and often leaves behind him a few branches of the thefpecia
populnea, which they call E'midho: thefe ceremonies are repeated
till the patient recovers or dies. If he recovers, they
•fay the remedies cured him, i f he dies, .they fay the difeafe
was incurable, in which perhaps they do not much differ
from the cuftom of other countries.
If we had judged of their Ikill in furgery from the dreadful
fears which we fometimes faw, we fhould have fuppofed
it to be much fuperior to the art not only of their phyficians,
hut of ours. We faw one man whofe face was a! mod intirely
deftroyed, his nofe, including the bone, was perfectly flat,
and one cheek and one eye were fo beaten in, that the hollow
would almoft receive a man’s lift, yet n ou lcef remained;
and our companion, Tupia, had been pierced quite through
his body by a fpear headed with the bone of the fting-ray,
the weapon having entered his back, and come out juft
under his bread; but except in reducing diilocations and
fractures, the belt furgeon can contribute very little to the
cure of a wound; the blood itfelf is the beft vulnerary bal-
fam, and when the juices of the body are pure, and the
patient is temperate, nothing more is neceffary as an aid to
Nature in the cure of the worft w<?und, than the keeping it
clean. r s
Their commerce with the inhabitants of Europe has, however,
already entailed upon them that dreadful curfe which
avenged the inhumanities committed by the Spaniards in
America, the venereal difeafe. As it is certain that no European
veffel befides our own, except the Dolphin, and the two
that were under the command of Monf. Bougainville, ever
viiited this ifland, it muft have been brought either by one of
them or by us. That it was not brought by the Dolphin,
Captain Wallis has demonftrated in the account of her
voyage,
voyage, fvol. I. p. 269, 270.] and nothing is more certain than
that when we arrived it had made moft dreadful ravages in the
ifland. One of our people contrafted it within five days after
we went on fliore, and by the enquiries among the natives,
which this occafioned, we learnt, when we came tounderftand
a little of their language, that it had been brought by the vef-
fels which had been there about fifteen months before us, and
had lain on the eaft fide of the ifland. They diftinguiflied it
by a name of the fame import with rottennefs, but of a more
extenfive fignification, and deferibed, in the moft pathetic
terms, the fufferings of the firft victims to its rage, and told
us that it caufed the hair and the nails to fall off, and the
flefh to rot from the bones : that it fpread a univerfal terror
and confternation among them, fo that the fick were abandoned
by their neareft relations, left the calamity fhould
fpread by contagion, and left to perifli alone in fuch mifery
as till then had never been known among them. We had
fome reafon, however, to hope that they had found out a
fpecific to cure i t : during our flay upon the ifland we faw
none in whom it had made a great progrefs, and one who
went from us infe&ed, returned after a fhort time in perfect
health; and by this it appeared either that the difeafe had
cured itfelf, or that they were not unacquainted with the
virtues of fimples, nor implicit dupes to the fuperftitious
follies of their priefts. We endeavoured to learn the medical
qualities which they imputed to their plants, but our
knowlege of their language was too imperfect for us to*
fucceed. If we could have learnt their fpecific for the venereal
difeafe, if fuch they have, it would have been of great
advantage to us, for when we left the iiland-it bad been contracted
by more than half the people an board the fhip.
It is impoflible but that, in relating incidents, many particulars,
with refpedt to the cuftoms, opinions, and works of
thefe;