French and English, the Tahitians called venereal disease), by Mr. de Bougainville[1] in 1767, Cook remarks: "These people are, and were before Europeans visited them, very subject to scrofulous disease, so that a seaman might easily mistake one disorder for another."[2] And might not less easily, it may be thought, fail to recognise the true nature of leprosy when he saw it.
Few voyagers, in fact, had any real facilities for gaining a real insight into the domestic life of the South Sea Islanders. Their visits were brief. They did not possess an adequate knowledge of the language, though they might easily gain a smattering which served but too often to mislead them in their conclusions. Saving as to natural history and botany, their narrations have usually (until quite recent times and with the notable exceptions of Labillardiere and Forster) been compiled by the leaders or sailing masters of the expeditions rather than by the special scientific observers; and this applies more particularly to subjects of medical interest. The naval surgeons of the last century were often persons of inferior attainments and rank; and medicine and surgery were but crude studies.
It is in the records of travellers who have dwelt on shore amongst the islanders, therefore, that references must be sought if one would learn anything connected about their inner life and social condition. Missionaries, traders, castaways, and runaways are the classes who, if they had possessed the necessary medical knowledge, might have thrown much light upon the physical condition of the natives eighty or ninety years ago. Such records as they have left, however, do not enrich our knowledge in these particulars. The "Duff" missionaries who sojourned in Tonga suffered too chequered an existence to occupy
