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 rangatira 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, there 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 criminals, and scarcely 

 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 httle 

 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 eyesight poring over miserable books." The Maoris, like 

 all the races of men, suffered from insanity. Idiots were not uncommon. Insanity was 

 usually of a melancholic nature. Two 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-worked. 



If one went carefully through the 1,600 and odd diseases mentioned in the Eoyal 

 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. 



Undoubtedly 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 peo]ple are, on the whole, healthier, suffer less pain, and live 

 longer than do savages. 



Then, 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 have 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 individiial but also the race. 



