Fatal Contact: How Epidemics Nearly Wiped Out Australia's First Peoples by Peter Dowling

Abstract

Reviewed by: Fatal Contact: How Epidemics Nearly Wiped Out Australia's First Peoples by Peter Dowling Charmalne Robson (bio) Peter Dowling. Fatal Contact: How Epidemics Nearly Wiped Out Australia's First Peoples (Clayton: Monash University Publishing, 2021). ISBN: 9781922464460 (PB). xxx + 306 pp. The impact of imported infectious diseases on Indigenous Australians remains a vastly under-researched area of historical study, therefore a new book by Dr Peter Dowling with the bold title, Fatal Contact: How Epidemics Nearly Wiped Out Australia's First Peoples, promises to be a valuable addition to the field. Perhaps the neglect of this topic can be explained by the longstanding under-estimation by historians of the prevalence and ramifications of epidemics affecting Indigenous people in Australia's post-contact history. In contrast, frontier violence has received far greater scholarly attention. Henry Reynolds has recently stated that whereas the 1789 smallpox epidemic 'only affected one generation', fighting that began on the early Sydney frontier 'became a permanent feature of Australian life for 150 years' (Truth-telling: History, Sovereignty and the Uluru Statement, 2021). Dowling's book gives us cause to re-evaluate such a contrast. It documents a succession of different disease epidemics through the years from 1788 to 1919 and across the continent, and it highlights their consequences: population decline through death and infertility, the intense suffering of the afflicted and those around them, and the impairment of Indigenous cultures. Dowling also argues that disease, whether or not intentional, expedited the occupation of Indigenous land by Europeans. The book is organised into four parts, preceded by an introduction which gives a brief historical overview, explanations of Indigenous perspectives on illnesses, and other contextual information. Part 1, after a broad discussion of infectious diseases, explores the Australian epidemics of smallpox and measles that struck Indigenous communities from the late eighteenth to late nineteenth centuries. Part 2 focuses on the sexually transmitted diseases of syphilis and gonorrhoea, and Part 3 on the respiratory diseases of tuberculosis and influenza. The final chapter analyses three different case studies: diseases in Aboriginal settlements of southeastern Australia; a biomedical profile of Tasmanian Indigenous woman, Truganini; and, leaping into the twenty-first century, a discussion of COVID-19 and Indigenous Australians. Dowling has doctorates in archaeology and biological anthropology, and researches and presents his study with scientific rigour, but his book is accessible to everyone. The pathology and epidemiology of the different infectious diseases are patiently explained, as are his analyses of statistical data. The historical context he provides is vital for [End Page 149] understanding the scale of tragedy caused by the introduction of major diseases and, in some cases, their flourishing, among Indigenous people. As a population previously unexposed to these pathogens (a 'virginsoil population'), Indigenous Australians were especially vulnerable to their effects, as were the indigenes of the Americas in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries after European invasions. These diseases could not be cured, nor did most doctors in the nineteenth centuiy understand their causation. Furthermore, attempted remedies sometimes made the patient worse, as was probably the case for Truganini who was prescribed a mercury-based medicament for a respiratory illness, and then exhibited a range of symptoms consistent with mercury toxicity. State and mission policies of forcibly concentrating people on settlements, often with crowding, and inadequate nutrition and shelter, created ideal conditions for the spread of respiratory diseases to these already vulnerable populations. At Oyster Cove and Wybalenna, influenza and pneumonia rapidly decimated the groups of Tasmanians removed there from their homes to make way for European settlers. For the sources, Dowling makes judicious use of accounts by medically qualified witnesses of the times to ascertain the presence of disease. He is aware of their limitations but argues for their reliability where collective reports agree on characteristics of particular epidemics. He has also obtained quantitative data for mortality and morbidity rates. This task was enabled by studying several Victorian and South Australian missions and settlements during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, as fairly detailed medical records were kept. Descriptions of the patients' symptoms and the course of their illness by settlement managers and doctors are poignant indicators of the toll of these diseases on the individual...