dreadful scars which
we sometimes saw, we should have supposed it to be much superior to the
art not only of their physicians, but of ours. We saw one man whose face
was almost entirely destroyed, his nose, including the bone, was
perfectly flat, and one cheek and one eye were so beaten in that the
hollow would almost receive a man's fist, yet no ulcer remained; and our
companion, Tupia, had been pierced quite through his body by a spear
headed with the bone of the sting-ray, the weapon having entered his
back, and come out just under his breast; but, except in reducing
dislocations and fractures, the best surgeon can contribute very little
to the cure of a wound; the blood itself is the best vulnerary balsam,
and when the juices of the body are pure, and the patient is temperate,
nothing more is necessary as an aid to nature in the cure of the worst
wound, than the keeping it clean.

Their commerce with the inhabitants of Europe has, however, already
entailed upon them that dreadful curse which avenged the inhumanities
committed by the Spaniards in America, the venereal disease. As it is
certain that no European vessel besides our own, except the Dolphin, and
the two that were under the command of Mons. Bougainville, ever visited
this island, it must have been brought either by one of them or by
us.[28] That it was not brought by the Dolphin, Captain Wallis has
demonstrated in the account of her voyage, and nothing is more certain
than that when we arrived, it had made most dreadful ravages in the
island. One of our people contracted it within five days after we went
on shore; and by the enquiries among the natives, which this occasioned,
we learnt, when we came to understand a little of their language, that
it had been brought by the vessels which had been there about fifteen
months before us, and had lain on the east side of the island. They
distinguished it by a name of the same import with _rottenness_, but of
a more extensive signification, and described, in the most pathetic
terms, the sufferings of the first victims to its rage, and told us that
it caused the hair and the nails to fall off, and the flesh to rot from
the bones; that it spread a universal terror and consternation among
them, so that the sick were abandoned by their nearest relations, lest
the calamity should spread by contagion, and left to perish alone in
such misery as till then had never been known among them. We had some
reason, however, to ho