Disease, health and healing: aspects of indigenous health in Western Australia and Queensland 1900-1940

Abstract

In this thesis I examine aspects of disease, health and healing among the indigenous people in Western Australia and Queensland from 1900 to 1940. I argue that diseases have helped to shape and influence the interaction between the indigenous people and the various members of the settler community most concerned with them- government protectors, missionaries, pastoralists and health workers. In developing this argument I draw on the distinction made by Stephen J. Kunitz between the universalistic and particularistic approaches to historical epidemiology. Kunitz argues that the development of physiology and bacteriology transformed the practice of medicine by revealing universalistic 'natural histories' of diseases and their causative agents, but that this approach should be tempered by attention to the particular individual, cultural and institutional circumstances of disease occurrence. Diseases have a past, a present and a future of their own, and when considered within the context of human social history, are seen to be a powerful motivate force in human affairs. My approach involves examining the history of diseases, health and healing among the indigenous peoples using models of causation, some of which are biomedical, some are anthropological and others are demographic and epidemiological. There are differences between such models. The biomedical model is 'universalistic' and 'scientific', based on general principles subject to proof or denial through empirical research. In the same way, the demographic and epidemiological models are also universalistic. The anthropological model, however,is 'particularistic' in that each situation is unique and is explained by its history and internal dynamics, not by reference to general principles. The combination of the biomedical, demographic and epidemiological methods with those of social history allows an otherwise silent indigenous population to be brought into the historical narrative from which they would otherwise have been excluded. In Western Australia, contrary to previous thinking, the total number of Aborigines increased during the study period. In particular, the number of females and older males increased under the influence of protection laws. The increases contradict the popular belief that the indigenous populations were still in decline. However, the spread of disease and the growing population worsened the already poor personal and public hygiene practices, creating the mistaken impression that the indigenous populations were declining. Indeed, diseases such as leprosy, respiratory and sexually transmitted diseases had by the 1930s reached epidemic proportions, which suggested that the indigenous people were a dying race. The indigenous populations already contained some pathogenic infections prior to contact with Europeans. The Aborigines had developed a means, however rudimentary, of predicting how sick people reacted to an illness and of determining what the disease might be that healers treated. But following European contact, other diseases came from contact not only with Europeans but also with Asians, who introduced leprosy into mining camps and Kanakas, who introduced leprosy into the cane plantations and tuberculosis into the Cape York regions. Protection policies intensified the effects of the diseases. In Queensland, the government applied its protection policies with increasing vigour over the period, resulting in most Aborigines living on government relief depots, missions and reserves by the 1930s. Demographic analysis reveals that Queensland consistently overestimated its indigenous populations. Death, disease, health and heating among indigenous groups, therefore, came to have social and political dimensions which few, if any, people recognised at the time. In hindsight, however, we can appreciate that the assumption behind health programs was that the indigenous populations should be the passive, but grateful, recipients of welfare rather than historic actors in their own right. The consequences in terms of disease dynamics were profound. The associated practice of gathering together sick, infirm and infected people in 'disease compounds' created reservoirs of exotic diseases to infect newcomers with low immunity. The social consequences of weakened populations meant, in turn, higher numbers of inmates who succumbed to virulent infections. Even in the absence of 'disease compounds', overcrowding of depots and inadequate health services based mostly on religious compassion (on both mission and government compounds) were instruments in promoting increased infection. After 1920 professional services supervised by government protectors and health officials became the norm, but in general, Aborigines were not allowed access to normal hospital facilities. During epidemics, overcrowding of depots and settlements meant a greater susceptibility to respiratory and sexually transmitted diseases, which became endemic, as well as to other infections such as hookworm and leprosy. Show more