DESERT SURGERY

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 8736, 19 May 1914, Page 9

DESERT SURGERY

AVONDERFUL SKILL OF TRIBAL DOCTORS. LONDON, April 9. Mr Hylton-Simpson, whose anthropological investigations on the Congo are well known, has just returned from the Algerian hinterland, where he has for some years been studying the Bedouin and other tribes of the desert. Accompanied in his travels by his wife, ho has kept off the beaten track and has lived in remote villages as a guest of the sheikh. During his previous travels Mr Hylton-Simpson had heard much of the wonderful skill of the tribal doctors, particularly in surgery. On this expedition, says Renter’s Agency, he came into touch with a friendly Arab doctor, who helped him to a meeting with eight village surgeons. He has brought back for the learned societies a mass of valuable information and a large collection of native surgical instruments. These, consisting of 50 saws, lancets, and probes, are of the crudest description, but prove highly effective. The only training these tribal doctors obtain is that banded on from father to son. Very few are able to read or write, and one most successful surgeon met by the traveller was quite unable to read. Trepanning is very common, and is most successfully performed. That operations of this sort are frequent is due to the fact that the country is very stony, .and stones are frequently used in disputes. The use of an anaesthetic is unknown, and is, in fact, regarded with contempt. The people seem impervious to pain. Mr Hylton-Simpson saw one boy who was operated on for fifteen days for the removal of a piece of skull smaller than a half-penny. The hoy recovered. The native doctors claim to have over 200 “cures” for various diseases. Mr Hylton-Simpson also made Investigation of many strange superstitions among the nomads. On one occasion he witnessed a theatrical performance of the pre-Islamic period in which the performers were dressed as lions. One remote village in which the travellers lived was cut off from the rest of the country by a ridge—unseen at a short distance —of several hundred feet of precipitous and overhanging rock. Some of the sheikhs are of very ancient family. .