Newman. — Is Neiv Zealand a Healthy Country ? 499 



sufferer arid is not acquired here. It is singular that hydatids should not 

 exist here, for they are very prevalent in Australia, and dogs are numerous 

 and live in intimate communion with man. 



Skin diseases. — Owing to the well-to-do character of the people, the small 

 amount of segregation and the abundance of good food, skin diseases are far 

 less common in the colony than at home. A little acne, eczema or psori- 

 asis and liver compose the bulk of the cases. 



Constitutional. — The tubercular diathesis is abundant and perhaps as- 

 sumes a greater prominence because the others are rarer. In young New 

 Zealanders this diathesis far exceeds all the others. Struma exists but in 

 modified forms. The population are so well off, and so abundantly supplied 

 with good healthy food and ample shelter, and lead such healthy out-door 

 lives that they beget a healthy offspring ; and to this offspring they give 

 the best of food and raiment. For the same reasons rachitis is but little 

 seen. 



Syphilis for some reason or other is of a very mild type. The true hard 

 or Hunterian chancre is but seldom seen and when it is seen is usually 

 imported. Though gonorrhoea is abundant and soft chancre not uncommon, 

 the Maoris, who suffer much from gonorrhoea, very rarely present symptoms 

 of syphilis. 



Gout. — A rare disease ; one which will probably be almost or quite un- 

 known to young New Zealanders, who in appearance and build show scant 

 tendency to the gouty diathesis, and in habits and mode of life do little to 

 promote the spread of this most unnecessary malady. When gout does 

 appear it is always in the person of an immigrant. 



Rheumatism in all shapes is the great scourge of the colonist. Whether 

 the wide spread of the disease and its severity is due to climate, or rather to 

 the hardships and exposure of the settlers, is a question which can be solved 

 only by time and the elimination of those things which specially tend to 

 produce it. 



Goitre appears in two mountainous districts. Tabes mesenterica, 

 so-called atrophy, and other childish diseases of defective nutrition are 

 comparatively rare, as is shown in the small mortality. 



Dental affections. — The chief feature is the very rapid decay of the teeth, 

 a decay which may be called almost universal among the New Zealand 

 born. This premature decay is seen in the milk and permanent teeth. 

 Its early beginning and its steady progress till all the teeth are affected 

 leads to much pain and indigestion through "bolted" food. The early 

 decay of both sets of teeth is one of the most noteworthy features in New 

 Zealand medicine. I am quite convinced that statistics would show an 

 amount of disease of the teeth that would startle European physicians. 



