2 BUEEAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 42 



It is difFicult to trace the early spread of tulierculosis among the 

 Indian tribes, because of the meagerness of the information at our 

 disposal. As early as 1615 °' there occur references to diseases of 

 the "chest" — some of which may have been of a tuberculous nature — 

 among the Tarasco of Michoacan. In the seventeenth and eight- 

 eenth centuries, especially the latter, both scrofula and consumption 

 were, according to the Jesuit fathers,^ already common among the 

 ISIontaignes and other tribes in New France. 



Of the spread of the disease through the remaining tri]:)es ])ut little 

 is known until we come down into the nineteenth century. As late 

 as 1794 such an authority as Dr. Benjamin Rush, whose knowledge 

 was probably limited to the eastern Indians south of Canada and 

 New England, states that -> tuberculosis "is unknown among the 

 Indians in North America." Similar reports will be found in the 

 Bibliography. B}'^ the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth 

 century, however, the disease was certainly widely disseminated, 

 though still rare, according to Long, Hunter, Morton, and others, 

 among the Indians of the Central states and the Missouri valley. 

 Before the centuiy closed it existed in all parts of the country, and 

 at the present time no tribe in the whole of North America is exempt. 



The special study of tuberculosis among the Indians in the United 

 States is a matter of recent years only, dating, in fact, from the 

 establishment, about twenty-five years ago, of the regular Indian 

 medical service. Unfortunately, there are as yet in existence no 

 exact and comprehensive data on the subject. The physicians in 

 the Indian Service report regularly on all the diseases treated, but 

 the reports have not always been complete or accurate. The first 

 extensive published statistics relating to tuberculosis in Indians are 

 found in the United States Census reports, particularly those for 

 1890 and 1900, but these also can not be regarded as entirely satis- 

 factory for the purpose in view. Original research in tliis subject 

 may be said to have been begun in the "eighties" by Dr. Washington 

 Mattliews.'' Subsequent to tliis, in 1894, Dr. H. R. Bull published obser- 

 vations on the disease among the pupils of the large nonreservation 

 Indian school at Grand Junction, Colo. A series of valuable notes and 

 data on pulmonary tuberculosis among the Pine Ridge Sioux, collected 

 during the las£ fifteen 3^ears, was reported by Dr. J. R. Walker in 

 1906, before the National Association for the Study and Prevention 

 of Tuberculosis. In the same year an account of the disease in 

 Arizona and New Mexico, based on special reports of the agency and 

 school physicians, was published by Dr. I. W. Brewer, and one year 

 later an interesting paper in tliis line by Dr. Woods Hutchinson'" ap- 



a Heniandez, F., and F. Xiinenez, Plantas, Aniinales e Minerales de Nueva Espafia, usados en la 

 Medicina. Mexico, l(il5; Leon ed., Morelia, 1888. 

 b Jesuit Relalion.s, Thwaite,s edition; see Bibliography, 

 c See Bibliography. 



