434 Proceedings. 
No Maori milkman ever distributed typhoid fever with his milk. In fact, even did 
space permit, we could fill many a page recounting the diseases from which Maoris could 
never have suffered. Here is a striking fact. No old Maori ever had delirium tremens ; 
no old SES ever had the “ horrors ”—not even “ hot coppers ;” no old Maori ever 
called his friend a “ drunken sot,” or “ brainless idiot.” Unfortunately, as they were all 
teetotallers, dies was no special class of men who could clearly prove that if it were not 
for the use of strong drinks, there would be no lunatics and no crimin riminals, and searcely 
any disease. As a matter of fact there were plenty of all these evils. 
Not one of all the descendants of the canoes that came from Hawaiki ever suffered 
from gout. In England one family held an estate for 400 years, and as each man suc- 
ceeded to the inheritance, so surely did he also inherit severe gout. 
Imagine an old Maori chief suffering from rich gout, when he had for food irregular 
and often scanty allowances of fern-root, dried eels, and an occasional slice of man or 
woman ; his favourite tipple being a mild infusion of tutu-berries, or perchance a little 
pure water, weakly flavoured with the juice of flax-flowers. Of course no genuine old 
Maori ever had gout. 
No young Maori lad or lass ever broke down reading for honours, or became crooked 
in the spine from sitting for hours on a backless bench ; nor of any Maori child could a 
local poet sing—'* with blinded n poring over miserable books.” The Maoris, like 
all the races of men, suffered from anity. Idiots were not uncommon. Insanity was 
usually of a melancholic nature. Pes things combine to make insanity little visible 
among savages : in the first place the amount of brain power required in the struggle for 
existence is far less among the savage than among the civilized races, and therefore defi- 
ciency in intellect is not so marked; and, secondly, savages use their brains but little, 
their lives are monotonous, they never suffer from commercial panics, and their brains 
are never over-work 
If one went carefully through the 1,600 and odd diseases mentioned in the Royal 
College of Physicians’ work on Nomenclature of Disease, one could pick out a great num- 
ber arising from the complexities of life in civilized countries, and from which the Maoris 
never suffered ; it might from this be inferred that the Maoris were a particularly healthy 
race. Such, however, was not the case. They had few distinct diseases, but those were 
so common that the aggregate illness was great. 
€—: in the wake of civilization there do follow and arise many diseases, but 
judging from the longevity of the civilized men and their rapid rate of increase there can 
be no doubt that civilized people are, on the whole, healthier, suffer less pain, and live 
longer than do savages. 
en, too, look how carefully we nurse our invalids, and how much the Maoris 
neglected their sick friends. Why, I have seen a well-to-do old chief apparently crying 
bitterly over his dying wife, and yet, rather than go to the expense of burning her bed 
which he must have done had she died on it, as it would bave been tapu, he put the 
stricken woman on the bare hard floor to die. In sickness they had no comforts, 
and only injurious treatment. 
Many Darwinians hold that physicians really help to deteriorate the race by prolong- 
ing the existence of the sickly, who would otherwise be weeded out in the struggle for 
existence, and that these sicklier persons propagate a sickly race; but a comparison will 
show that we civilized whites, with physicians, are a stronger, longer-lived, healthier, 
more capable race than the Maoris, with only their harmless medicine men. The fact is, 
though it would take a long essay to demonstrate it, that modern healing art benefits not 
only the individual but also the race 
