The history of small-pox in Australia, 1788-1908 / compiled from various sources by J.H.L Clumpston.

Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The history of small-pox in Australia, 1788-1908 / compiled from various sources by J.H.L Clumpston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

    185/210 (page 161)
    To the Editor oj the Argus. Sir,—As the existence of small-pox on the Mun-ay 40 or more years ago, is a question to which a good deal of interest attaches, I must seek your indulgence for insertion in your columns of some remarks on Mr. Rusden's letter of the 80th ult. on that subject. In it, Mr. Rusden calls in question the veracity of the statement made by me, that both my brother and myself had witnessed a case of small-pox amongst the aborigines in about 1841 or 1842, and has proposed to me several questions whereby to test, not the correctness but the truthfulness of what I have advanced, to which, with your permission, I will now reply. This I should have done some days back, had it not been that I was desirous of obtaining further evidence on the subject. Such evidence I have fortunately been able to obtain from Mr. Elliget, whose letter you will perhaps be good enough to have printed with mine. It requires no comment, except that the country which Mr. Elliget refers to was a portion of my father's run, and the tribe the same amongst which I have seen small-pox. Before coming to the point, however, I will take this opportunity of pointing out as regards the date quoted by Mr. Rusden in his letter of 30th ult., to which in my former letter I drew attention as an error, that I find that I was wrong and Mr. Rusden quite correct. Two dates occurred in the same paragraph of Mr. Rusden's letter, and, writing hurriedly, my eye caught the wrong one, and hence my mistake. Fortunately however, I merely alluded to his date eyt passant, and it had no particular bearing on the subject of our original difference. On this question as to whether Sturt's failure to recognise small-pox was sufficient to invalidate the statements made by Mitchell and Eyre to the contrary effect, I have no doubt my arguments have been found by Mr. Rusden to be conclusive, as though he has returned to the general question, he has been discreetly silent on this particular, a circumstance not to be wondered at, as he must perceive, one would think, that the position he originally took up amounted to a declara- tion that, because Sturt had not seen small-pox on the Murray when he was there, theiefore Eyre, Toplin, Mr. Bevericlge, and myself were mistaken when we asserted that we had seen the disease or its traces at subsequent periods. It is also noticeable that Sturt himself, though not on the best of terms with Mitchell, and somewhat given to show up the shortcomings of that officer, never, as far as I can learn, attempted to traverse the adverse statements of the Major and Mr. Eyre in this particular, though he had ample opportunity for doing so. To proceed, then, with the matter in hand, I have asserted in my former letter (though not with the details now given) that in 1841 or 1842, my brother and I, and some of our men, saw on my father's station an aboriginal child suffering in the most unmistak£.ble manner from small-pox ; that the mother or the child expressed great anxiety about its life—an anxiety which never occurs in cases of the ordinary bora, the only other skin disease which I have noticed amongst the blacks ; that the child was brought to my head station, laid in a mia-mia of boughs specially made to exclude the sun from it, and that it remained at the station a day or two at least. As to the ultimate fate of the child I never knew, or have forgotten it. As what Mr. Rusden has written unmis- takably calls in question the bona fides of this statement, and leads to the impression that what I have advanced might be a mere fabrication, designed to sustain an argument, I think it right to remark that about three months back and consequently long previous to the discussion of this question in yourcolumns,! mentioned in conversation to Mr. Henry F. Gurner, of St.Kilda,thefact of my brother and myself having seen a case of small pox as related, with some other facts connected with the subject. This conversation, Mr. Gurner assures me, he distinctly remembers, and to him I have much pleasure in referring Mr. Rusden. Consequent on the assumption that the statement made by me was an untruthful one, Mr. Rusden proceeds to put to me what to his mind are evidently crucial questions con- cerning it; as whether the medical men of the country were consulted, and whether the fact was reported to Mr. Latrobe, the superintendent, intimating that unless some steps were taken, and that unless I am able to sup])ort ray assertion with skilled evidence, it must be relegated to a certain class of rumours which he particularizes. Before answering these questions, I think it desirable to remark that tliis necessity for medical and skilled evidence does not seem to have suggested itself to Mr. Rusden in the case of Sturt, McLeay, or Eyre, and yet, as far as I am aware, the unsupported evidence of those gentlemen has not in any point of view, perhaps, any greater claim to reliability than my own. Mitchell's party had a medical assistant attached to it, but Mr. Rusden has no reliance on Mitchell. It may also be noticed that in his letter to you of 23rd January, Mr. Rusden deferentially throws overboard your medical corres- pondent M.D., who relates that he had seen blacks on the Edwards scarred and blind from small-pox ; so that, as far as can be seen, so long as statements coincide with Mr. Rusden's views he is not by any means hypercritical concerning their source ; that he accords to them a value to which medical testimony must not aspu'e if it point to con- clusions at variance with his own. When such is the case, when vvdtnesses relate incon- venient facts, an accuracy fit suddenly comes over him, and he asks for proois, which he