Note 12 — INTRODUCTION

During the last fifty years the numbers of the Andamanese have been greatly diminished. This has been the result of the European occupation of the islands, and is chiefly due to new diseases that have been introduced amongst them. Syphilis was introduced among the tribes of the South Andaman about 1870, and this has now spread among all the Great Andaman tribes (that is, excluding the hostile J̌a̤rawa). A large number of natives are infected, and the disease is responsible directly and indirectly for a considerable increase in the death-rate. In March, 1877, an epidemic of measles broke out among the Andamanese, introduced with a batch of convicts from Madras, and spread rapidly from one end of the Great Andaman to the other. In six weeks 51 out of 184 cases treated in hospital proved fatal. It is almost certain that the proportion of deaths was much greater in the case of those, the vast majority, to whom no medical aid could be given. A writer on the Andamans12 has estimated that the mortality from measles and its sequelae was one-half if not two-thirds of the whole population of the Great Andaman. Other diseases which were formerly unknown to the islands seem also to have been introduced, including influenza.