BOY’S LIFE SAVED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24855, 3 March 1942, Page 4

BOY’S LIFE SAVED

ARTIFICIAL RESPIRATION • MAORI METHOD SUCCEEDS An extraordinary case of resuscitation after apparent drowning is reported from Rotorua. A young Maori child, son of Mr Isaac Matenga, a Public Works Department employee, when playing with a child companion, fell into the Waikato River. The other child ran arid informed the mother, who hastened to the river and got the apparently drowned child out of the water. Artificial respiration was tried without success, and a message was sent to the father, who arrived over half an hour after the accident. He adopted a Maori method of resuscitation by lighting a fire of manuka wood and then hanging the patient up by the ankles in the dense, hot smoke, at the same time squeezing the chest. The treatment was entirely successful. Questioned regarding the method a Rotorua medical practitioner said that he had heard of its use in the South Sea Islands but not previously in New Zealand.

An authority on Maori lore in Rotorua, however, stated that the method was well known in the early times. He recalled an accident some years ago when it was applied to a girl who was drowned. On that occasion it was over an hour before the body was taken from the water, and the method was unsuccessful.