Diseases.
Long before the Europeans came to mix with the Aboriginal natives of Australia the latter were afflicted with various diseases—some resembling those that are generally regarded as having had their origin in Europe and Asia. They had, as a common complaint, ophthalmia, brought on by exposure to the weather. Over the dusty dry plains of the interior, which cast back the rays of the sun with an intensity that cannot be believed until it is experienced, they were sometimes compelled to wander; and the heat, and the dust, and the stinging of the flies and mosquitos, almost blinded them.
"The poor winking people of New Holland," as they are called in Dampier's Voyage, "have their eyelids always half-closed, to keep the flies out of their eyes, they being so troublesome here that no fanning will keep them from coming to one's face; and without the assistance of both hands to keep them off, they will creep into one's nostrils, and mouth too, if the lips are not shut very close. So that from their infancy, being thus annoyed with these insects, they do never open their eyes as other people, and therefore they cannot see far, unless they hold up their heads, as if they were looking at somewhat over them."[1] It was on the 4th January 1688, in the height of the Australian summer, that Dampier saw the natives of the north-west coast, and his straightforward, uncompromising language was no doubt justified by what he saw.
Sir Thomas Mitchell found a native on the River Bogan afflicted with ophthalmia, and again on the Lachlan one almost blind from ophthalmia or filth.[2] The complaint, combined with neglect and exposure, sometimes causes a native to lose the sight of one or both eyes. In the low, flat country drained by the Murray, Murrumbidgee, and Lachlan, this disease is common.
A very fatal disease, which nearly all writers describe as small-pox, was prevalent very many years ago, and carried off great numbers. Mr. Gason says that the Cooper's Creek natives call it Moora-moora, and that they were evidently subject to it before coming into contact with Europeans, as many old men and women are pock-marked in the face and body. They state that a great number died of this disease; and Mr. Gason has been shown, on the top of a sandhill, seventy-four graves, said to be those of men, women, and children who perished by this fell disorder.[3]
- ↑ Dampier's Voyages, 1688, vol. I., p. 464.
- ↑ Eastern Australia, vol. I., p. 197.
- ↑ The Dieyerie Tribe, 1874, p. 28.
