Where intemperance produces no diseases, there will be no physicians by profession; yet where there is sufferance, there will always be attempts to relieve; and where the cause of the mischief and the remedy are alike unknown, these will naturally be directed by superstition: thus it happens, that in this country, and in all others which are not further injured by luxury, or improved by knowlege, the management of the sick falls to the lot of the priest. The method of cure that is practised by the priests of Otaheite, consists chiefly of prayers and ceremonies. When he visits his patient he repeats certain sentences, which appear to be set forms contrived for the occasion, and at the same time plaits the leaves of the cocoa-nut into different figures very neatly; some of these he fastens to the fingers and toes of the sick, and often leaves behind him a few branches of the thespecia populnea, which they call E’midho: these ceremonies are repeated till the patient recovers or dies. If he recovers, they say the remedies cured him, if he dies, they say the disease was incurable, in which perhaps they do not much differ from the custom of other countries.

Voyaging Accounts