Church Mission Station, Yelta, Lower Murray,
26th November 1860.
Gentlemen,
In reply to the communication of your secretary bearing date the 15th October, I have the honor to inform you that I have no statistics of the diseases prevalent amongst the Aborigines; of ten that have died here during the last four years, there have died of consumption, three; of debility and purulent scabies, one; inflammation of lungs, one; hardening of the stomach, one; venereal, &c., one; old age, two; and one from a spear wound. The three first were men, the second a boy, the others women, with the exception of the one speared, who was an elderly man.
I do not feel qualified to draw up a special report upon the subject, but, for the information of your Board, will mention the diseases which I have observed to be most prevalent amongst the Aborigines in this district.
I will first state that the treatment I adopt is the homœopathic, the medicines being administered in a solution of the tincture or the crude drug in suitable doses. In all curable cases this treatment has been invariably successful, and in the face of many disadvantages, smoking, unsuitable diet, and such like.
The medical treatment the Aborigines get generally is very little. At the various stations salts is the almost universal remedy for all their complaints, and, I doubt not, is often the source of much after-suffering to them, producing hæmorrhoids, &c.
Inflammation of the lungs is of frequent occurrence, and, when not fatal in itself, is generally the commencement of pulmonary affections, which terminate fatally after a year or two of lingering sickness.
The violent exertion they undergo at corrobborees, combined with sleeping upon wet ground, causes them to take cold, which generally produces inflammation of the lungs; this affection being more frequent in the summer, when they make their camps upon the flooded ground, and sleep upon it almost as soon as the water is off—the coolness and moisture being grateful to them at the time; this I think is one fruitful cause of their sicknesses. Influenza is prevalent amongst them at times, generally at the commencement of winter and at its close. It has proved fatal in several cases. Where it has been combined with inflammation of the lungs or enlargement of the liver, I have known a few cases which terminated fatally in each instance.
Dropsy is not unfrequent. I know of one case in which the woman, after lying for some months very ill and becoming of a great size, recovered, and is now her usual size and free from the disease. As she was not at this station, I had no opportunity of administering medicine to her. A man died of this complaint a few months since, about twenty miles above Euston.
Heart Disease.—Two men died last summer at a station on the Darling, and their deaths were attributed to this disease.
Apoplexy.—I have known one well-marked instance, and the two cases above mentioned may have been similar instances. Sudden deaths are not unfrequent.
