Page:The State and Position of Western Australia.djvu/139

 diseases—who have recovered their health in a remarkable degree since their arrival. Some of slight figure have become more robust and stronger. Parturition with the female sex is expeditious and safe; being accomplished by the efforts of nature alone, within from three to six hours. No woman has died in childbirth in this colony since its commencement, nor am I aware of any who died within a month after.

Children thrive remarkably well, and I may add every description of live stock, although collected from different climates,—England. India, South America, Africa, &c., and various plants and vegetables, collected from as many different sources, find here a congenial temperature.

Indeed I am disposed to conclude, that when the settlers are well lodged and fed, and the country more cultivated and improved, but few diseases will be met with; I might perhaps say, only dysentery and ophthalmia, and these of a mild character. (Signed), M. D.



Another point ought also to be taken into consideration—the debilitated state of those constitutions which were undergoing this exposure, in consequence of having been so long a period upon salt provisions and without vegetable diet—out of three years and ten months