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Show 2 BTJRE'Att ' OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [ BULL. 42 It is difficult to- « fctace the early spread of tuberculosis among the Indian tribes, h$ tf& yse of the meagerness of the information at our disposal. As , iferly as 1615 ° there occur references to diseases of the " chest " - r ^ m e of which may have been of a tuberculous nature- among thcTTrirasco of Michoacan. In the seventeenth and eighteenth cenWies, especially the latter, both scrofula and consumption were/. according to the Jesuit fathers, 6 already common among the Montaignes and other tribes in New France. Of . the spread of the disease through the remaining tribes but little i^ Ikftbwn until we come down into the nineteenth century. As late va&' 1794 such an authority as Dr. Benjamin Rush, whose knowledge ;";.. * was probably limited to the eastern Indians south of Canada and • . ^ "• New England, states that tuberculosis " is unknown among the Indians in North America." Similar reports will be found in the Bibliography. By the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, however, the disease was certainly widely disseminated, though still rare, according to Long, Hunter, Morton, and others, among the Indians of the Central states and the Missouri valley. Before the century closed it existed in all parts of the country, and at the present time no tribe in the whole of North America is exempt. The special study of tuberculosis among the Indians in the United States is a matter of recent years only, dating, in fact, from the establishment, about twenty- five years ago, of the regular Indian medical service. Unfortunately, there are as yet in existence no exact and comprehensive data on the subject. The physicians in the Indian Service report regularly on all the diseases treated, but the reports have not always been complete or accurate. The first extensive published statistics relating to tuberculosis in Indians are found in the United States Census reports, particularly those for 1890 and 1900, but these also can not be regarded as entirely satisfactory for the purpose in view. Original research in this subject may be said to have been begun in the " eighties" by Dr. Washington Matthews. c Subsequent to this, in 1894, Dr. H. R. Bull published observations on the disease among the pupils of the large nonreservation Indian school at Grand Junction, Colo. A series of valuable notes and data on pulmonary tuberculosis among the Pine Ridge Sioux, collected during the last fifteen years, was reported by Dr. J. R. Walker in 1906, before the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis. In the same year an account of the disease in Arizona and New Mexico, based on special reports of the agency and school physicians, was published by Dr. I. W. Brewer, and one year later an interesting paper in this line by Dr. Woods Hutchinson0 ap-o Hernandez, F., and F. Ximenez, Plantas, Animates - e Minerales de Nueva Espafia, usados en la Medicina. Mexico, 1G15; Leon ed., Morelia, 1888. & Jesuit Relations, Thwaites edition; see Bibliography. « See Bibliography. |