1866.] Diseases of the Karens. 25 



herbs, leaves and bark, to fall back upon when the offerings do not 

 prove efficacious. 



From satisfactory statistics the annual death rate of the Mountain 

 Karens has been ascertained as a little over two and a half per cent., 

 or about the same as in London. The same years that these statistics 

 were collected, the death rate among the acclimatized European 

 soldiers in Toungoo, was only one per cent. The difference should be 

 attributed, it is believed, to difference in constitution, difference in 

 habits, and difference in treatment of the sick ; and not to locality. 

 The Karen Mountains appear as healthy as the Scotch Mountains, or 

 the Mountains of Pennsylvania. That something does affect the death 

 rate besides the locality, is manifest from the deaths in the Toungoo 

 jail. The very years that one man only in a hundred was dying in 

 Cantonments, from eight to seventeen in a hundred were dying in the 

 jail. 



Karens lack vigour of constitution, and therefore present a weak 

 resisting power to disease. They are subject to intermittent fevers 

 throughout life. I have prescribed to shivering infants at the breast 

 and to shaking old men of threescore and ten. An European does not 

 escape them, but he has a strong constitution, which struggles hard, 

 and if it comes off victor, it is a victor for life. For the first four 

 years of my jungle travels, I had fever every year, but for thirty 

 years since, with one slight exception, I have been entirely exempt. 

 Bites from land leeches often result in bad sores on Karens ; while 

 an European will sit down and pick off a dozen from his legs after 

 a walk, without the slightest subsequent inconvenience. In some 

 localities, there is a species of gad fly that bites severely, and its 

 bite is often followed by an ulcer on a Karen ; while I have had 

 the backs of both my hands dotted all over with blood spots from 

 their bites, without suffering anything beyond the temporary incon- 

 venience. 



The Karens are a dirty people. They never use soap, and their 

 skins are enamelled with dirt. When water is thrown on to them, it 

 rolls off their backs, like globules of quicksilver on a marble slab. 

 To them, bathing has a cooling, but no cleansing effect. Dirt is 

 death's half brother, and is the father of a host of skin diseases to 

 which the Karens are subject. About half of them have the itch, and 



4 



