Author: POPE, James H.
Title: Health for the Maori: a manual for use in native schools. [with] Te Ora Mo te Maori: he pukapuka mo nga kura Maori.
Description: Wellington, Govt Printer 1884. Small octavo, the two together in contemporary gilt calf (edges scuffed); 121pp;129pp. A rather good, appealing copy. ¶ Both the English and Maori versions of this plain speaking work. After all, "Maoris, old and young, call a spade a spade" and they need to hear the truths "which they must learn to respect if they are to escape extermination". One chapter is titled "Why the Maori Population is Decreasing, Although War has Ceased" in which due respect is given to the problems introduced by whites - pakeha - but Pope is adamnant that it is the fault of the Maori that they choose to accept the bad customs of the Pakeha - rum among them - and not the good customs like tilling neat patches of fenced ground. The Tasmanian Aborigine, with some magnificently specious reasoning, is made an object lesson: that now extinct race "learned some of the bad ways of the whites, but none of the good ones".

Keywords: science medicine public health education c19th New Zealand Maoris juvenile children language