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The medical expedition to Easter Island in 1964-1965 was carried out as part of the International Biological Programme, a world-wide study of the functional relationship of living things to their environment. It is in progress at this moment, and most of the major countries of the world are participating. One section of the programme is concerned with human adaptability. This involves the study of Man in various environments, and the elucidation and evaluation of the factors that affect his health, his bodily constitution and his way of life. These factors may involve climate, geology and endemic diseases. His own sociological background is important, as is his genetic constitution. His medical and nutritional states must be considered. Studies of his work capacity will give an index of his general fitness. In the past, many isolated studies, under different auspices, have been made of various population groups living in extreme conditions. Examples of these are the Eskimos, the desert nomads and the inhabitants of the high Andean plateau, but these studies have, for the most part, been concerned with only a few aspects of the people or their environment. The Human Adaptability Section of the Inter? national Biological Programme intends to send out scientific expeditions to perform comprehensive studies of such groups, and these will necessarily be comparatively large, involving problems of finance and logistics. Canada's contribution to the Programme was a scientific study of this type, and a team of thirty scientists and technicians, of many different disciplines, was or? ganized by McGill University. The expedition was basically Canadian, but to make it truly international, members were invited from Switzerland, America, Norway, Sweden and England. The Royal Canadian Navy provided a 10,000-ton fleet support vessel, the Cape Scott. In November 1964 the expedition sailed from Halifax and one month later it arrived at Easter Island. Easter Island was chosen for several reasons. It had a small but stable population?about 1000 islanders. This number was large enough to make the study worth while, but small enough to enable us to examine the whole population during the time available. It is perhaps the most isolated inhabited island in the world, a supply ship from Chile calling once a year. Because of this isolation, all the factors affecting the lives of the islanders are present on the island and a dynamic equilibrium therefore existed which we wished to study; for our purposes, the island could be said to be a living laboratory. Easter Island is situated in the empty part of the Pacific Ocean. It lies on lat. 260 S, long. 1100 W, being 2000 miles west of Valparaiso in Chile, and 2000 miles east of Tahiti and the Tuamatou archipelago. Its only neighbour is Sala y Gomez, a tiny, uninhabited barren rock, 200 miles to the east, and it has been called the 'loneliest place on Earth'. In ancient days the Polynesians knew it as 'Te Pito o te Henua'?the Navel of the World. The island is triangular in shape, with an extinct volcano at each corner, and low hills inland. The coast is rocky, and in
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