486 Proceedings, 
ing their infants on their backs were apt to strike them against the lintels of the doors. 
Since the arrival of the Europeans, and in consequence of their civilizing tendencies, and 
better and more regularly acquired diet, this disease is tending to become less. 
ould appear that the children were, as a rule, born healthy and well made; but 
few being deaf and dumb, or deformed. Hare-lip was known, and instances of children 
with six fingers and six toes on each limb were not uncommon. Albinos were not rare. 
Colenso says that the flax was often carelessly applied to the umbilieal cord and some- 
times — giving rise to umbilical hernia. This can searcely be correct. 
ing to the badness of the food most Maori children were pot-bellied, shrunken- 
uk wizen-faced looking wretches who improved wonderfully under a generous diet. 
Maori women flattened their infants’ noses, and Colenso describes a curious plan for 
making handsome the lower limbs of their children: they rubbed the knees, and the 
inner side of those joints were squeezed to attain this object. He also says that they 
half disjointed the thumbs of female children to make them better able to hold and serape 
flax. Maoris pierced their ears with sharp flints, and shaved themselves with sharp shells. 
Tattooing was often attended by great pain and infl tory swelling; if the entire body 
were done at any one time it was apt to produce death. 
hinese of rank allow their finger-nails to grow very long, to show they are rich and 
need not do manual labour; a few rangatiras daughters about Poverty Bay did the same 
thing, allowing their left thumb-nail to grow. I have seen the same thing in Rio Janeiro. 
Remembering the physiological law that organs little used have little tendency to 
disease, one is not surprized at finding that the Maoris suffered very little from any forms 
of brain disease. Insanity usually assumed a melancholic type. Epilepsy was known. 
Apoplexy and bemyplegia were rare; nor is this to be wondered at when we remember 
that aicoholines never existed, gout was unknown, and rigid arteries were of doubtful 
existence. 
Sunstroke was rare. In summer they got a fever from haunting swamps. 
Goitre exists ose ihe hill-abiding Ureweras, and, Dr. Hector tells me, among the 
white residents 
Most of "dd Poesie among the Maoris were due to their dirty habits—their whares, 
filthy ragged mats were the chief sources of distribution ; and to their bad, irregu- 
lay supplied food: hence the abundance of skin affections, and indigestion, and diseases 
ing therefrom. 
Treatment.—The Maori treatment of disease was partly the result of their belief in 
ihe nature of disease, and partly based on practical experience. 
Believing that disease arose through the agency of spirits—‘ atua,” they naturally 
appealed to their priests (tohungas) to relieve them, either by propitiating or exorcising 
ihe evil spirits, and, just as amongst nearly all savages, the office of priest and physician 
was combined. Tohungas, by their incantations, were believed to cure diseases ; and now 
and then, a tohunga would get a great name—his mana was great for a time, and he 
became the fashionable physician of the day, to whom flocked patients from far and near. 
These tohungas, like other ** medicine men,” only resorted to prayers, when they did not 
know what else to do. They used to treat rheumatism by blisters (caused by hot stones), 
by scarification, by embrocation with pigeons’ oil, by poultices made of hot leaves, and 
by ordering a course of warm baths at Waiwera or Rotomahana, or elsewhere. I am not 
aware that they had any special line of treatment for phthisis. They found out by 
practical experience, like Prince Bladud of Bath, that certain springs were good for skin 
and other diseases, but they never made the further discovery that on Ruapehu they 
might found a en Engadine, as a sanatorium for consumptives, 
