At Wellington Valley the same malady was first remarked, (as near as could be ascertained,) in October last year, (1830,) and continued to affect the blacks in that vicinity to December. The poor creatures blamed Captain Sturt for its introduction,[58] were much alarmed about it, and are represented as having anticipated some grievous calamity; a great fire and flood were predicted by one of their sages, which would come from Mount Harris and destroy them. From the testimony of George Clark, a convict, who had resided with the native tribes, far in the interior, for several years, and was lately taken prisoner by the mounted police the disease proceeded from the north-west coast, and spared none of the tribes as far as Liverpool Plains, attacking twenty and thirty at a time, none escaping its fury. The king, or chief of the tribe among whom Clark had been naturalized, was first seized with it, and died, as had been predicted by the kradjee, or physician and soothsayer. He had previously been with a tribe situated near the sea, and it is probable may have seen the disease before, although he disclaimed having any but supernatural knowledge of it. The plan of treatment followed in the case of the king was immersion in cold water; four persons of less note underwent the same, and only one survived. The consequence was, that other medicinal measures were thought of, and the cold-bath was stigmatized and abandoned. Scorching the hair from the head, and pricking the pustules with a sharp-pointed fish bone, then squeezing out the fluid contained in them with the flat part of the instrument, was the next mode of cure adopted by the kradjee; and it is worthy of remark, that the operation suggested itself to him from the observation that the pustules burst spontaneously, and discharged whitish matter, in the first case of recovery. It is curious, observes Dr. Mair, that the very same process was recommended by Avicenna, the celebrated Arabian physician, who flourished in the tenth century of the Christian era, and gave the first complete history of the small-pox, with this only difference, that the learned author used a more elegant instrument, a golden needle! and even in the present day the same practice is approved of by the best writers on the subject. The new method of treatment was attended with happier results than the old, only one out of six dying of the malady; and if, continues Dr. Mair, instead of entirely relinquishing the cold-bath, it had still been employed with judicious caution, the mortality might have been further reduced.