436 Pivceediw/s. 



ing their infants ou their backs were apt to strike them against the Untels of the doors. 

 Since the arrival of the Europeans, and in consequence of their civiUziug tendencies, and 

 better and more regularly acquired diet, this disease is tending to become less. 



It would 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. 



Coleuso says that the flax was often carelessly applied to the umbilical cord and some- 

 times slipped, giving rise to umbilical hernia. This can scarcely be correct. 



Owing to the badness of the food most Maori children were pot-bellied, shrunken- 

 limbed, 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 scrape 

 flax. Maoris pierced their ears with sharp flints, and shaved themselves with sharp shells. 

 Tattooing was often attended by great pain and inflammatory swelling ; if the entire body 

 were done at any one time it was apt to produce death. 



Cliinese 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 Eio Janeiro. 



Bemembering 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 hemyplegia 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 among the hill-abiding Ureweras, and. Dr. Hector tells me, among the 

 white residents of Bealey. 



Most of the diseases among the Maoris were due to their dirty habits — their whares, 

 and filthy ragged mats were the chief sources of distribution ; and to their bad, irregu- 

 larly supplied food : hence the abundance of skin affections, and indigestion, and diseases 

 arising therefrom. 



Treatment. — The Maori treatment of disease was partly the result of their belief in 

 the 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 

 the 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 tolmnga 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 Eotomahana, 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 second Engadiue, as a sanatorium for consumptives, 



