MEDICINE MEN

Science is slowly but persistently catching up on nature. A writer in a medical journal has recently declared that "whatever man may achieve by laborious effort, he will find a better equivalent in nature", and he illustrates by reference to anaesthetics. New revelations prove, he says, that in many cases the elaborate paraphernalia of gas of chloroform is less safe and less effective than nature's own way of accomplishing the same ends. A partial state of coma is induced in the patient by deep and rapid breathing; dizziness follows, and it is held that almost any part of the body may then be subjected to treatment that would ordinarily cause pain, without the slightest sensation of discomfort, and without any harmful after-effects.

It is the method of discovery, apparently, that stirs this scientist's sense of irony. With all its advancement, surgery has had to turn for this lesson to the pariahs of the profession, witch-doctors, fakirs, and miracle-workers of semi-civilized races. The exhibitions of professional tricksters, who astonish their audiences by self-inflicted torture, are often made possible and painless by this simple process of deep breathing. A French doctor, observing some of these semi-savage rites in Africa, drew his own conclusion, and the test of actual experiment was a satisfactory proof.

Readers of Stevenson will recall, in "The Master of Ballantrae", the Hindu servant who taught his master to feign death by "swallowing his tongue". The experiment, in that case, was not altogether successful, and the author leaves doubt as to whether the Hindu really remained alive, after two week's burial in the ground, or not. But the trick was founded on an actual oriental superstition, of which many others have likewise appeared to baffle "civilized" doctors. Perhaps later investigators, like this Frenchman, will not only explain them by natural laws rather than supernatural, but also apply them usefully to modern practice.

This newspaper science, however, served up to the credulous for popular consumption, must not be swallowed whole. The French discoverer of "self-anaesthesia" claims only that it will be useful for minor operations, such as extracting teeth, when the cause of pain is only momentary, and when the patient's heart is sound. Even at that, it may be widely useful; "Painless Dentistry", the promise of zealous advertisers, can become an everyday reality; and the ordeal of removing splinters and cinders will be only a matter of a few deep breaths.