Native Welfare

How "Yankee Doctor" Saw Australian

By Toomboona

YOUTH, emerging from schools and universities, finds that the world and the people in, it are quite differ ent from the picture given them by pro fessors and schoolmasters. So, if ever any of them go out into New Guinea or the Islands, the students of Sydney Uni versity who listened to Professor Elkin’s recent address will surely find that in some of his remarks, the professor was slightly astray.

“PlM’s” editorial note on the subject (August) hits the nail on the head: “We have no record of even one person, who really knows and understands the Terri tories conditions, condemning the system in the manner of recent Australian critics.

None of the latter appears to know any thing whatever of the practical side of the problem.”

Who, then, can give us the practical side of the problem? One can think of no-one better qualified than Dr. S. M.

Lambert, of the Rockefeller Foundation and author of “A Yankee Doctor in Para dise.”

Dr. Lambert had no axe to grind, save in the role of “lobbyist for human health ”

Among the planters in Papua, New Guinea and the Solomons; with the New Zealand Administration of the Cook Islands and Samoa, and—with, the excep tion of a snob or two—with the British Administration in Fiji, his lobbying was successful. But not so with the Com monwealth Government. Even Governor Murray, in Papua, he found “polite but vague, with a smile that let me know that our work had been thrust upon him and that every hookworm we might find would bei an added insult to his adminis tration-something that would lead to trouble with the overlords in Australia.”

BEFORE going to Moresby, the doctor had been told that he needn’t fool with vthe villages; all the parasites were on the plantations. He found that actually the reverse was the case. Time

and again he notes that the plantation boys were healthier, happier, better muscled and brighter than their relatives who had stayed in the native villages The natives realised this themselves Otten he was able to pick out ex-planta tion boys in the villages because of their better-conditioned appearance.

Of his great survey work in Papua and New Guinea, he says: “ . . . the planters backed us all the way. In my weeks of preparation, I found that I had the Papuan Club behind me. That meant support from the ablest colonials in the South Pacific: Loudon, Bertie, Sefton, Jewel, Tom Nesbitt and a dozen more L co i? 1< ? n ’ t have moved a finger without the help of these men and their friends These were the forward ones who wanted native labour restored to health, to re vitalise races for whom, at that time there seemed no future but extinction.”

It was the same in the Solomons; while, in Fiji, Sir Maynard Hedstrom was a tower of strength; and in New Zealand were great Maoris like Sir Apirana Ngata Dr. E. P. Ellison and Sir Maui Pomare’

Of their work he says: “The surprising thing is that the Maori’s rise from death to life came about largely through the genius of certain Maoris, of one genera tion at least, who seized the opportunity and so brilliantly improved it that their zeal revived the flagging soul of a con quered people.” New Zealand’s medical work in Western Samoa was also “becom ing a model for other island groups.”

IN comparison, Australia’s record in her possessions and Mandated Territory is one of which none can be proud.

It seemed to Lambert that the Common wealth authorities were completely indif ferent to the native tendency to die out, however much the planters and the doc tors might want them to survive. Of the difficulties his Foundation encountered in Papua, Dr. Lambert says: “We were only there on sufferance, for the Australian Government chose to snub local authority Governor Murray was at his wits’ end to carry on his pinch-penny policy, with the aid of ships’ engineers and stewards whom he had made into roughly able Magistrates and District Officers.”

Just as admiration of the individual Australian sticks out plainly from the doctor’s book, so does his contempt for the niggardliness, crippling incompetence and lack of interest of the overlords of Canberra.

For years Dr. Lambert strove to get Australia interested in the school for native medical practitioners in Suva, which has revolutionised medical treat ment over a large area of the, South Pacific. He fondly hoped Australia would

contribute to the same extent as other Administrations, and would be pleased to send its quota of native students along.

Let him speak for himself:— “ a USTRALIA never sent any students . A from Papua or New Guinea; they still maintained that these natives were too ‘backward.’ I had worked in the jungle with Papuan and New Guinea boys, and I knew that they were no more backward than the inhabitants of the Solomon Islands and New Hebrides, who were represented with us from the first.

“I still feel that Australia, with her tremendous problem, will never make any progress with native health until she establishes some institution similar to the one in Suva—which is out of the question now, because they haven’t the proper set-up. Sydney has an admirable School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene—for whites. It lacks both the clinical material and the staff to cope with natives and native conditions. Once in a great while, this school will take a black boy, merely to exhibit him as a curiosity.”

When Dr. Lambert went to Papua, admittedly some years ago, he found the whole medical service pared down to “an excellent Chief Medical Officer with noth ing to work with, a Judgment Day pro phet in charge of the local hospital, and one physician for each of three far-flung districts. These five, with a couple of nurses and two European dispensers, were supposed to service the 90,000-odd square miles. The officer at Samarai was effi ciently modern; the other three were elderly hacks,”

DR. LAMBERT approved of the recruit ing supervision carried out by the British Administration in the Solo mons. and sums up as follows: “The recruiting of contract labour was once a curse, but more enlightened government has turned it into something of a bless ing; wise labour laws have made it so that a worker usually leaves the planta tion with his health better than when he came. The New Hebrides, where French planters serve drink, drugs and firearms to their native helpers, is an exception.”

In his final retrospective chapter, he says: “The problem of depopulation of natives in the Pacific need no longer exist. The formula for turning declining into increasing population has been devised and put into operation by British Administrators in Central Polynesia, in Polynesian New Zealand, in British Micronesia (the Gilberts), and in Mela nesian Fiji. American Samoans are increasing under the operation of the same general formula.”

That formula is native medical prac titioners and nurses who, under compe tent white supervision, take care of cur rent illnesses and educate their people in the prevention of disease; infant and child welfare; and a careful study of native customs on the part of civil Administrations, so that they may learn respect for the more wholesome aspects of the folk-lore that gave zest to the life of the native people.