| Notes |
- Ariaentjie Jacobs was one of 8 orphan girls that went to the Cape on board the «i»Berg China«/i». She was baptised in the Gereformeerde Kerk in Rotterdam on 25 Desember 1670. Her father died when she was 5 months old and her mother when she was 8. She was 18 years old when she went to the Cape from the Gereformeerde Burgerweeshuis (Orphanage) on the Goudse Wagenstraat in Rotterdam.
In 1687 the Here Sewentien decided to send orphan girls to the Cape as wives for the Free Burghers. They sent 8 orphan girls, including her half-sister Willemijntje She left on 20 March 1688 from Goere in Holland, and arrived on August 4, 1688.
She was a carrier of porphyria, a rare genetic disease found in very few populations, one of them is in the Afrikaner population in South Africa, another is in Western Australia. As her husband was also a carrier, they passed it on to four of their children, and their descendants.
Their son Hendrik was deported to Batavia from the Cape, after getting into trouble in a drunken fight. He never arrived - his ship, the "Zuytdorp " was wrecked off the coast of Western Australia in 1712, 500 km North of modern Perth. There they intermarried with the local tribe and lived out their lives - and passed on porphyria to their descendants.
«u»The History of Porphyria «/u»
After the British doctor Geoffrey Dean was settled in South-Africa in 1947 he saw, over a short period of time, many patients with a striking disease. They suffer from stomach-ache, vomiting, constipation, muscular-weakness and restlessness. Some patients suffer attacks of insanity which caused high blood-pressure and a rapid heartbeat. Most of the patients also had skin defects like blisters and strong pigmentation as a result of sun exposure. Recent infectious disease, alcohol abuse or a period of fasting, could provoke the symptoms. But even more often he noticed that medicine and especially barbiturates, anti-epileptics and narcotics used during operations, exhorting the symptoms. Because the disease was unknown, Dean couldn't give the patients proper treatment. Mostly the patients turned became so sick that treatment was no longer possible. Eventually they died a horrible death. Restless patients were given barbiturates, unfortunately this caused in many cases an even quicker death. The patients
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