EVE’S FIRST SEWING.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19695, 23 January 1926, Page 22

EVE’S FIRST SEWING.

How did Adam and Eve learn to sew broad, smooth leaves together? Sir John Bland Sutton (quoted by the British Medical Journal) suggested in a lecture at Liverpool that they may have profited by watching the tailor bird spin its thread and sew the edges,of adjacent leaves together to form its nest in the trees of the Garden of Eden. Sir John was explaining that surgeons are still searching for the perfect stitching material for wounds, and said that plants, insects, and animals had been ransacked for the ideal material. It was by no means improbable, he added, that tendon for thread and thorn for needle were the first sewing materials used by primitive man for closing wounds. There was no material used by tailor or cobbler which had not been of service to surgeons for stitching wounds. In India, Brazil, and Asia Minor, said Sir John, the mandibles of ants have been used from remote times as clips for securing the edges of wounds, which are pressed together and the ant applied by means of forceps. The ant separates its mandibles for defence, and as the insect is brought to the wound it seizes the edges and remains fixed. The body of the ant is divided with scissors, leaving the mandibles grasping the edges of the wound. The mandibles are antiseptic in virtue of formic acid normally present iu ants.