The Maoris differ from most other races in that it is the old women, not the men, who seem to be the medical practitioners. These wise women are now a dying race, and though memory is listed in Maori carvings as a cardinal virtue, the impact of a technological age, in which the M

-The loving care and high order of intelligence shown by these customs should fire us with a great admiration for those mothers, who had only primitive materials to work with, especially as we know that the infant death rate was very low and malformed limbs and imbecility very ra

The Maoris of old suffered from much the same illnesses as we do today, and sought their remedies in the plants among which they lived. They found, for instance, that manuka provided almost a panacea: an infusion of the bark cured constipation, or from the seed capsules, diarrho

Whatever its practical uses, the kowhai in bloom is one of the most beautiful trees in a land of lovely trees. George Nepia, the Maori All Black, relates how he was “cured by kowhai."