Wellington Philosophical Society. 437 
Working on a wrong hypothesis, they arrived at a right method of treatment for 
certain diseases. This treatment was change of climate; but they changed their residence 
not because of the air, but, finding beneficial results, they believed these were due to the 
fact that when they moved they left their ** atua" behind. 
Of course the uncivilized Maori medicine men knew nothing of such means of 
restraint as straight-jackets or padded-rooms for maniacal or strongly-convulsed patients. 
However, they very ingeniously adopted another line of treatment. If a patient ate 
karaka berries, he was sure to be violently convulsed; so they dug a hole, lashed his 
arms to his side, tied his arms, put him up to his chin in the hole, filled up with earth— 
then let him have his fits.—(Colenso. He sometimes got well. 
Abscesses were opened long before they were ripe by means of thorns or shells, and 
were then violently squeezed, causing great pain. They also used hot poultices of leaves. 
To stop bleeding, they used the old housewifes' common remedy—cobwebs. 
In cases of suspended animation from drowning, they held a man upside down to let 
the water run out, and then hung him (heels still up) over a smoking fire. There are no 
snes Aoi pakintion showing the results of this plan. 
ed to excite vomiting, they held the patient under water till his stomach 
was full, and Miei rolled him on the ground and squeezed him. 
Certain tribes believed they could squeeze out diseases, and the tohungas used to lay 
their patients on the ground, and pile on weights. This plan sometimes produced ill 
results when carried very far, because the patient's life was squeezed out. Very learned 
London surgeons recently tried to cure cancer in the same foolish fashion. 
habit of cannibalism arose one good, it taught them something roughly of 
human anatomy, and they could sometimes reduce a dislocation (Colenso), and use 
splinters for broken bones. Pd they amputated fingers and joints, but this was 
the limit of their achievements in surgery. 
They used a few plants edidi e.g., the shoots of the koromiko. 
The tohungas practised much on the credulity of their patients, and are said to have 
used ventriloquism as an aid. They got certain offerings (fees), and, when they did not 
in the least know what was the matter, could look as solemn and as wise as a leading 
London physician. 
They suffered indigestion, the result of ill-cooked semi-putrid eels, half-rotten maize, 
and other like food 
They much frequented the hot-springs; one near Tolaga Bay is much celebrated in 
skin diseases, and a times the natives make pilgrimages there, especially when afflicted 
with venereal aff 
The Maoris sare E all our contagious diseases, and doubtless in time will 
acquire those which are the direct products of civilization. Scarlet fever, measles, small- 
pox, and typhoid fever, have all at times done much mischief. Syphilis and other vene- 
real affections have been introduced. Syphilis does not seem to commit great ravages ; 
but gonorrhoa and all its attendant evils are very rife, and are much aggravated by dirt 
and neglect. They seldom apply for treatment to European doctors. Perhaps the fre- 
quency of discharges in the women may account for part of the large amount of infertility, 
and be one among the many facts leading to e 
From a medical point of view there is sass to interest the physician who studies his 
fellow-colonists. With the rare exception of a person bitten by the katipo, who as a rule 
does not die though he suffers a good deal, and the occasional illness and still rarer death 
of some child, from eating poisonous berries, there Pet one fingis disease which colonists 
acquire from the Maoris; uot g g ge in the soil, or climate, 
