PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION G. 651 
tions and enquiry among the countless tribes of Africa, Mada- 
gascar, and the Malay Archipelago, as to where these customs 
sprang from, and as to what circumstances called them into 
existence. 
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Addendum on the Surguwal Aspects of THOKA LOSI. 
An operation such as THOKA LosI may appear coarse and inutile. 
Tt has been customary, indeed, among surgeons in Fiji to regard 
it, as performed by the Fijians, with aversion and contempt, and 
to stigmatise by various uncomplimentary epithets all natives 
who pose as its defenders. Those of the European lay community 
who have any knowledge of THoxa Lost, whether from hearsay or 
from observation, regard it as barbaric and unjustifiable, and 
popularly believe that recovery after it is the exception rather 
than the rule. 
Amid this storm of opposition, THoKA Lost, though it affects but 
a small and imperfectly-known handful of Her Majesty’s subjects, 
deserves, perhaps, as a surgical proceeding a word of apology, 
even though as a measure of medical treatment it may not be 
deemed worthy of support nor even justifiable. Indeed, I am by 
no means sure that its ill-repute amongst white people is deserved. 
For, though in principle it is unreservedly fallacious, in its effects 
it is at least free from many of the disastrous consequences with 
which it has been charged. Only twenty European surgeons have 
resided in the Viti Islands, and of this number but few have 
mixed freely with the aboriginal race or learned sufficient of the 
language and of the inner domestic life of the people to have 
gained an opportunity of watching a case of THoKa Lost from its 
beginning to the healing period. Such cases are, from their very 
nature, not freely paraded, and a European surgeon is still less 
likely than a non-professional person to have them exhibited to 
his observation and, doubtless, adverse criticism. Moreover, the 
native operator receives his training as a family prerogative. 
It represents his stock-in-trade, by which he counts upon gaining 
presents and property. And for these reasons he is never very 
ready to afford another person any insight into his methods. It 
is only after many years’ residence, therefore, and much intimacy 
with individual natives from different parts of the group, that a 
series of data, consisting of actual observations, can, in a matter 
like THoKa tos, be collected. 
From what I have seen, I have formed the opinion that it is 
unfair to draw parallels, and then comparisons, between THOKA LOSI 
and our own operation of perineal section. But this is what 
commonly has been done in arriving at those condemnatory state- 
ments which meet the traveller’s ear in reference to this subject. 
