Strange Native Disease

From Our Own Correspondent

Mangaia, Jan. 10.

NOT all the germs in Cl are known as yet to the Health Department’s philosophy, in spite of NMP’s and cottage hospitals.

The mysterious “maki pou toto” still claims many victims. This is a painless (and seemingly-causeless) haemorrhage, via rectum. The absence of pain, and usually absence of temperature, is very deceiving, for the complaint. is serious—

I have seen natives die of the resultant anaemia.

There seems to be no cure —operation is useless. The patient does not feel ill, merely languid. “Maki pou toto” can attack anyone Europeans are not exempt.

There is some well-founded reason to believe that the condition may begin with calcium-deficiency in diet, for Cook Is landers live on taro and tinned meat; have few “green” vegetables; almost no fresh milk at all, and their life, even in good times, is no picnic upon the outer islands.

Here is immense room for improvement.

Deficiency diseases take very unusual forms in the Cl at times.

Administrator Yves Gavon and Colonial Inspector Barthes, both well known in New Caledonia and who both served under Vichy regime, have been reinstated in the Colonial, Office list.