Te Aroha Ohinemuri News UPPER THAMES ADVOCATE SATURDAY, MARCH 26. 1898. A MOUNTAIN SANATORIUM FOR TE AROHA.

Te Aroha News, Volume XIV, Issue 2089, 26 March 1898, Page 2

Te Aroha Ohinemuri News UPPER THAMES ADVOCATE SATURDAY, MARCH 26. 1898. A MOUNTAIN SANATORIUM FOR TE AROHA.

English medical journals have been commenting on the methods employed by the warriors of the Matabele tribe in Africa in the treatment of their wounded in battle. Practically they reverse our accepted fashion. After an engagement we,hurry our wounded into the field hospitals pitched in some sheltered nook, and after operating, bandage their hurts in the usually approved manner. Not so the more warlike and intelligent savages of that dark continent upon which light is being so rapidly shed ; with them the main idea is to get* their stricken comrades as high up-the hillside as possible and as soon as may well be. So far as bandages are concerned they will none of them - A wounded, friendly native under treatment in an English hospital tent tears the bandages off, we are told, and uses his best endeavours to expose his wounds to the sun. The success attending this form of treatment somewhat astonished some of our army surgeons. The explanation is that admirable as is. the anti-, septic treatment, in which, it may be mentioned, substances are used that resist and correct putrefaction by the

myriads of disease germs with which the atmosphere of a town is loaded when dealing with wound?; that ndmir able as such treatment is in centres o! population, out in the open-air of the country side and, a fortiori , on high mountain land, it is unnecessary, and even a let to rapid healing. Pure mountain air is practically free from floating disease germs, whereas the vitiated atmosphere of a town swarms with them. In Queen-street, Auckland, for instance, hundreds of thousands of germs are to he found in a eubic inch of atmospheric air, whereas on the summit of the To Aroha mountain we question if a similar quantity of air would yield more than from 10 to £O. The savage is quite correct iu hi8 r meihod of treating wounds, under the circumstances obtaining on the burning veldt. The sun is a mighty healer and cleanser. Nothing can putrefy while exposed to its rays. The savage knows nothing about the germ theory of disease—his knowledge is purely empirical, and by that we mean derived entirely from long ex perience and observation. Thinking over these things put us in mind of a well-nigh forgotten incident. Some years ago, it is now, we met a man in the States who had amputated his ownleg and yet lived to tell the tale. It happened in this way. He was a trapper.following his vocation among the fastnesses of the Rocky Mountains and, one day, while out on an expedition he met with a gun accident which shattered one of his legs below the knee. He managed to crawl back to his hut, and after a brief examination of the wounded limb resolved, rightly or wrongly, that he must, if he did not wish to die, amputate it. He arranged his food by his bunk, rolled up his sleeves and set to work. With the aid of a sharp knife and a tomahawk the operation was successfully performed, the arteries tied up, and nothing remained for the patient but to lie abed until he somewhat regained his normal vigour. As we remarked he lived through the subsequent days of anguish to tell the. tale. This singular feat could not have been accomplished in a town, mortification would have set in sooner or later and the man would have died. It was tho pure, germless, mountain air that an- j abled the hunter to pull through and allowed of the rapid healing of the maimed limb. Mountaineers suff r little from wounds that would destroy a dweller in the cities of the plain ; nor does he suffer from the ravages of disease to the same extent as does the latter. W e firmly believe that persons suffering,from disease or wounds would effect aT more rapid recovery and that their recovery would be attended by less danger of relapse if they were located at an altitude of say 1000 feet, than if stowed away in a hospital at the Thames, Hamilton, or Paeroa*—all other things being equal. When the system is run down it becomes legitimate prey for the microbe, all pervading below certain altitudes. Nature’s decree—the survival of the fittest involyes the in ‘vciless destruction of the weak and di (‘.ised. We have watched, in other c-nmies, the huge bull-dog ant—an inch in length armed with a pair of formidable nippers and a sting—when in an exhausted state, through trying, to escape from a miner’s trench into which it had fallen, set flpon by a horde of minute ants, pulled down and finally eaten up after a prolonged struggle. It is ever the way in the world of nature, no mercy is shown to the sick and ailing. Man alone among the animals is merciful to his kind when disease fastens on them. We cannot in the space at our disposal today go into the subject of this article as we would like to do; but in a few words, we can indicate our idea. On the summit .of the Bald Spur ia to be found a convenient plateau for our purpose, and here in the pure sweet air, and amid the restful solitude its isolation imparts, we would build a cottage hospital and home for convalescents. The one great objection the ‘ ifngetatableness/of the situation we believe could be readily overcome by the construction of an elevator rail car. At that fashionable English wacering-place, Scarborough, oh the Yorkshire coast, an elevator of this description has been in use for nearly 20 years conveying passengers from the cliffs, where the town is perched, to the sandy bay below and vice versa. In the United Stages these aerial tramways are in common use and accidents are unheard of. As to the cost we do not think it would be beyond the resources of a Borough. We believe if we started with a cottage hospital before many years were past a huge sanatorium would not meet the demands for accommodation from patients from all parts of the colonies. We are wakening up te the value of our thermal springs as an asset, may it not be worth our while to consider whether we cannot turn the exceptional formation on the summit of the best known spur in the Te Aroha Range to the use for’which, in our way of thinking, nature has clearly designed it, namely, the site of a mountain sanatorium *?