Native Surgery
pp. 39-40 · Read in the full issue
Practices in Pre-European New Britain
THE general idea of cannibal surgery "*■ does not as a rule extend beyond battle axes and sharpened shells, with which bodies are reduced to manageable proportions for rapacious appetites.
So it comes as a surprise to read in the late Richard Parkinson’s work “Dreissig Y T ahre in der Sudsee” (“Thirty Years in the South Seas —1875 to 1905”) that not only did the inhabitants of the Gazelle Peninsula, New Britain, practise trepanning for injuries to the head, but that they had a considerable knowledge of medicines and anatomy; which they put to good use, in spite of their can nibalistic tendencies.
In dealing with the customs of these people, Richard Parkinson writes: “Their knowledge of medicine is far from unimportant, and though of not a high order, those who practise it, com mand attention and respect on account of their profound belief in their inspired powers.
“It is difficult to draw the line between bona fide remedies and white magic.
Certain maladies are treated with speci fic medicines varying in potency, con cocted chiefly from plants and herbs.
“Their knowledge of anatomy, in line with their cannibalism, is astonishing, and could be said to be far ahead of that of the average educated European.
The exact position of each internal organ is known to them and they are capable of deciding in which organ a malady is seated.”
It seems they showed their greatest skill in operations on broken heads, re ceived during fighting, from stones from slings.
Stones were hurled from considerable distances and did great damage, and it was not unusual for warriors to be car ried unconscious to the village “Special ist” and his assistants, who had prepared *
and sharpened obsidian splinters, mussel shells and sharks’ teeth for emergency cases.
These crude and simple implements were evidently equal to their task for in most cases the operation proved suc cessful. Within the knowledge of an old man of a village, states Mr. Parkinson, 23 out of 31 cases survived treatment.
Many of them were known to him per sonally.
Great care was taken to wash the wound before setting to work with water contained in a coconut shell, used pre viously for the “surgeons’ ’’ far from clean hands. The operation consisted briefly in making an incision, pulling back the scalp (to expose the skull bone), extracting broken portions, and making a careful and extended search among the folds of the brain for embedded matter.
This delicate procedure over, and all rough edges removed (with obsidian “scalpel”), the hole was carefully covered over, either with a small portion of bark cloth, or a piece of the inner leaf of a banana—first sterilised over glowing coals for a few seconds.
The scalp was then drawn slowly back, washed with coconut milk and bound in position by means of a fine wide meshed net, fitting closely and firmly to the head'.
Finally to hasten healing, the patient was adorned with charms, hung either around his neck or on various parts of his body.
Trepanning was practised also in the Duke of York Islands and alpng the southern shores of New Ireland and on Gerrit Denys and Caens Islands as well.
Here, the practice was extended to patients suffering from continued head aches and epileptic fits. The operation was less complicated, though an opening seems to have been made in the skull bone by scraping.
Broken bones also recei/ved surgical attention, and were set by means of bam boo splints, fitted closely to the exposed bone. These were withdrawn after two or three weeks apparently with good re sults. This method was chiefly applied in the Gazelle Peninsula (New Britain).
Beyond these measures, and blood
letting, which was universal, sorcery played the chief role in their treatment of diseases, and when the power of sor cery failed they abandoned all hope.
Numbers fell victims early to pulmonary complaints and epidemics, and smallpox at various times decimated whole dis tricts. This disease was well known to the inhabitants and regarded with such horror that, on the first sign of its symp toms, the wretched victims were killed to prevent contagion.
According to Parkinson, they placed little faith in European medicine, though they submitted willingly to the surgeon’s knife, when they showed extraordinary courage and endurance, never flinching under the severest treatment.
Richard Parkinson was one of the earliest pioneers for the German New
Guinea Company, which commenced ope rations on an extensive scale in the Bismarck Archipelago as a chartered company in 1885. Before his death in Herbertshohe (New Britain) in 1909, he published this valuable record of the customs and habits of the natives of the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands, together wuth a detailed descrip tion of the principal features of the country. In 1926, at the request the pub lishers (Streaker and Schroder) a second edition, abridged and revised, was pub lished by Professor D. August Eichhorn, Director of the Oceanic branch of Eth nology, at the Berlin State Museum, in view of its valuable information to ethnologists.