178 DISEASES. 



tributed the presence of these diseases among the Polynesian races. 

 M. E,ollin, who, as surgeon of the frigate " Boussole," accompanied 

 La Pdrouse on his ill-fated voyage, adduces evidence to show the 

 probability of these diseases having existed in the Pacific before the 

 discoveries of the French and English navigators in that region ; ^ 

 and La P^rouse himself approaches very near the truth when he sug- 

 gests that the free intercourse, which prevailed between the natives 

 and the crews during those expeditions, may have increased the ac- 

 tivity and destructive tendency of the pre-existing diseases.^ For, 

 not only has M. Parrot of Paris demonstrated from an examination 

 of the skulls of some South American aborigines the existence of 

 Syphilis in the New World before Columbus set foot on its shores, 

 but he affirms without hesitation, after examining three frasrments 

 of infant skulls from a dolmen in central France, that this disease 

 existed in prehistoric times ("Lancet," May 10th, 1S79). We are 

 not therefore surprised at finding references to venereal diseases in 

 the ancient literature of China, India, Arabia, Greece and Kome 

 (Aitken's " Medicine," 6th edit, 1872, vol i. p. 859) ; and having re- 

 gard to the ethnological past of the Pacific, we can with some confi- 

 dence assume that the original stock, derived in the first place from 

 the Asiatic continent, brought with them these diseases. 



The susceptibility of these islanders to comparatively small falls 

 of temperature is an element in their predisposition to disease which 

 should not be disregarded. This susceptibility was strikingly shown 

 to me on one occasion, at the end of August 1882, when I was 

 following up the course of a stream at Sulagina on the north coast 

 of St. Christoval. Accompanied by a party of natives, I was wading 

 up the stream for several hours, the water often reaching the waist, 

 whilst a steady deluge of rain completed the wetting. Although 

 the air was merely comparatively cool for this latitude (10° 30' S.), the 

 thermometer in the shade standing at 80° Fahr, my natives were 

 shivering with the cold ; whilst I myself felt only the inconvenience 

 of having been soaked through for so many hours. As soon as we 

 returned to the coast, all my party huddled themselves together 

 around their wood-fires in a little hut and warmed their hands and 

 feet as eagerly as we should in winter-time at home. As I stood in 

 the hut looking comfortably on at my naked companions who, 



^ "Voyage round the World, by La Perouse," edit, by Milet-Mureau: London : voL iii., 

 p: 180. 

 2 Ibid, vol. ii.'p. 52. 



