220 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



and along the Murray, but rarely met with among the coastal tribes. 

 They had also, very prevalently, a loathsome cutaneous disease 

 resembling an aggravated form of itch or mange. It was very 

 contagious amongst themselves, but did not appear to be readily 

 communicated to Europeans. 



Of the diseases introduced by the settlers, small-pox, usually 

 the most fatal scourge to primitive people, was restricted to one 

 serious outbreak in 1789, when it swept away many hundreds of 

 the natives inhabiting the coast line about Sydney and the adjacent 

 rivers. There is no doubt that it spread inland and worked much 

 destruction amongst then unknown tribes, and traces of the disease 

 have been found amongst the natives inhabiting the country around 

 the Murray along its whole course. But it has not been known as 

 an epidemic in Victoria. Pulmonary diseases and rheumatic affec- 

 tions increased rapidly after the tentative provision of blankets 

 and European clothing, the intermittent use of which necessarily 

 enfeebled Nature's resistance to severe climatic changes. Syphilis, 

 in its more aggravated form, worked terrible havoc amongst the 

 natives during the first ten years of the settlement, and proved 

 exceptionally fatal besides materially lowering the birth-rate. So 

 recently as 1876 an epidemic of measles carried off nearly 200 

 about one-fifth of the existing remnant. It is a noticeable and not 

 easily explained fact that in all cases of imported diseases the usual 

 medical remedies, which were efficacious with Europeans, very 

 generally failed to work a cure upon the natives. Partly on this 

 account, and partly as a result of their ingrained superstitions in the 

 matter of disease, a general attitude of suspicious distrust was 

 widely manifested towards the white " medicine man ". 



But probably all the diseases which had been originally intro- 

 duced with the immigrants were less serious as factors in the 

 process of depopulation than the deteriorated physique the trans- 

 ference of the erect, agile warrior into the cringing, listless hanger- 

 on upon the skirts of civilisation's meaner product. It must be 

 borne in mind that though a large proportion of the early settlers 

 were men of good character and just intentions, they were not as a 

 rule brought into direct contact with the natives, and had little indi- 

 vidual share in their general corruption. But every settler whose 



