chiefly in conse- 

 quence of their own unhappy prejudices, every com- 

 plication of the disease must have been invited and^ 

 rendered intense ; in accordance with this view, we find 

 that those classes of the native population over whom 

 adequate supervision could be exercised have suffered 

 slit^htlv.' Smellie mentions facts of the same kind in 

 tlie destructive epidemic of 1846 among the natives of 

 Hudson's Bay Territory ; of all those who were received 

 into Fort York, and who there received medical treat- 

 ment, not one died. In the account given by Squire 

 of tlie frightful epidemic of measles in the Fiji Islands, 

 which was known to have been introduced from Sydney 

 by tlie retinue of King Kakobau, and which carried off 

 20,000 of the natives, or one-fourth to one-fifth of 

 the whole population of the Fiji group, we find the 

 following : — 



" ' The favourable progress of the early native cases 

 negatives the idea of any special proclivity. Dr. Cruik- 

 shank, who treated 143 of the native constables, reports 



