by Oliver Sacks
17 William Dampier was the first European to describe breadfruit, which he saw in Guam in 1688:
The fruit grows on the boughs like apples; it is as big as a penny loaf, when wheat is at five shillings the bushel; it is of a round shape, and hath a thick, tough rind. When the fruit is ripe, it is yellow and soft, and the taste is sweet and pleasant. The natives of Guam use it for bread. They gather it when full grown, while it is green and hard; then they bake it in an oven, which scorcheth the rind and maketh it black; but…the inside is soft, tender and white, like the crumb of a penny loaf. There is neither seed nor stone in the inside, but all of a pure substance, like bread. It must be eaten new, for if it be kept above twenty-four hours, it grows harsh and choky, but it is very pleasant before it is too stale. This fruit lasts in season eight months in the year, during which the natives eat no other sort of bread-kind.
18Many holothurians have very sharp, microscopic spicules in their body walls; these spicules take all sorts of shapes – one sees buttons, granules, ellipsoids, bars, racquets, wheel forms with spokes, and anchors. If the spicules (especially the anchor-shaped ones, which are as perfect and sharp as any boat anchor) are not dissolved or destroyed (many hours, or even days, of boiling may be needed), they may lodge in the gut lining of the unfortunate eater, causing serious but invisible bleeding. This has been used to murderous effect for many centuries in China, where trepang is regarded as a great delicacy.
19Irene Maumenee Hussels and her colleagues at Johns Hopkins have taken samples of blood from the entire population of Pingelap and from many Pingelapese in Pohnpei and Mokil. Using DNA analysis, they hope it will be possible to locate the genetic abnormality which causes the maskun. If this is achieved, it will then be possible to identify carriers of the disease – but this, Maumenee Hussels points out, will raise complex ethical and cultural questions. It may be, for example, that such identification would militate against chances of marriage or employment for the thirty percent of the population that carries the gene.
20In 1970 Maumenee Hussels and Morton came to Pingelap with a team of geneticists from the University of Hawaii. They came on the MS Microglory, bringing sophisticated equipment, including an elec-troretinogram for measuring the retina’s response to flashes of light. The retinas of those with the maskun, they found, showed normal responses from the rods, but no response whatever from the cones – but it was not until 1994 that Donald Miller and David Williams at the University of Rochester described the first direct observation of retinal cones in living subjects. Since then, they have used techniques from astronomy, adaptive optics, to allow routine imaging of the moving eye. This equipment has not yet been used to examine any congenital achromatopes, but it would be interesting to do so, to see whether the absence or defect of cones can be visualized directly.
21 ‘Cannibalism,’ wrote Stevenson, ‘is traced from end to end of the Pacific, from the Marquesas to New Guinea, from New Zealand to Hawaii.…All Melanesia appears tainted…[but] in Micronesia, in the Marshalls, with which my acquaintance is no more than that of a tourist…I could find no trace at all.’
But Stevenson never visited the Carolines, and O’Connell does claim to have witnessed cannibalism on one of Pingelap’s sister atolls, Pakin (which he calls Wellington Island):
I did not believe, till my visit, that the natives of Wellington Island were cannibals; then I had ocular demonstration. It seemed with them an ungovernable passion, the victims being not only captives, but presents to the chiefs from parents, who appeared to esteem the acceptance of their children, for a purpose so horrid, an honor. Wellington Island…is, in fact, three islands, bounded by a reef. One of them is inhabited, and the other two are uninhabited spots, claimed by different chiefs, as if to afford a pretext for war, and the gratification of their horrible passion for human flesh.
22 The legendary history of Pingelap is told in the Liamweiwet, an epic or saga which had been transmitted to each generation for centuries as a recitation or chant. In the 1960s, only the nahnmwarki knew all 161 verses; and if Jane Hurd had not transcribed these, this epic history would now be lost.
But an anthropologist, however sympathetic, tends to treat an indigenous chant or rite as an object, and may not be able to fully enter its inwardness, its spirit, the perspective of those who actually sing it. An anthropologist sees cultures, one wants to say, as a physician sees patients. The penetration, the sharing, of different consciousnesses and cultures needs skills beyond those of the historian or the scientist; it needs artistic and poetic powers of a special kind. Auden, for instance, identified with Iceland (his first name, Wystan, was Icelandic; and an early book was his Letters from Iceland ) – but it is his linguistic and poetic powers which make his version of the Elder Edda, the great saga of Iceland, such an uncanny recreation of the original.
And it is this which gives unique value to the work of Bill Peck, a physician and poet who has spent the last thirty-five years living and working in Micronesia. As a young doctor with the U.S. Public Health Service, he was shocked by his first experience in Micronesia as an official observer of the atomic tests, and appalled by the treatment of the islanders. Later, as commissioner of health for the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (as Micronesia was called), he attracted energetic and romantic physicians (including John Steele and later Greg Dever) to help him develop new health services (now the Micronesian Health Service) and train native nurses to be physician’s aides.
Living in Chuuk in the early 1970s, he became increasingly conscious of the ancient traditions and myths of the Chuukese, and had a ‘conversion experience’ when he met Chief Kintoki Joseph of Udot. He spent several weeks with the chief, listening, recording. This, he says, was
…like discovering the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Book of Mormon…Chief Kintoki would sit quietly, almost in a trance, nodding rhythmically as he recalled a prayer or chant. Then, gesturing, he would recite it dramatically in Ittang, his voice rising and falling as the glory or awe or fright of his vision impelled him… Chief Kintoki said to me, ‘Each time I recite these poems I believe, for the moment, that I am the ancient prophet who first revealed them.’
This encounter opened a new dedication for Bill – to record and preserve, to recreate for posterity, the songs and myths of Chuuk and of all the Micronesian cultures (though only a fraction of his work has been published, in his Chuukese Testament and I Speak the Beginning, as well as a handful of articles and poems). His is a voice, a scientific and poetic transparency, as remarkable as any in Micronesia. In Rota, where he has retired to live and write (and where I met him), he is an honorary citizen, the only non-Chamorro ever accorded this honor. ‘Here I am,’ he said as I finally left him, ‘an old doctor, an old poet, in my eighty-third year, translating, preserving the old legends for the future – trying to give back to these people some of the gifts they have given me.’
23 There may be as many as thirty thousand of these tiny biolumi-nescent creatures in a cubic foot of seawater, and many observers have attested to the extraordinary brilliance of seas filled with Noctiluca. Charles Frederick Holder, in his 1887 Living Lights: A Popular Account of Phosphorescent Animals and Vegetables, relates how M. de Tessan described the phosphorescent waves as ‘appearing like the vivid flashes of lightning,’ giving enough illumination to read by:
It lighted up the chamber that I and my companions occupied [de Tessan wrote J…though it was situated more than fifty yards distant from the breakers. I even attempted to write by the light, but the flashes were of too short duration.
Holder continues his account of these ‘living asteroids’:
When a vessel is ploughing through masses of these animals, the effect is extremely brilliant. An American captain states that when his ship traversed a zone of these animals in the Indian Ocean, nearly thirty miles in extent, the light emitted by these myriads of fire-bodies…eclipsed the brightest stars; the milky way was but dimly seen; and as far as the eye could reach the water presented the appear
ance of a vast, gleaming sea of molten metal, of purest white. The sails, masts, and rigging cast weird shadows all about; flames sprang from the bow as the ship surged along, and great waves of living light spread out ahead – a fascinating and appalling sight…
The light of Noctilucae in full vigor is a clear blue; but, if the water is agitated, it becomes nearly, if not quite white, producing rich silvery gleams sprinkled with greenish and bluish spangles.
Humboldt also described this phenomenon, in his Views of Nature:
In the ocean, gelatinous sea-worms, living and dead, shine like luminous stars, converting by their phosphorescent light the green surface of the ocean into one vast sheet of fire. Indelible is the impression left on my mind by those calm tropical nights in the Pacific, where the constellation of Argo in its zenith, and the setting Southern Cross, pour their mild planetary light through the ethereal azure of the sky, while dolphins mark the foaming waves with their luminous furrows.
24 Although O’Connell’s story sounds more like a fantasy, it tallies with Melville’s experiences a decade later and William Mariner’s several decades before. Thus Finau Ulukalala II, the most powerful chief in Tonga, took a great liking to Mariner, a young English sailor who had survived the massacre of half of his crewmates in 1806. The chief appointed one of his wives as Mariner’s ‘mother’ and teacher, had him indoctrinated in the ways of the tribe, and then adopted him into his own household, giving him the name of his deceased son. Similarly, when Melville jumped ship in the Marquesas in 1842 and wound up in the valley of the Typee, the most powerful chief in the valley, Mehevi, adopted him, and gave him his daughter Pe’ue (Fayaway) as teacher and lover.
Melville’s story, while it charmed readers, was generally seen as romantic fiction, although Melville himself always insisted on its veracity – a century later anthropologists were able to confirm his story, which had been indelibly recorded in the oral history of the remaining Typee. It was easier for O’Connell to obtain credence for his story, for he arrived back in the United States tattooed from top to toe; indeed, he went on to tell his story all over the country, billed as ‘the Tattooed Irishman.’
25 The way in which human populations have met ‘mysterious ends on over a dozen Polynesian islands’ has been investigated by M.I. Weisler, particularly in relation to Pitcairn and Henderson, which are among the world’s most remote and isolated islands. Both of these were colonized from the parent island, Mangareva, around 1000 A.D.
Henderson, a coral atoll with little soil and no permanent fresh water, could not support more than fifty people, but Pitcairn, a volcanic island, was able to support several hundred. At first, when these two populations remained in touch with each other and with the parent colony on Mangareva, and the populations did not exceed their resources, they were able to maintain a social and ecological balance. But expanding populations, hypothesizes Weisler, deforested Mangareva and Pitcairn and drove the seabirds and tortoises on Henderson to near-extinction. Mangareva’s population survived, but ‘descended into an orgy of war and cannibalism,’ in Jared Diamond’s words, and fell out of contact with Henderson and Pitcairn around 1450. Without the physical and cultural contact of Mangareva, these populations were now doomed, shrank into themselves, and finally vanished around 1600. Diamond speculates on what may have occurred in these last, pathetic years:
No potential marriage partners could have remained who did not violate incest taboos…climatic variations in an already marginal environment may have driven the islanders to starvation… The people of Henderson may have [turned to]] murder and cannibalism (like those on Mangareva, and Easter Island)… The islanders may have become insane from social deprivation.
If they managed to avoid all these gruesome fates, Diamond stresses, the islanders ‘would have run up against the problem that fifty people are too few to constitute a viable population.’ Even a society of several hundred ‘is insufficient to propel human culture indefinitely,’ if it is isolated; even if it survives physically, it will become stagnant and un-creative, regressed and culturally ‘inbred.’
When I collected stamps as a boy, I was especially pleased by the stamps of Pitcairn, and the idea that this remote island was populated by only seventy people, all descendants of the Bounty mutineers. But of course, the Pitcairners now have access to the larger world, with modern communications and frequent ship and air traffic.
26 Darwin marvelled at the survival of these fragile atolls:
These low hollow islands bear no proportion to the vast ocean out of which they abruptly rise; and it seems wonderful, that such weak invaders are not overwhelmed, by the all-powerful and never-tiring waves of that great sea, miscalled the Pacific.
27Cook learned of many instances of accidental migrations, often due to the strong westward trade winds. Landing at Atiu, he found three survivors who had been cast ashore from Tahiti, seven hundred miles away. They had set out in a party of twenty, expecting to make a brief journey from Tahiti to Raiatea, a few miles away, but had been blown off course. Similar unintentional voyages, he thought, might explain ‘how the South Seas, may have been peopled; especially those [Islands] that lie remote from any inhabited continent, or from each other.’
28I thought of Montaigne’s words in relation to Knut that day:
A man must have experienced all the illnesses he hopes to cure and all the accidents and circumstances he is to diagnose… Such a man I would trust. For the rest guide us like the person who paints seas, rocks and harbours while sitting at his table and sails his model of a ship in perfect safety. Throw him into the real thing, and he does not know where to begin.
29 Like Knut, Frances Futterman has acquired an enormous catalog of information about color, its physical and neurological basis, its meaning and value for other people. She is curious about (and finds that other achromatopes are intrigued by) its meaning and value, and I was especially struck by this when I visited her office in Berkeley, which was filled with bookshelves containing the hundreds of volumes she has collected. Many of these she acquired during her years of special education and rehabilitation teaching with the blind and partially sighted – others deal with scotopic or night vision. Thus on one wall, I saw titles like The World of Night: The Fascinating Drama of Nature as Enacted between Dusk and Dawn; Nature by Night; The Coral Reef by Night; After the Sun Goes Down: The Story of Animals at Night; The Shadow Book (a photographic-esthetic study); Images from the Dark; Night Eyes; Black Is Beautiful (black-and-white landscape photos) – books about the world she loves and knows.
On the other wall there were several shelves of books about color, that strange phenomenon which she can never perceive and never really know, but about which she is endlessly curious. Some of these were scientific studies on the physics of color or the physiology of vision; others dealt with linguistic aspects of color – The 750 Commonest Color Metaphors in Daily Life; Seeing Red and Tickled Pink: Color Terms in Everyday Language. There were books on the esthetics and philosophy of color, ranging from anthropological treatises to Wittgenstein on color. Others, she told me, had been collected simply for their colorful titles [Color Me Beautiful: Discover Your Natural Beauty through the Colors That Make You Look Great and Feel Fabulous ). There was a variety of books for younger ages, with titles like Hello Yellow, Ant and Bee and Rainbow: A Story about Colors, and her favorite, Hailstones and Halibut Bones: Adventures in Color. She often recommends these for achroma-topic children, so that they can ‘learn’ the colors of common objects, and the emotional ‘valence’ of different colors – necessary knowledge in a chromatopic world.
Frances is also hugely knowledgeable about specialized sunglasses for visually impaired people, and had advised us on which type to bring to Pingelap. ‘She has collated a huge amount of practical information on all kinds of aids for achromatopic people,’ Knut remarked, ‘and although she repeatedly refers to herself as a nonscientific person, I regard her as a genuine investigator in the real meaning of the term.’
&n
bsp; 30 This is very much what happened with Virgil, a man virtually blind from birth whom Bob and I had worked with (his case history, ‘To See and Not See,’ is given in An Anthropologist on Mars ). When it was suggested that Virgil’s sight might be restored by surgery, he could not help being intrigued and excited by the prospect of seeing. But after the operation, which was seen, medically, as ‘successful,’ the reality, for Virgil, was bewildering. He had built up his world entirely from nonvisual information, and the sudden introduction of visual stimuli threw him into a state of shock and confusion. He was overwhelmed by new sensations, visual sensations, but he could make no sense of them, he could not give them any order or meaning. The ‘gift’ of sight disturbed him profoundly, disturbed a mode of being, habits and strategies he had had for fifty years; and, increasingly, he would shut his eyes, or sit in the darkness, to shut out this frightening perceptual assault, and regain the equilibrium which had been taken from him with the surgery.
On the other hand, I recently received a fascinating letter from a deaf man who received a cochlear implant in middle age. Though he experienced many difficulties and confusions, analogous to those of Virgil (and though the use of cochlear implants can often be fraught with problems), he can now enjoy melodies and harmonies, which before he could neither perceive nor imagine.
31Traditionally, very few of the islanders who enter medical schools have got their degrees, and Greg Dever has worked to develop a curriculum relevant to the resources and needs of the Pacific – he was very proud of his first class, of which two-thirds of the entering students had been graduated, including the first women physicians from Pohnpei.