Civilisation : its cause and cure and other essays / by Edward Carpenter.

  • Edward Carpenter
Date:
1921
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Civilisation : its cause and cure and other essays / by Edward Carpenter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of the New Zealanders, “ They enjoy perfect and uninterrupted health. In all our visits to their towns, where young and old, men and women, crowded about us. . . . we never saw a single person who appeared to have any bodily complaint, nor among the numbers we have seen naked did we once perceive the slightest eruption upon the skin, or any marks that an eruption had left behind.” These are pretty strong words. Of course diseases exist among such peoples, even where they have never been in contact with civilisation, but I think we may say that among the higher types of savages they are rarer, and nothing like so various and so prevalent as they are in our modern life ; while the power of recovery from wounds (which arc of course the most frequent form of disablement) is generally admitted to be something astonishing. Speaking of the Kaffirs, J. G. Wood says, ‘ Their state of health enables them to survive injuries which would be almost instantly fatal to any civilised European.” Mr. Frank Oates in his Diary 1 mentions the case of a man who was con¬ demned to death by the king. He was hacked down with axes, and left for dead. 4 What must have been intended for the coup dc grace was a cut in the back of the head, which had chipped a large piece out of the skull, and must have been meant to cut the spinal cord where it joins the brain. It had, however, been made a little higher than this, but had left such a wound as I should have thought that no one could have 1 Matabcle Land and the Victoria Falls, p. 209.
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