Exposure to the inclemency of the seasons, which
among ùs induces inflammatory disorders, brings on
with the Indian islanders chiefly fevers and dysenteries;
but it ought to be remembered, thaft as they
live in a climate far less variable, and, for them at
least, a much better climate than ours, diseases induced
from this cause are far less frequent there
than the parallel disorders in Europe.
The fevers which prevail are remittents and
intermittents brought on by marsh miasma, the
former often fatal, when in particular seasons
they prevail as epidemic. Contagious distempers
brought on by animal effluvia are quite unknown ;
and except the small-pox, the Indian islanders are
fortunately strangers to every species of pestilential
disorder of a fatal nature. To the opinion entertained
on this subject by the most accurate European
observers we may add the testimony of the
natives themselves, who, when the most dangerous
epidemic rages, never recur to contagion as the
upon the spot, he will cut the nose, for instance, so deep,
that the brain may be seen through the wound, or mangle a
foot or a leg in two or three pieces, &c. In all these cruel
mutilations, and even gelding itself, scarce any one dies,
though some of the persons thus maimed are above fifty or
sixty years of age; and the only remedy they use is, to put
the wounded part immediately into water, and after it has
bled a little, wash it and bind it up with linen cloths.” Harris’s
Collection o f Voyages and Travels, Vol. I. p. 743,
cause. So mysterious a cause, if it had existed,
could hardly have failed to have laid a deep hold
of minds so superstitious. For a contagious disorder
of this sort, I am not aware that any language
of the Archipelago lias even a name.
The most fatal disorder among the Indian islanders
is the small-pox. Of the manner or the
time in which it was introduced I can find no record.
It is probable that the Arabs brought it
with their commerce and religion, as the Europeans
did a still more loathsome disorder with theirs.
In the town of Yugyacarta on Java, where the
whole mortality is one in forty-five, one tenth of
all the children born die before fifteen years of age
of this disorder.
The venereal disease is frequent in every part of
the Indian islands, but particularly in Java. No
precise information can be obtained respecting
the time of its introduction. * The Javanese allege
the time of its introduction into their island to have
been that of the last Hindu king, Bro'wijoyo ; but
the death of that prince took place thirty-three years
* Within ten years of the first appearance of the .Portuguese
in the Archipelago, the disease had spread throughout
the whole « fit, according to Pigafetta.— “ Dans toutes les îles
de cet Archipel que nous avons visitées règne la maladie de
Saint-Job, et bien plus ici que par-tout ailleurs, où on l’appelle
jo r franchi ; c’est-à-dire, maladie Portugaise.’’ P. 215, 210.