Charles John Abraham to Frederick Chesson, 10 August 1877

10 August 1877

Lichfield

My dear Sir,

I am sorry that I can never attend your meetings, but I think I led you to expect, when I agreed to be on your Committee, that I was too far from town to be of much use.

With regard to [medical?] help to the natives of Fiji, my own experience leads me to believe that our systems are too drastic for the constitutions of Polynesians. The Maoris in N.Z. used to call our hospitals ‘slaughterhouses.’ The real help we could afford was … surgical and suggestions in midwifery cases, & the treatment of infants. But our strong medicines killed the children.

Without having any … that way, when the discovery of the australian gold fields carried off all our … practitioners to Melbourne and Sydney, one man was left in Auckland, a Homeopath … we were obliged to call him in, and I am bound to say that that treatment admirably suited the native constitution. The only people in my part that did not return to their own primitive use of herbs and nostrums, were those I cured homeopathically.

But as this is not likely to be accepted, I should advise you send in – if any – a surgeon, & one skilled in diseases of children, and as I said before, midwifery.

Believe me yours v. truly

C.J. Abraham

Bishop