Fiji Medicine Men

In some ways, it is the strangest medical school in the world. Many of the students are only one generation removed from cannibalism. They are Fijians, Maoris (from New Zealand), Samoans, natives of the Solomon, Cook, New Hebrides, Tonga, Gilbert and Ellice Islands, and a few East Indians.

Only requirement for the Central Medical School, at Suva in the Fiji Islands, is the equivalent of a good U.S. high-school education. Students are given four years of anatomy and surgery. One thing students find hard to unlearn: their fear of native witch doctors.

N.M.P. Y. M.D. The Suva degree is N.M.P.--Native Medical Practitioner. With it goes a Government salary and the right to practice within the Western Pacific Islands. Many N.M.P.s are so good that Europeans prefer them to white doctors (in the islands there are about 20 white doctors, 200 N.M.P.s for 1,000,000 people). But N.M.P.s' chief job is to care for their own people. Native diseases are bad: yaws (a childhood skin disease caused by a spirochete), malaria and blackwater fever, filariasis (worm infestation which frequently ends as elephantiasis). The imported diseases are often worse: diphtheria, gonorrhea, tuberculosis, leprosy, measles (which is often fatal to South Pacific natives who have not yet acquired immunity). The N.M.P.s vaccinate, fight mosquitoes, teach latrine building, operate for elephantiasis, give quinine, deliver babies. The slow increase of native populations on most Western Pacific Islands is largely due to their efforts.

From Makeshift to McGusty. The Suva Medical School began back in the 1880s with verbal instruction (no textbooks, no laboratories) by the British Medical Officer at Fiji. For the first 40 years it was only a makeshift. In 1928, bulky, energetic Dr. Sylvester Maxwell Lambert, who spent 20 years in the South Pacific for the Rockefeller Foundation, persuaded the Foundation to help. In 1929, the Suva School dedicated a new dormitory and mess hall. Enrollment was increased from 16 to 40, extended to include non-Fijians. In the 1930s, pathological and bacteriological laboratories were added. In 1940 a European nurse started a nurses' school.

Since Dr. Lambert's retirement in 1939. Dr. Victor William Tighe McGusty, director of Fiji's medical services, has had complete charge of the school. Rockefeller support, no longer needed, has been withdrawn. The regular teachers are British-paid Colonial Medical Service doctors.

Last week came news that: 1) the Central Medical School has increased its students to 76, including eight dental students; 2) there are 100 native nurses in training; 3) the Fijian Government now proposes an overall health plan for all the islands, with a base hospital at Suva served by air ambulances from the other islands.

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