which in English is—­

    “O Moomoo!  O Moomoo! 
    I’m on the eve of spearing you.”

Then he would rise up, flourish about with his spear over the head of the patient, and leave the house.  No one dared speak or smile during the ceremony.  Influenza is a new disease to the natives.  They say that the first attack of it ever known in Samoa was during the Aana war in 1830, just as the missionaries Williams and Barff, with Tahitian teachers, first reached their shores.  The natives at once traced the disease to the foreigners and the new religion; the same opinion spread through these seas, and especially among the islands of the New Hebrides.  Ever since there have been returns of the disease almost annually.  It is generally preceded by unsettled weather, and westerly or southerly winds.  Its course is generally from east to west.  It lasts for about a month, and passes off as fine weather and steady trade-winds set in.  In many cases it is fatal to old people and those who have been previously weakened by pulmonary diseases.  There was an attack in May 1837, and another in November 1846, both of which were unusually severe and fatal.  They have a tradition of an epidemic, answering the description of cholera, which raged with fearful violence probably about eighty years ago.  In 1849 hooping-cough made 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 pharmacopoeia 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 the sick.