13 страница. The cook on the government boat was an aboriginal Australian from Northern Australia

The cook on the government boat was an aboriginal Australian from Northern Australia. He had been trained on a military craft as a dietitian. Nearly all his teeth were lost. It is of interest that while the native Aborigines had relatively perfect teeth, this man who was a trained dietitian for the whites had lost nearly all his teeth from tooth decay and pyorrhea.

In the group of Aborigines so far reported, there were many who had come from the interior districts of Australia and many who had always lived near the coast. These two types of districts provided quite different types of foods. Those near the coast were able to obtain animal life from the sea, including fish, dugong or sea cow, a great variety of shell fish, and some sea plants. Those from the interior districts could not obtain animal life of the sea, but did obtain animal life of the land which was eaten with their plant foods in each case. It was quite important to reach a group of Aborigines who had always lived inland and who were on a reservation inland. This contact was made with the group at a government reservation called Cherbourg. A typical group of individuals was examined. Of forty-five individuals with 1,236 teeth, 42.5 per cent of the teeth had been attacked by tooth decay. For the women, this constituted 43.7 per cent; for the men, 64.6 per cent; and for the children, 5.6 per cent. Of all of the individuals here examined 64.5 per cent had dental caries. It is of interest that many of these men had worked on white men's cattle ranches. While the adults showed 11.7 per cent to have deformed dental arches, this rose to 50 per cent for the children of the group. We were informed that in all of these groups tuberculosis was taking a very heavy toll. In Fig. 58, upper left, will be seen a boy with a superating tubercular gland of the axilla; at the right, a girl with a fistula draining pus onto the outside of the face from an abscessed tooth; below, deformed legs and a girl with tubercular glands of the neck.

A reservation situated on the coast where sea foods were available might be expected to make available a particular type of nutrition through sea foods. The individuals in a reservation for the Aborigines at Tweed Heads, which is so situated, were studied. Of the twenty-seven individuals examined, 89 per cent had dental caries. Of their 774 teeth, 39.7 per cent had been attacked by dental caries. For the women, this amounted to 62.5 per cent; for the men, 70.9 per cent; and for the children, 20.8 per cent. Most of these children had been born in this environment while their parents were being fed, largely, the foods provided by the government and mission. In this group, 83.4 per cent of the children had deformed dental arches, and 33.3 per cent of the adults.

An interesting incident was brought to my attention in one of the Australian reservations where the food was practically all supplied by the government. I was told by the director in charge, and in further detail by the other officials, that a number of native babies had become ill while nursing from their mothers. Some had died. By changing the nutrition to a condensed whole milk product, the babies recovered. When placed back on their mother's breast food they again became ill. The problem was: Why was not their mothers' milk adequate? I was later told by the director of a condition that had developed in the pen of the reservation's hogs which were kept to use up the scraps and garbage from the reservation's kitchens. He reported that one after another the hogs went down with a type of paralysis and could not get up. The symptoms were suggestively like vitamin A deficiency in both the babies and the hogs, and indicated the treatment.

The rapid degeneration of the Australian Aborigines after the adoption of the government's modern foods provides a demonstration that should be infinitely more convincing than animal experimentation. It should be a matter not only of concern but deep alarm that human beings can degenerate physically so rapidly by the use of a certain type of nutrition, particularly the dietary products used so generally by modern civilization.

The child life among the Aborigines of Australia proved to be exceedingly interesting. Children develop independence very young and learn very early to take care of themselves. Mothers are very affectionate and show great concern when their children are not thriving. Two typical mothers with their children are shown in Fig. 59. These children, as suggested in the picture, were keenly interested in everything that I did, but were not alarmed or frightened.

FIG. 59. Typical Aborigine mothers with their children.

The wonderful wisdom of these primitive people was attested by the principal of the public school at Palm Island. A mother died and her nursing infant was taken care of by its maternal grandmother, who had not recently given birth to a child. She proceeded to carry out the primitive formula for providing breast food by artificial means. Her method was to make an ointment of the fresh bodies of an insect which made its nest in the leaves of a certain tree. This she rubbed on her breast and in a short time produced milk liberally for this foster child. I was shown the type of insect, photographed its nest and the colony inside when the nest was opened. The people who vouched for this circumstance declared that they had seen the entire procedure and knew the facts to be as stated. They further stated that this was common knowledge among the Aborigines.

Another important source of information regarding the Aborigines of Australia was provided by a study of the skeletal material and skulls in the museums at Sydney and Canberra, particularly the former. I do not know the number of skulls that are available there for study, but it is very large. I examined many and found them remarkably uniform in design and quality. The dental arches were splendidly formed. The teeth were in excellent condition with exceedingly little dental caries. A characteristic of these skulls was the evidence of a shortage of material for those that had been transferred to a museum from the interior arid plains country. Those skulls, however, that had come from coastal areas where sea foods were available, show much more massive dimensions of the general pattern. In Fig. 60 will be seen typical skulls showing the normal dental arches and general design of the head. It is of interest to note the very heavy orbital ridges which characterize this race.

FIG. 60. The buried skulls throughout Australia provide a dependable record of their physical excellence and splendid facial and dental arch forms. In the lower pictures are shown the skull dome of a typical Australian Aborigine for comparison with that of the recently discovered Peking man who possibly lived a million years ago.

I have previously referred to a report by Professor Weidenreich regarding the resemblance of the Australian native's skulls to those of the recently discovered Peking man in the caves of China. In Fig. 60 are two views for comparison. The skull at the left is that of an Australian primitive photographed in a museum in Sydney, and an outline of the Peking skull is shown at the right. Professor Weidenreich has emphasized the observations that when three skulls are put in series, namely, the Australian primitive, the Peking skull and a chimpanzee skull, the Peking skull appears to be about half way between the two in design and developmental order. The Australian primitive's skull is higher in the crown, showing much greater brain capacity. The supra-orbital depressions are less deep in the Peking than in the chimpanzee, and still less deep in the Australian primitive. The supra-orbital ridges which produce the prominent eyebrows are less pronounced in the Australian primitive than in the Peking man, and still more prominent in the chimpanzee. The prominent supra-orbital ridges of the chimpanzee face are shown in Fig. 48.

The age of the Peking skulls has been variously placed from several hundred thousand to a million years. A distinguished anthropologist has stated that the Australian primitives are the only people living on the earth today that could be part of the first race of mankind. It is a matter of concern that if a scale were extended a mile long and the decades represented by inches, there would apparently be more degeneration in the last few inches than in the preceding mile. This gives some idea of the virulence of the blight contributed by our modern civilization.

The foods available for these people are exceedingly limited in variety and quantity, due to the absence of rains, and unfertility of the soil. For plant foods they used roots, stems, leaves, berries and seeds of grasses and a native pea eaten with tissues of large and small animals. The large animals available are the kangaroo and wallaby. Among the small animals they have a variety of rodents, insects, beetles and grubs, and wherever available various forms of animal life from the rivers and oceans. Birds and birds' eggs are used where available. They are able to balance their rations to provide the requisites for splendid body building and body repair. In several parts of Australia, which originally supported a large population of the primitives, none are left except a few score in reservations. These also are rapidly disappearing. Their fertility has been so greatly reduced that the death rate far exceeds the birth rate.

This group provides evidence of exceptional efficiency in obeying the laws of Nature through thousands of years, even in a parched land that is exceedingly inhospitable because of the scant plant foods for either men or animals. While the Aborigines are credited with being the oldest race on the face of the earth today, they are dying out with great rapidity wherever they have changed their native nutrition to that of the modern white civilization. For them this is not a matter of choice, but rather of necessity, since in a large part of Australia the few that are left are crowded into reservations where they have little or no access to native foods and are compelled to live on the foods provided for them by our white civilization. They demonstrate in a tragic way the inadequacy of the white man's dietary programs.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 11

ISOLATED AND MODERNIZED TORRES
STRAIT ISLANDERS

IN STUDYING the relationship between nutrition and physical characteristics, it is important to make observations at the point of contact with civilization where as few factors as possible in the environment have been modified by that contact. My previous studies have shown that wherever groups of people were utilizing sea foods abundantly in connection with land plants including roots, greens and fruits, they enjoyed fine physical development with uniform reproduction of the racial pattern and a very high immunity to dental caries. For this particular study we wished to select a racial group living on islands in tropical or subtropical climate, whose ancestral stocks differed from those previously observed, and which was located at points of contact with modern civilization. A high level of excellence might be expected among the groups who were in process of being modernized but were still utilizing the native foods.

For this study the inhabitants of islands north of Australia were chosen in order to record the effect on the Asiatic and Malay stocks at the points of contact of the north with the south and of the east with the west. In the Torres Strait there are a number of fertile islands supporting populations of from several hundred to a few thousand individuals each. These groups are in an area of the sea that is well stocked with sea animal life, and during the past they have been sufficiently isolated to provide protection. The racial stocks have retained their identities and include Papuans, New Guineans, Mobuiags, Arakuns, Kendals and Yonkas. The splendid dental arches of these groups will be seen in the various illustrations. Many of the girls are quite prepossessing, as may be seen in Fig. 61.

FIG. 61. The inhabitants of the islands north of Australia have splendidly built bodies with fine facial and dental arch form.

With the valuable assistance of the officials of the Australian Government we were able to make investigations on several islands in the Torres Strait. The local administrator provided us with a government boat and personal introductions to the local chief and local representatives of the government. We were accompanied by the administrator and by the general manager of the government stores. These stores have been located on the various islands, and the profit derived from them is used for administrative expenses of the government. They provide modern clothing in addition to foods, chiefly white flour, polished rice, canned goods, and sugar. Studies were made on the various islands in the order in which the stores had been installed on them. It is important to have in mind the nature of these islands. Some are of volcanic origin and have rugged interiors with deep bays; others are of coral origin. All are in a zone that is abundantly supplied with sea animal life, this being the scene of the richest pearl fishing industry in the world.

Badu Island had had the store for the longest period, namely twenty-three years. Of the 586 teeth of twenty individuals examined, 20.6 per cent had been attacked by tooth decay. Of the individuals examined 95 per cent had dental caries. Unfortunately, our stay at this island was accompanied by a torrential downpour which made it very difficult for us to carry forward our investigations. Had we been able to examine the mothers the figures doubtless would have been much higher. The children were examined at the school and showed 18.8 per cent of the teeth to have been attacked by tooth decay. The men examined showed 21.9 per cent. Figures given me by Dr. Gibson, who had been taken by the government to the island to make extractions, showed that he found as high as 60 per cent of the teeth had been attacked by tooth decay. For the children of this group, 33.3 per cent had abnormal dental arches, whereas only 9.1 per cent of the adults' arches were abnormally formed.

On York Island, 1,876 teeth of sixty-five individuals showed that 12.7 per cent had been attacked by tooth decay. For the women, this was 20.2 per cent; for the men, 12.1 per cent; and for the children, 7 per cent. For the children, 47.1 per cent had abnormal dental arches; for the adults, 27 per cent were affected. The individuals on this island had been in contact with the pearl fisheries industry for several years. Several of the men had been working on the fishing boat. Of the sixtyfive individuals examined, 67.6 per cent had dental caries.

On Darnley Island, thirty-three individuals showed that of their 900 teeth 5.7 per cent had been attacked by tooth decay. The store had been established on this island recently. For the women, 16.6 per cent of the teeth had been attacked; for the men, 6.3 per cent; and for the children, 4.1 per cent. On this island, 29.6 per cent of the children showed abnormal dental arches, and 14.3 per cent of the adults. Of the whole group, 46.1 per cent had been attacked by dental caries.

On Murray Island where a store had recently been established, of the 1,074 teeth examined for 39 individuals, only 0.7 per cent of the teeth had been attacked by tooth decay. For the women, this amounted to 2 per cent; for the men, 1.7 per cent; and for the children, 0.26 per cent. Only 12.8 per cent of the group had dental caries. It is significant that the natives were conscious of a danger from the presence on the island of a store providing imported foods. This had been so serious a problem that there was a question whether it would be safe for us to land, since on the last visit of the government officials, blood was almost shed because of the opposition of the natives to the government s program. The result of our examination indicates that dental caries on these islands shows an incidence which has an apparent direct relationship to the length of time government stores have been established there. The immunity to dental caries on this island is nearly 100 per cent. Of the adults, 14.3 per cent had abnormal dental arches, and of the children, 34.4 per cent.

Thursday Island is the location of the administrative center for the group. Although it is the best sheltered harbor and affords protection for small boats in the Torres Strait, it was not originally inhabited by the natives. They considered it unfit for habitation because the soil was so poor that it could not provide the proper plant foods to be eaten with the sea foods which are abundant about all of the islands. Nearly all of the whites inhabiting the islands of this district live on this island. They are the families of the administrative officers and of merchants who are engaged in the pearl industry. Owing to the infertility of the soil, practically all of the food has to be shipped in except the little that the whites obtain from the sea. On the island there were many native families, with children attending the native school, while their fathers worked in the pearling fleets. Thirty individuals in three fleets were examined, and of their 960 teeth only thirty-five had been attacked by dental caries, or 3.6 per cent. Of these thirty individuals, five, or 16.3 per cent had abnormal dental arches. The men who had teeth attacked by dental caries informed me that this had happened after they had engaged on the pearling vessels and began to use the foods provided there. In the native school on Thursday Island twenty-three children were examined. They were living in homes in which a considerable part of the food was purchased at the company stores. The incidence of tooth decay was 12.2 per cent of their 664 teeth. Many of these Thursday Island children had been born since their parents had begun using the commercial foods provided to the islanders. Among twenty-three individuals, 43.5 per cent had abnormal dental arches.

While these investigations were planned and carried out primarily to obtain data on the condition of the native races in contact with modern white civilization, wherever possible, data were obtained on the whites also. In a school for whites on Thursday Island, fifty children were examined with regard to their dental arches, but an embarrassing situation was encountered with regard to the sensitiveness of the whites in the matter of having their children examined for dental caries. Figures were obtained for the facial development which reveal that, out of the fifty children examined, 64 per cent had irregularities of facial and dental arch development. In the upper half of Fig. 62, will be seen a group of children photographed in the native school, and in the lower a group of white girls photographed at the white school. The difference in their facial development is readily seen. The son of the white teacher (Fig. 66, left) had marked under development of his face. The white population lived largely on canned food.

FIG. 62. School children from the two groups on Thursday Island. Note the beautifully proportioned faces of the natives, and the pinched nostrils and marked disturbance in proportions of the faces of the whites. The dental arches of the natives are broad, while many of the whites have very crowded teeth. The parents and children of the natives used native foods while the parents and children of the whites used the modern imported foods of commerce.

Hammond Island adloins Thursday Island sufficiently close by to be easily reached in small boats. Accordingly, the people of this island have access to the stores of the white settlement on Thursday Island. Unlike Thursday Island, Hammond Island is quite fertile. Of twenty-seven individuals, all of native stock, 16.5 per cent of their 732 teeth had been attacked by dental caries, and 40 per cent of the individuals showed some deformity of the dental arches. After examining the children at the mission school, I inquired whether there were not families on the island that were living entirely isolated from contact with modern influences. I was taken to the far side of the island to an isolated family. This family had continued to live on their own resources. They were raising vegetables including bananas, pumpkins, and pawpaws. In the cases of the three girls in the family, one with a child five months of age, only six of their eighty-four teeth had been attacked by tooth decay, or 7.1 per cent, as compared with 16.5 per cent for the entire group on this island. These three girls all had normally developed dental arches and normal features. Three of the girls are shown in Fig. 63. We inquired about the mother and were told that she was out fishing, notwithstanding the fact that the sea was quite rough. While we were there, she came in with two fish (Fig. 63). Here was one of the principal secrets of their happiness and success in life. The Catholic priest who had charge of the mission on this island told me that this family practically never asked for assistance of any kind, and was always in a position to help others. They were happy and well nourished. It is important to note that the progressive degeneration in facial form which occurred in many of the families on the other islands was not found in this family.

FIG. 63. These pictures tell an interesting story. The grandmother shown in the lower right knew the importance of sea food for her children and grandchildren and did the fishing herself. Note the beautiful teeth and well formed faces of her daughters.

The incidence of dental caries ranged from 20.6 per cent of all of the teeth examined for the various age groups on Badu Island to 0.7 per cent, on Murray Island. A group of individuals from this island will be seen in Fig. 64. Note the remarkable width of the dental arches. Note also in this connection that the natives of this island are conscious of the superior food of their locality and wish that their people were not required to purchase food from the government store. The island is situated on the Barrier Reef and has an abundant supply of small fish. The swarms of fish are often so dense that the natives throw a spear with several prongs into the school of fish and when the spear is drawn back, there are several fish on it. This condition provides abundant food for sharks many of which could be seen surrounding the schools of small fish. Encircling the group, they dashed in, mouths open and gorged themselves with the mass of fish from the water. It seemed quite remarkable that the people were willing to go into the water to spear the fish within the zone frequently approached by the sharks, but I was told by the natives that when the fish are so abundant the sharks never attack human beings. One of the natives rowed me in his canoe to a point where I could photograph the sharks at close range. To show his disdain for the shark, he had no hesitancy in standing up in the end of the canoe and hurling his spear into the side of the monster. The spear was immediately thrown out by the shark, which had not been frightened sufficiently to make it leave the scene of action. The sharks in my pictures were swimming so close to the shore that the upper part of the tail was forced out of the water, also the back fin, in order to clear the bottom. It was a great revelation to watch the movement of the tail. Instead of swinging it from side to side like other fish, with which I was familiar, the shark would rotate its tail half or three quarters of a turn in a motion like that of a propeller of a boat, then reverse the motion for the return trip. By a sudden increase of speed in this motion, the shark could dart ahead at a rapid rate, corral the small fish by encircling them, and finally make a dash through the school with its mouth open. Hundreds of the small fish, in order to escape, dart out of the water into the air. This exposes them to the birds, a flock of which follows the sharks when they are feeding on the fish. The birds dive down at the time they see the shark making his raid and catch the small fish as they dart out of the water. It is by the birds of prey that the native fishermen from their lookout locate the schools of fish. While there is a difference of opinion as to whether some species of shark will attack human beings, we saw one pearl diver who bore enormous scars received from the jaws of a shark.

FIG. 64. Natives on the islands of the Great Barrier Reef. The dental arches here teach a high degree of excellence.

The procedure on one island is to snare the sharks by calling them by means of special sounds made by clapping together two large half shells on the surface of the water. This attracts the shark, and then the men one at a time go into the water with a sharp stick with which they guard themselves against attack. A noose made of rope of coconut fiber is slipped over the shark's head and over the back fin. It is then allowed to tire out and is brought to shore. It was not unusual in a good season for the shark fishers to bring in three or four in a night's fishing. The strength of the native swimmers is almost beyond belief. The pearling boats are frequently in great danger of being dashed to pieces on a coral reef, since in those waters gales of fifty miles an hour are frequent. We experienced some such gales. On one occasion, when a pearling boat was wrecked some distance from an exposed rock, one strong swimmer rescued and helped two dozen of the crew to the rock, and was himself rescued after being in the water continuously for thirty-two hours. The pearling boats feed their crew largely on commercial provisions. When the men have been continuously on the boats for one or two years, or often when they have been at sea using this food for six months, they have rampant tooth decay. When the cavities approach or reach the pulp chambers the pain produced in the teeth by the high pressure in deep water produces such agony that they often have to give up pearling.

Physical characteristics of all these residents of the Torres Strait Islands, regardless of their tribal group, were, sturdy development throughout their bodies, broad dental arches, and for all of those who had always lived only on their native food, a close proximity to one hundred per cent immunity to dental caries. These men are natural mariners. They do not hesitate to make long trips even in rough seas in their homemade crafts. They have an uncanny skill in determining the location of invisible coral reefs. They relate the height of the swell as it rolls over the reef to particular color tones in the water, all of which were too vague for me to see even when they were pointed out.

Among the inhabitants of the Torres Strait Islands, almost all individuals who had been born before the foods of modern civilization had become available were found to have dental arches normal in form. In many families, however, living on islands where a store had been established for some time, and on Thursday Island where imported foods had been available for several decades, many individuals were found who had been born since the use of imported foods. They had gross deformities of the dental arches. This fact is illustrated in Fig. 65 in which typical depression of the laterals and narrowing of the upper arch and abnormal prominence of the cuspids due to the lack of space for the normal eruption may be seen. The facial deformity in two white boys is seen in Fig. 66. Rampant tooth decay in white children is shown in Fig. 67.

FIG. 65. The contrast between the primitive and modernized natives in facial and dental arch form is as striking here as elsewhere. These young natives were born to parents who had adopted our modern foods of commerce. Note the narrowed faces and dental arches with pinched nostrils and crowding of the teeth. Their magnificent heredity could not protect them.

FIG. 66. These children are from the white colony on Thursday Island. Note the pinched nostrils and deformed dental arches with crowding of the teeth. The boy at the left is a mouth breather.

FIG. 67. As everywhere these whites prefer the modernized foods and pay the penalty in rampant tooth decay. They are in pathetic contrast with the superb unspoiled natives. They are within reach of some of the best foods to be found anywhere in the world and yet do not use them; a typical characteristic of modern whites.

We are particularly concerned with data that will throw light on the nature of the forces responsible for the production of these deformities. Since they do not appear to their full extent until the eruption of the permanent teeth as part of the development of the adult, it is easy for the abnormality to be ascribed to the period of child growth. As a result, it has been related to faulty breathing habits, thumb sucking, posture, or sleeping habits, of the child.

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