PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION G. 647 
THOKA Los! is done for various ailments or illnesses, generally in 
cases of lumbar rheumatism and in the sequele of catarrhal 
fever, such as haric pneumonia, mild but painful pleuritis, and 
various neuralgic affections, and in disease of the sacro-iliac 
synchondroses. 
The usual explanation given by natives when interrogated as 
to the rationale upon which this operation is recommended is 
that by incising a dependent portion of the trunk, such as the 
perineum, the abdomen is relieved from an accumulation of blood 
about its fundus. 
This theory, ingenious though it be, is, of course, as foolish in 
conception as it is anatomically inconsistent. Yet many Fijian 
natives, chiefs of intelligence among them, declare that their lives 
have been saved by undergoing THoxka Lost, and that it is one of 
the few really good methods of treatment handed down to them 
by their medical experts from the dark ages of their history. The 
fact that this grain amongst the chaff of the medizval lore of a 
race of cannibals should rest upon a principle at variance with 
the most rudimentary facts of human anatomy is to be explained 
by their custom of cooking bodies as they still cook pigs—by 
baking them whole in an oven or pit, lined and covered with 
heated stones. This process prevented the natives from acquiring 
any deeper knowledge of the human frame as a consequence of 
their cannibal habits, than the average English housewife learns 
from roasting a rabbit or a barn-door fowl of comparative 
anatomy of the Leporid and the Gallinacee. 
THOKA Los! is performed more commonly in certain districts of 
Fiji than in others. The central and western provinces of the 
main island are its strongholds, and it becomes less resorted to 
towards the eastern portions of the group, where the admixture 
with the Tongan race is more general. As the latter condition 
markedly influences the colour of the skin, one may say, speaking 
roughly, that the darker the prevailing tint of skin in any tribe 
or matangga/?, the more commonly is THoxKa Los! likely to be met 
with amongst its members. 
Fijians, however, are not the only people who practise some 
method of tampering with the urethra. Among certain tribes in 
the west and north-western portions of Australia the urethra is 
commonly laid open from the meatus backwards. In some tribes 
the slit extends two or three inches; in others it is carried quite 
to the scrotum. It is made on the under side of the organ, and 
is not expected to re-unite, but leaves a mere groove in place of 
the normal urethra, which becomes callous. 
While the occurrence of so singular a practice in races as 
widely separated, both geographically and ethnologically, as the 
Fijians and the natives of north-western Australia is remarkable, 
there are essential differences between the two procedures, Their 
ethics are different, and their methods are dissimilar. With the 
