MEDICAL STUDIES 35 



then presented itself to me was, "Why could not 

 people be made dead drunk before operations ? Could 

 it not be effected without upsetting their digestion and 

 doing harm in other ways ? " The subsequent dis- 

 covery oi inhaling, instead of drinking the intoxicating 

 spirit, whether it be chloroform or ether, solved that 

 question most happily. 



The cries of the poor fellows who were operated 

 on were characteristic ; in fact, each class of operation 

 seemed to evoke some peculiar form of them. All 

 this was terrible, but only at first. It seemed after a 

 while as though the cries were somehow disconnected 

 with the operation, upon which the whole attention 

 became fixed. 



It was obvious that different persons felt pain 

 with very different degrees of acuteness. I may here 

 go quite out of chronological sequence, and refer to 

 an experience in 1851, when I was on the point of 

 starting from a mission station on my exploration of 

 Damara Land, then wholly unknown but now a 

 German possession. It will be again alluded to in a 

 later chapter. A branch missionary outpost, twenty 

 miles off, had lately been raided, and most of the 

 people, other than the missionaries themselves, 

 murdered. Of those who escaped, two women, each 

 with both of their feet hacked off, made their way 

 to the station, at which I saw them. The Damara 

 women wear heavy copper rings on their ankles, put 

 on when they are growing girls that the rings may 

 not slip over their feet when they are adult. These 

 coveted treasures can therefore be obtained only by 

 the summary process of cutting off the feet. In this 

 horribly mutilated state the two women crawled the 



