Healing Art

Periodic Crazes in Tahiti

From Our Own Correspondent

Papeete, Oct. 10.

ANY new and bizarre form of the art of healing always finds ready accept ance on Tahiti. The more unusual and fantastic the method, the more en thusiastic is the reception accorded it.

The present novelty is a procedure which is alleged to have come from China, by way of Paris. We are not in formed as to its official name; but, for want of a better term, it can be desig nated needle therapeutics.

The treatment consists of sticking needles into various parts of the body along the course of some trunk nerve.

According to the savants of this school, this procedure will relieve and eventually cure all the ills to which the flesh is heir.

Marvellous cures are always reported when a new vogue in therapeutics sweeps the Islands.

This was particularly true when, two years ago. a Roumanian “professor” took the island by storm with his system of eso- and exo-hydropathy, a starvation diet, and his assumption of profound wis dom.

The professor appeared to have an hypnotic influence over his followers, which keyed them up to an ecstatic fer vour, resembling that of the strange cult called holy hollers, which flourished in the United States during the early years of the century. Indeed, the professor’s European disciples (and there are many such) would become angry and hostile toward anyone who ventured to offer counsel or criticism.

In the course of a few weeks Papeete was full of pallid, hollow-eyed phantoms who, nevertheless, resolutely proclaimed that they were new men and women— as, undoubtedly, they were!

The inevitable consequences of the violent assaults on the human economy exacted by this regime, at length mani fested themselves. There were sudden deaths from heart failure, several pati ents became insane, and the increasing weakness of the others awakened them to the danger which threatened them.

The professor heard some very unpleas ant opinions of himself and his therapeu tics from those who had sufficient strength remaining to voice their indig nation. The most caustic remarks came from an elderly and very aristocratic English lady who was sojourning in the islands and had come under the profes sor’s spell. It is reported that her lan guage on this occasion departed from the cultured and classic idiom of Mayfair, and that she displayed a surprising knowledge of the rich vocabulary cur rent about the Indian docks and cele brated fish markets of London.

The professor was unperturbed.

He boasted to his intimates that he had had a very inexpensive and enjoy able stay in the islands. Soon after wards he departed—it is said, to Mexico— in search of new worlds to conquer.

Mr. Parkin Christian, a direct descend ant of Fletcher Christian, leader of the mutineers of the “Bounty” and founder of the colony of Pitcairn Island, recently arrived at Wellington. He said that he was of the fifth generation since Flet cher Christian, whose descendants now comprised a large family.