Five Years Have Not Found Cause

ack Magic or redity?

Of Kuru

Kuru, the peculiar shaking disease that is killing natives in the Forea area of New Guinea’s Eastern Highlands, is now being considered as a problem for medical experts. Four years ago there was doubt as to whether it was not one for psychologists.

HIS confusion may have been the reason why medical investigations did not begin til comparatively recently. The cumstances surrounding the urrence of the disease have been peculiar as the disease itself.

Curu—or sorcery, which is how ; natives describe the disease— -5 been the subject of medical estigation for the last 12 months, Vincent Zigas, Government dical Officer at Kainantu, first de a medical report on it in member, 1956, after going to the apa area (among the Forea) in tober. le reported that it was rather

similar to encephalitis and Parkin son’s Disease, with the patient gradually losing control of his body over a period of months, shaking and falling about, until a coma and eventually death occurred about nine or 10 months after the onset.

Peculiarly, the disease appeared to be localised to the Forea. a primitive group south of Kainantu. who still practice cannibalism. It struck mostly woman and children and was possibly hereditary.

This localisation made the problem of special medical interest, apart from the normal anxiety of the Administration to do something for the victims.

As shown in this article, although the disease or condition called kuru by the Forea people, has been known or studied by Europeans for about five years it is only recently that it has been considered news-worthy in Aus tralia and that is because, in recent months, some reporter has coined the name Laughing Death, or Laughing Disease.

The idea of these people laughing themselves to death seems to have tickled public fancy until this, the minor, early symptom, has obscured the full sober story.

This has enraged a number of people in New Guinea—including Dr. Vincent Zigas (who has been responsible for most of the medical research into the disease) and his wife. When Dr. Zigas was interviewed last July by R W Robson (RIM, Aug. p. 129) he did not, in fact, mention laughing as a symptom at all. And in early November, in a letter to the ' Sydney Morning Herald ", Mr* Zigas inferred that none of the Forea considered kuru a laughing matter and that "Port Moresby"' re porters who wrote that Okapa hospital walls shook with hysterical laughter were merely drawing on their imagina tions.

This year, after work had already been done on the problem, Dr.

Zigas invited the help of a young visiting American doctor, Dr. D.

Carleton Gajdusek, who went to Okapa. Other scientists, some from

the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, soon came into the picture, and many parts of the question have since been studied, so far without arriving at a solu tion. About five natives continue to die every month.

A full clinical medical report on the disease is shortly to be pub lished in Australia, written by Doctors Zigas and Gajdusek. r:E first newspaper report of the Forea problem was pub lished about May this year, but it and subsequent reports aroused no real interest.

Not until recently, when a news paper correspondent coined the new name of “Laughing Death” for kuru, did the public become aware of it. This is not an accurate name for it, but it is one that is likely to stick, even if, one day, kuru is called Zigas’ Disease —as there is a chance that it might.

The “Laughing Death” descrip tion refers to one of the earlier symptoms, when the patient’s emotions appear to be upset, as well as his physical equilibrium, so that he is more easily depressed and he more easily laughs.

There is another name that fits the requirements far better than that.

It is “guria sorcery”—from the Pidgin English word guria, mean ing earthquake or shaking—and it was first used in print by an anthropologist, Dr. Ronald Berndt.

To Dr. Berndt credit should probably go as the first man to describe the disease (Dr. Zigas is first to give a clinical description).

Dr. Berndt and his wife, Catherine Berndt, were working among the Forea between October, 1951 and April, 1952, when they saw the effects of kuru. Dr.

Berndt then was doing some work

for Sydney University Departmer of Anthropology, and was intereste in a Cargo Cult movement whic had passed through the Easter Highlands.

The Cargo Cult had probabl started with the arrival of the fin Europeans in the Highlands in tt early 1930’5, and it had built n and spread until just after the wa

hen it quickly lost its force, with it apparently ever having become serious problem.

The development of the Cult nong the Forea probably occurred rer that 20-year period, although ily for a short time had it fected any one large group.

In a scientific paper, a summary which was read at an ANZAAS inference in Sydney in 1952, and hich was published in full in ceania in September, 1952, Dr. srndit referred to a “zona wind” a “ghost wind” (presumably not real wind, but rather a mani station of mass hysteria) which is believed by the people to occur the land of the Forea and their jighbours at the time of the Cargo fit.

When this wind “blew”, every >dy started to shiver and shake, id once a village was possessed by the villagers continued to shiver voluntarily for an undetermined riod. They built a storehouse and llowed various rituals to appease e spirit in the wind.

Dr. Berndt said this was a llective phenomenon and indivi lals didn’t appear to be troubled th it. He said this type of ivering had been observed among imitives before—with even reports aong the New Zealand Maoris at .e time.

But the important point Dr. ;rndt made in this 1952 paper is that the Forea’s shivering and aking with the effects of the host wind”, was similar to—but stinguished from “a shaking ;kness caused through sorcery”.

The latter was kuru. sf Oceania, in March, 1954, Dr.

Berndt drew in more detail the differences between the ghost nd of the Cargo Cult and the ler (kuru) variety, which, he said, as also termed guria in Pidgin glish, but allegedly brought about rough sorcery”. auria sorcery (the term is his), s comparatively common, he said.

Tt involves partial paralysis and ;k of muscular control; the at :ks become more frequent and >re intense and finally lead to ith.

Tn the cases observed in the >gu and Busarasa-Moge districts ' subjects could walk with the aid sticks and with the help of snds; there were involuntary itchings, a feeling of abnormal dness, dilation of the eyes, which peared to be glazed, and lack of itrol over the limbs. Despite iscular difficulty in uttering words ‘y did not appear to be mentally ected, although cases inferring s have been recorded.”

Dr. Berndt described the “ghost id” of the Cargo Cult as being Jhtly different, in that th e vering occurred intermittently ;r a period, but otherwise it was : recurrent and did not become ensified.

Dr. Berndt had no firm explana tion to make for the “ghost wind”, and suggested that an explanation might be only fully made on a psychological level. Or it might have been a manifestation of hysteria, or something else.

He did not attempt to explain guria sorcery— which is not surpris ing, since the medical men have not been able to either, after a much longer investigation.

But it is surprising to realise how two such similar phenomena could exist side by side in the one area one apparently an entirely new disease, the other something else again. The situation has invited confusion, and patrol officers have in the past, not unexpectedly,

worried about guria sorcery as some kind of manifestation of a fear of sorcery by the native.

Meanwhile, it is understood that Dr. Berndt has not yet finished with his considerations of guria sorcery, and soon hopes to publish two further referenies to it, one in an

overseas journal.

Stuart Inder.

t Leuatea Lusitini Sio, of Samoa, was ordained as a minister of the Pacific Islanders’ Congregational Church at Auckland by the Rev.

R. L. Challis on November 27, and will be his assistant in Auckland.

Leuatea is the first Samoan to be ordained in this church. His father and grandfather were pastors in Samoa.