its appearance, and prevailed for several months, among adults as well
as children. A good many of the children died. In 1851 another new
disease surprised the natives--viz. the mumps. It was traced to a
vessel from California collecting pigs, and soon spread all over the
group. Scarcely a native escaped. It answered the usual description of
the attack given in medical works, and passed off in ten days or a
fortnight. Hitherto they have been exempt from small-pox. Some years
ago the missionaries vaccinated all the natives, and continue to do so
as often as a supply of vaccine lymph is obtained.

_Medicine._--The Samoans in their heathenism seldom had recourse to
any internal remedy except an emetic, which they used after having
eaten a poisonous fish. Sometimes juices from the bush were tried; at
other times the patient drank on at water until it was rejected; and,
on some occasions, mud, and even the most unmentionable filth, was
mixed up and taken as an emetic draught. Latterly, as their
intercourse with Tongans, Fijians, Tahitians, and Sandwich Islanders
increased, they made additions to their _pharmacopœia_ of juices from
the bush. Each disease had its particular physician. Shampooing and
anointing the affected part of the body with scented oil by the native
doctors was common; and to this charms were frequently added,
consisting of some flowers from the bush done up in a piece of native
cloth and put in a conspicuous place in the thatch over the patient.

The advocates of _kinnesipathy_ would be interested in finding, were
they to visit the South Seas, that most of their friction, percussion,
and other manipulations, were in vogue there ages ago, and are still
practised. Now, however, European medicines are eagerly sought after;
so much so, that every missionary is obliged to have a dispensary, and
to set apart a certain hour every day to give advice and medicine to