Operation on Elephant.

Huntly Press and District Gazette, Volume 3, Issue 6, 3 April 1914, Page 4

Operation on Elephant.

__— Cohn, the great elephant whose homo is the Zoo at Posen, lias had a tusk sawn off, an operation which, though successful, was the indirect cause of Carl Schoerz, one of the keepers, being seriously injured. Cohn, after being made thirsty by eating a quantity of salted hay was given a bucketful of water in which 120 grains of hydrate of chloral had been dissolved. This narcotic soon began to take effect (says the Berlin correspondent of the “Express”), and Cohn, heavyeyed and with uncertain gait, dragged his ponderous three-ton body towards a corner of his enclosure. Thereupon a generous ration of clover was provided, which Cohn started eating with sleepy mien, letting bunch after bunch fall from his lazy jaws. Then the dental operation began. While three stout navvies hung on to the elephant’s tusk, another with a strong, sharp-toothed saw, deftly severed it from the intoxicated animal’s jaw. Next, the nerve was destroyed by the application of three red hot iron bars, the socket was washed out with a sublimate s fiution, and the hollow plumbed with a provisional wax filling, which will in a few days be substituted by one of permanent substance. On the termination of the operation Cohn, up this point quite docile under the influence of his doped refreshment, grew enraged at the pain in his tusk stump. With a violent movement quite unexpected by the “ dentist ” and his assistants, tne elephant made a rush at Schoerz, and, felling him to the ground, knelt on him, uttering terrifying groans. Other keepers rushed forward, and with red-hot iron bars prodded Cohn in the body until, rising, he freed the unfortunate keeper, who w'as with the greatest difficulty removed from the enclosure. The man's injuries are of so serious a nature that he not expected to recover.