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Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume I, Issue 13, 19 December 1857, Page 3

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To the Editor of the Hawhe's Bay Herald. Sir, — I see reported in your last issue that Matenga (Moana Nui's brother), and several others on that side are slightly wounded. I feel assured that the gentleman who furnished that report had no intention whatever of placing me in any equivocal position as respects the natives. Btit my opinion, as a medical man, is that bullet wounds of the neck, with retention of the ball and an impossibility of its extraction — that bullet wound's of the lungs, with retention of the ball in one case — that bullet wounds of the pubic region, passing out through the rectum and sacrum — that compound and comminuted, fractures of humerus and elbow joint, &c, are, or ought to be, classified as serious cases, and require

all the resources of the medical art for their alleviation or cuvo. Had my patients been Europeans I should not have trespassed upon your space. But, Sir, the light of medic. J civilization is only just dawning upon the natives ; and as I fill a difficult and responsible position just now — having to attend the wounded on both sides — an opinion of the slightness of the cases all on one side gaining the publicity it cannot fail to do in your columns, might, in the event of some of these cases terminating fatally, lead to suspicions as to the legitimacy of the curative means adopted, — my position, both socially and medically, be rendered not an enviable one — and a noble profession brought into undeserved disrepute. I am, &c, Thomas Hitciiixos. Native Surgeon.