Newman.—On Causes leading to the Extinction of the Maori. 467 
seem to prefer doing. Amongst ourselves the awful ravages of phthisis may 
be either entirely checked or greatly abated, by care, by medicine, by nurs- 
ing, and by change of climate; of all these the Maori knows nothing. He 
undergoes no medical treatment at all, or only in the last stages, when 
medicine is powerless ; he never takes care of himself, he goes out in all 
weathers, gets soaked and does not change his clothes, and his food is not 
the well-cooked, wholesome, easily digestible food fit for an invalid; he 
still further aggravated by the close fetid air of their tiny whares, or the 
draughty condition of their badly made wooden houses. Again, as so many 
7 persons, healthy as well as unhealthy in all stages, sleep all huddled close 
| together in their unventilated whares, they breathe and rebreathe each 
others unhealthy breaths. The consequence is that the naturally healthy 
; catch the disease in large numbers. Amongst ourselves who have private 
sleeping rooms, we see the ill effects, but among the Maoris the results are 
awful to contemplate. 
This evil habit of pitching their dwellings on low-lying swampy ground 
j causes many deaths from rheumatism, from bronchitis, pneumonia, and 
low fever. 
I wrote to a number of medical men to obtain their experience, and to 
_ them I am exceedingly grateful for much most useful information. Unfor- 
tunately the Maoris need not have their deaths certified to, and in a large 
class of diseases, especially those of women, they never consult a doctor. 
| __ Owing to these causes I am unable to present to this society any statistics 
Of disease; but still it is not difficult to detect the chief. The principal 
diseases of infants are scrofulous ; large numbers die from scrofula in some 
Shape or another. From the time they are weaned they eat anything the 
mother eats, and the consequence is that most Maori children look badly 
| ___ fed, big-bellied, with wasted limbs, and with eruptions about their orifices. 
es They die largely from the effects of bad feeding, getting tabes mesenterica, 
| ¢hronic diarrhea, atrophy. They suffer from swollen glands and ecze- 
_ Matous eruptions. Some have hydrocephalus, acute and chronic. Dr. 
Spencer, who has for many years attended a Maori orphanage, says they 
improve wonderfully on admission; their bellies shrink; their limbs grow 
___ bigger, and their eruptions vanish; but about puberty they often get weak 
— They are very subject to 
' Wanganui etankaie the many hundreds of ‘children that 
fens dy a : = Sy ee ge 2 PES ll , br ght on by improper 
never wears suitable warm clothing. This frightful scourge (phthisis) is ~ 
milk diet. With regard to a milk diet, Mr. Locke 
es eee ee 
Peas 
