PRIMITIVE SURGERY.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5458, 7 August 1929, Page 3

PRIMITIVE SURGERY.

TREATMENT OF WOUNDS. NATIVES AND THEIR METHODS. Some of the backward races show a greater dexterity in the treatment of their wounds than we might expect (writes Dr. E. Knight, in Chambers’ Journal). When a wound is gaping, the Indians of Brazil take an ant which has very powerful jaws and cause it to bite the separated edges of the cut, and so bring them into juxtaposition; afterwards they snip off the ant’s head, and this holds them in apposition. Indeed, these aborigines have been often seen with wounds in course of healing by means of seven or eight ants’ heads. Another method that is adopted by certain natives for closing an open wound is to thrust long thorns across the depth of it, entering the skin a little way from the edge on one side and coming out at a corresponding distance on the other. A piece of string is then twisted over the protruding ends in a figure of 8 fashion under the thorns and across the wound. Same Method To-day. Surgeons often employ the same expedient for closing clefts in the lip, but use steel pins instead of thorns. In “Among the Wild Tribes of the African Frontier,” Dr. Pennell states that the native women are wont, When their husbands come home with gaping wounds after an affray, to sew them up with their sewing needles and hairs drawn from their own heads. And this, he avows, they sometimes do quite skilfully. Extracting Skin Parasites. Negroes are commonly very expert in extracting parasites, which in tropical countries get under the skin and cause much irritation there. Soon after the female jigger, or burrowing flea, has buried itself in one’s flesh, its body swells and becomes quite globular, being distended with a vast quantity of tiny eggs. With a needle a negro in operating carefully works round the globular body of the insect in order not to break it, as, if a single egg was left in the wound, all his trouble might be wasted. By degrees he deftly ejects the intruder, and exhibits the unbroken sac with great glee. The Guinea-worm mostly burrows in the legs of its victims, and forms a swelling like a boil, which breaks, and then the creature protrudes its head. Any attempt to pull out the worm in a few minutes is almost sure to fail, as it readily breaks, and the native way is to draw it out a few inches day by day, carefully rolling the projecting end round a small bit of wood. Much delicate manipulation must be required to do this successfully when the entozoon is eight or ten feet long. Crude Surgical Instruments. Now and then savages have displayed wonderful manual skill in their surgical operations with instruments all-adaptea for their performance. Being often unprovided with steel cutting instruments, they have used such makeshifts as sharp-edged fragments of flints, crystals, obsidian or volcanic glass, and shells. The operation trephining or removing rounded pieces of bone from the skull has been done at times by natives in the East Indies with their obsidian knives. Both on the Continent and in England" skulls have been found by archaeologists showing that this difficult operation was performed bj' our prehistoric forerunners during the Stone Age. It has been related of a Fiji Islander who had the barbed end of an arrow lodged in the side of his chest that he was operated upon by another native. The arrow had broken off about three inches from its point, and the whole of the end was perfectly hidden from view. With a bit of charcoal the operator marked out the length of cut which he intended to make, the small wound produced by the arrow being in the centre of the mark that be drew. He then began to cut through the skin with considerable pressure, for what he made use of for the purpose was only a 1 iece of bamboo. Later on, with a splinter of a shell, he divided some muscular fibres and exposed the end of the arrow. Deepening the opening in the chest, and cutting through the covering membrane of the lung, he was able to seize hold of the arrow head with his finger and thumb, and by gentle twisting of the missile succeeded in withdrawing it, but at the same time brought away a portion of the lung. Nevertheless, the patient in course of time made a good recovery, though there was no washing of the parts operated upon, and the only dressing applied was a pledget of banana leaf smeared with cocoanut oil. In an account of “ The Kaffirs of the Hindu-Kush,” Sir G. S. Robertson states that fractures are bound up by them carefully with wooden splints, but at the slightest onset of pain they are taken off “There is this to be said for the Kaffir method,” he adds, “that it cannot possibly cause gangrene of the fractured limb, which is often the result of tight bandaging among other ignorant' people.” That is very true. Thus, not a great while ago, a native boy was brought to a hospital in Persia with his arm tightly bound from the wrist to above the elbow. A fortnight before he had hurt his arm and was taken to a hakim, or native doctor, who diagnosed a fractured arm, and it was afterwards bound up so tightly by him that the circulation of the blood in it was stopped, and gangrene ensued. Consequently, the limb had to be amputated, and when the bones were examined it was found that there had never been a fracture. Probably without any treatment the arm might have got all right