il a change for the
better appeared. Idiots are not common. Consumption they call
"Moomoo;" and there were certain native doctors who were supposed to
be successful in spearing the disease, or rather the spirit causing
it. The doctor when sent for would come in, sit down before the
patient, and chant as follows:--

"Moomoo e! Moomoo e!
O le a ou velosia atu oe;"

which in English is--

"O Moomoo! O Moomoo!
I'm on the eve of spearing you."

Then he would rise up, flourish about with his spear over the head of
the patient, and leave the house. No one dared speak or smile during
the ceremony. Influenza is a new disease to the natives. They say that
the first attack of it ever known in Samoa was during the Aana war in
1830, just as the missionaries Williams and Barff, with Tahitian
teachers, first reached their shores. The natives at once traced the
disease to the foreigners and the new religion; the same opinion
spread through these seas, and especially among the islands of the New
Hebrides. Ever since there have been returns of the disease almost
annually. It is generally preceded by unsettled weather, and westerly
or southerly winds. Its course is generally from east to west. It
lasts for about a month, and passes off as fine weather and steady
trade-winds set in. In many cases it is fatal to old people and those
who have been previously weakened by pulmonary diseases. There was an
attack in May 1837, and another in November 1846, both of which were
unusually severe and fatal. They have a tradition of an epidemic,
answering the description of cholera, which raged with fearful
violence probably about eighty years ago. In 1849 hooping-cough made
its appearance, and prevailed for several months, among adults as well
as children. A good many of the children died. In 1851 another new
disease surprised the natives--viz. the mumps. It was traced to a
vessel from California collecting pigs, and soon spread all over the
group. Scarcely a native escaped. It answered the usual description of
the attack given in medical works, and passed off in ten days or a
fortnight. Hitherto they have been exempt from small-pox. Some years
ago the missionaries vaccinated all the natives, and continue to do so
as often as a supply of vaccine lymph is obtained.

_Medicine._--The Samoans in their heathenism seldom had recourse to
any internal remedy except an emetic, which they used after having
eaten a poisonous fish. Someti