Abstract
In 1981, when addressing the “burning question” of the integrated study of health and medicine in Africa, Gwyn Prins noted the “striking ... retreat from certainty” which has occurred in the study of the social history of medicine and the “introspection and doubt” which afflicts anthropological and historical studies in the same area (Prins 1981). The problems created by this confusion for the non-medically qualified, non-anthropologist geographer, who has not made a formal study of illness and misfortune are considerable. The situation is not improved by the “clashing conceptual, methodological, and philosophical perspectives characterizing present-day human geography” (Pred 1982: 157).
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Notes
It is not possible to now establish without question the pre-colonial disease pattern, but it can be inferred from detailed medical studies in villages with little access to medical services. Sturt and Stanhope (1968) and Lewis (1975) are such studies.
See also Lewis (1975) and, for a pre-war observation Wedgewood (1934).
The term “epidemic era” was coined first by Scragg (1977).
Dan Tyson, who recently completed 12 months of fieldwork in Gweligum, an Abelam village near Maprik, reports older people distinguishing between present-day measles and a pre-contact “measles” which killed many people. The extent and demographic repercussions of the circa 1890 epidemic deserves more attention.
New Guinea Annual Report 1936–37. The report on deaths at Yapunda comes from correspondence between G.A.V. Stanley and J.N. Marshall of Oil Search, 25 July 1935, Stanley Papers, Box 9, University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) Library.
New Guinea Annual Report 1937–38: 55.
New Guinea Annual Report 1932–33.
New Guinea Annual Report 1938–39.
New Guinea Annual Report 1937–38.
New Guinea Annual Report 1935–36.
Allen (1983) uses fragmentary census material brought together from three archives and from papers in the personal possession of retired officers, to reconstruct population change between 1941 and 1945 in the Torricelli foothills.
Notes made by G.A.V. Stanley, from the Village Book. Stanley was sheltering from rain in the village and read through the Village Book for something to do. All village books were destroyed during the Pacific War. Stanley Papers, Diary “I”, File 9, Box 7, UPNG Library.
Interview with John S. Milligan, South Caulfield, Melbourne, 2 December 1982.
“Wanali village was first visited in 1928 and since has been visited many times by patrols and by geologists engaged in the search for oil and there had been no cause to anticipate trouble.” Pacific Island Monthly, 15 August 1939: 37.
J.K. McCarthy, Patrol Report, 1936–37, Report of a Patrol to the Warn, Muihan and Urat Areas, 8 January 1936 to 18 February 1936. Pacific Manuscripts Bureau microfilm PMB616.
Stan Christian was a medical asssistant in the Sepik district between 1915 and 1942. Following the war, he worked extensively on malaria in the highlands. He died in 1984. Just before his death Mr Christian talked about his Sepik experiences in an interview with Donald Denoon and myself.
C.N. Sinnamon, DADH HQ ANGAU, Australian Military Forces, Hygiene Inspection: Lae-Wewak-Aitape ANGAU War Diary, 7 September 1945. Document 1/10/1, Australian War Memorial Museum. It is likely this comment reflects heavily the opinions of government officers serving in the area before the war.
McCarthy (1963). This event has never been investigated for its impact on village life. It did cause the change in location of a large number of villages. Deaths directly due to the earthquake appear to have been relatively few, with more in the west than the east. Australians who were in the area describe the experience as the most terrifying of their lives, including wartime experiences behind Japanese lines.
D.M. Fienberg, Patrol Report Aitape No.4 of 1943/44, Kombio, Warn, Urat, National Archives of Papua New Guinea. Fienberg, who later as D.M. Fenbury became Secretary of the Department of the Administrator in Papua New Guinea, was a graduate of the University of Western Australia, one of the few field officers with university education during this period.
Government officers who had visited the area before the war wrote of the “pitiful state” of people when they re-entered the area following the defeat of the Japanese. They recommended the Australian Army’s RAP at Yambes village should be kept open after light aircraft evacuation for Australian casualties became possible from Balif. Most patients treated at Yambes were not kept in a ward because of lack of food supplies. Rather they visited for one or two days en masse by village, when notified by ANGAU officers. See Patrol Report Aitape No. 3 of 1944–45, Urat Area, National Archives of Papua New Guinea.
D.M. Fienberg ibid. Fienberg wrote four foolscap typed pages subtitled “Native Disaffection and the Missions”, in which he accused the German missionaries of turning villagers against the government for political reasons, interfering in traditional ceremonies and marriages, and alienating land. He provided detailed evidence of catechists leading villagers against the mission and the government and contrasted the Aitape situation with the Vanimo area, where American priests administered the mission, and where village people remained law abiding and “loyal”.
In 1945 John Milligan wrote, “It is with “My tongue in my cheek”, that I have included pit latrines as part of the installations in rebuilding villages. Pit latrines at their best are not the most efficient. Like the enforcing of medical treatment, it will have to be constantly supervised, and penal sanctions of the NAR applied, if they are to be kept in a sanitary condition. Their own methods of using streams or isolated patches of bush were, in the past, seemingly efficient, but with the higher incidence of dysentery during the Jap occupation, this becomes too dangerous - not that pit latrines are in any way perfect - but they are considered the “lesser of two evils”.” Letter to HQ Northern Region from District Officer, Aitape, 1 August 1945, ANGAU War Diary, ibid.
Stanley Papers, Box 9 UPNG Library. Oil Search geologists prided themselves on their good health in the field and used the latest drugs available. Jack Fryer, a surveyor with the company, described to me how after a day’s work he religiously had a hot bath using germicidal soap. A folding canvas bath was carried by his party for this purpose. He suffered no tropical ulcers or other serious illness. During the war when such luxuries were impossible he became seriously ill with scrub typhus and other members of his party developed dysentery. Interview, Cairns, 22 November 1976.
Rabaul Times, 26 June 1933.
Interview, Stan Christian, Canberra 1983.
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Allen, B.J. (1989). Infection, Innovation and Residence: Illness and Misfortune in the Torricelli Foothills from 1800. In: Frankel, S., Lewis, G. (eds) A Continuing Trial of Treatment. Culture, Illness, and Healing, vol 14. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2731-5_2
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