allen upon a
set of people who, in spite of their high civilisation and many
excellences, had been so warped by the mistaken views presented to them
during childhood from generation to generation, that it was impossible to
see how they could ever clear themselves. Was there nothing which I
could say to make them feel that the constitution of a person's body was
a thing over which he or she had had at any rate no initial control
whatever, while the mind was a perfectly different thing, and capable of
being created anew and directed according to the pleasure of its
possessor? Could I never bring them to see that while habits of mind and
character were entirely independent of initial mental force and early
education, the body was so much a creature of parentage and
circumstances, that no punishment for ill-health should be ever tolerated
save as a protection from contagion, and that even where punishment was
inevitable it should be attended with compassion? Surely, if the
unfortunate Mahaina were to feel that she could avow her bodily weakness
without fear of being despised for her infirmities, and if there were
medical men to whom she could fairly state her case, she would not
hesitate about doing so through the fear of taking nasty medicine. It
was possible that her malady was incurable (for I had heard enough to
convince me that her dipsomania was only a pretence and that she was
temperate in all her habits); in that case she might perhaps be justly
subject to annoyances or even to restraint; but who could say whether she
was curable or not, until she was able to make a clean breast of her
symptoms instead of concealing them? In their eagerness to stamp out
disease, these people overshot their mark; for people had become so
clever at dissembling--they painted their faces with such consummate
skill--they repaired the decay of time and the effects of mischance with
such profound dissimulation--that it was really impossible to say whether
any one was well or ill till after an intimate acquaintance of months or
years. Even then the shrewdest were constantly mistaken in their
judgements, and marriages were often contracted with most deplorable
results, owing to the art with which infirmity had been concealed.

It appeared to me that the first step towards the cure of disease should
be the announcement of the fact to a person's near relations and friends.
If any one had a headache, he ought to be permitted within reasona