European impact on
Maori Health
By Ben, Daniel, Fiona, Nathan and Su Jin
Contents
1. Overall Health
2. Scrofula
3. Venereal Diseases (STD)
4. Rewarewa & tiko tiko
Overall health
Before the Europeans came to New Zealand
Maori still had diseases but they used religious
beliefs of spirits to understand their ailment.
When the Europeans came they brought more
diseases with them. The consequence of this
caused the Maori population to drop; which
meant their next generation had less people.
Some of the diseases were fatal as Maori had
never experienced things like measles, smallpox
and other types of diseases unknown to their
immune systems.
Scrofula
Scrofula is a type of tuberculosis specific to
the lymph nodes. This in turn caused
swelling and sores in the neck area,
eventually deficits the immune system and
attacks bones and tendons; cripples the
victim and finally kills them. Scrofula is
spread through contaminated milk from a
cow with the disease. The disease could
have came from cows that were on board
the Endeavour to provide meat and milk for
the journey.
Scrofula
Venereal diseases (STD)
Venereal diseases cause women to become
infertile, which lowers the population, and
these diseases may kill people too.
Missionaries found that Maori girls started
prostitution as young as 8, which further led
to more women with venereal diseases,
therefore stunted the growth of the Maori
population.
Other diseases: Rewharewha
and tiko tiko
Shipping journals are good sources of information,
as they carry the details of events a long time ago
that we may otherwise not find out about. From
these journals we know that in 1790 a
respiratory disease called rewharewha broke out
in Mercury bay, killing many members of the
hapu. Also, in 1795, in the bay of islands, an
illness called tiko tiko broke out. Maori
described it as spreading very fast- "like fire
among the flax"
Overall impact
These diseases had an extremely negative impact on the
Maori populace and damaged their numbers badly.
There was no cure for most diseases at the time- both
Maori and Europeans relied on superstition, magic and
religion to try and relieve the symptoms of illness.
Some herbs help relieve pain or ease infections but
modern cures weren’t available until the 1900’s. And
new weapons such as guns would kill more people in
war. All these diseases and new technology decimated
the Maori population to a fraction of what it was.
Bibliography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81ori_peopl
e#Decline_and_revival
Face to Face text book.