igoo-i.] D^NE Surgery. 17 



namely, their sharp points, their curved outlines and their serrated 

 edges. 



The first particularity is probably what led Mr. Meredith to incline 

 " to the opinion that they were used on occasions of sickness and 

 ceremony for lacerating and bleeding the temples."* My own studies 

 of the Northern Denes allow me, taking into consideration that analogy 

 found in most things aboriginal, to subscribe to the reverend gentle- 

 man's conclusions. But there remain the invariable and apparently 

 unnecessary curvedness and the indentations of the relics. That these 

 two peculiarities were intended for a specific purpose it would be idle 

 to deny. What was that purpose? The idea of their having been 

 designed as saws must be abandoned owing to the nature of the 

 material, soft and brittle obsidian. Both Prof Wilson and Mr, 

 Meredith are agreed on that point. On the other hand, temple- 

 bleeders do not require to be crooked in outline or serrated on the 

 inner curved edge as is the case with most of the implements figured 

 in Mr. Meredith's article. A brief reference to the custom of blood- 

 letting as it is practised among the Northern D^nes may throw some 

 light on the question. 



Among those aborigines, bleeding may be considered under five 

 different heads. There is blood-letting proper, darting, piercing, 

 gashing and scarifying. 



The Northern Denes have always been poor, unaesthetic workmen 

 and, as I have noted elsewhere,-]- among them " where extra exertion 

 was not absolutely necessary, it was very seldom bestowed upon any 

 kind of work." This explains how it is that none of my informants 

 could remember the use of, or any reference to, anything like a lancet 

 or bleeder by their ancestors. A sharp piece of stone, a flake from one 

 of the few tools or weapons they made, or, more generally, even a 

 common flint or obsidian arrow-head did that duty. Yet it would 

 seem that, in pristine times, they had something like a bleeder, 

 for one of the tribes, the Carrier, has a word, Jwkwoelh, to designate 

 that instrument 



The first process, I said, was, or rather is — for in that respect native 

 surgery has not changed with the advent of the whites — net's'uket or 

 blood-letting proper. As among us, the operation is performed either 

 on a vein or an artery. In the latter, and by far the commonest, case^ 



* Loc. cit. 



t "Notes on the Western D6n(is," Trans. Can. Inst., vol. IV., p. 



