EXTRAORDINARY CASE OF RESUCITATION

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 23, 2 March 1942, Page 5

EXTRAORDINARY CASE OF RESUCITATION

An extraordinary ease of resucitation after apparent drowning ?s reported last week. It appears that a young ]\laori child, named Matenga, son of Isaac Matenga, a Public Works Department employee, when playing near the Waiknto River with a child companion, fell into about five feet of water. The other

:'hild ran and informed tlie mother, who hastened to the river and recovered the body of the child. Artificial respiration was tried without success, and the message was sent to the father who was working some miles away. By the time he arrived on the scene over half an hour had elapsed since the accident. He adopted a Maori method of re-

suscitation by lighting a good fire of manuka wood and then hanging the patient up by the ankles in the middle of the dense and hot smoke, and at the same time squeezing the chest. The treatment was entirely successful. 1 After a short time the child violently expelled a quantity of water frem the lungs and thereafter recovered . Questioned regarding the method a Rotorua medical practitioner expressed great interest and said thab lie had heard of its use in the South; Sen Islands but not previously ira New Zealand.

A well known authority of Maori' lore in Rotorua, however, stated that the method was well known ia the early times and he recalled ani accident some years ago where it was applied to a girl who was drowned when swimming in the Kuirau Reserve. On that occasion! it was over an hour before the body* was taken from the water, and the* method, although applied vigorously was unsuccessful.