FU5TCIIER.) KxVBYLE TREPHINING. 27 



The fliebibe (operator) is a sort of semi-priest wlio has inherited tlie 

 right to exercise his function; the operation, the instruments, the dressings, 

 are all sacred, and the patient is held in reverence after recovery. The 

 dressings consist mainly of woman's milk and of butter; the former obtained 

 from a woman who has duly performed her religious rites. Both these 

 ingredients figure in ceremonial observances in the Orient. 



It is impossible to draw any conclusion as to the results of this process 

 of trephining. The fhehibes insist that it is always successful, but Arab 

 mendacity is proverbial, and neither M. Paris nor M. Martin gives any 

 credence to their statements. When commencing the incisions, the thchihc's 

 formula is thus pronounced : Thou wilt recover if it please God. If the patient 

 succumb, his family are told : It was tvritten. 



The natives, however, certainl}' regard the operation as without danger 

 to life, and it is even resorted to as a means of extortion. M. Paris relates 

 that two men having quarreled, one struck the other a blow on the body 

 with a stick. Some days after the latter had his head trephined for a pre- 

 tended fracture and sued his enemy for damag-es. The deception was 

 exposed, and both patient and surgeon were punished. The dieli, or price 

 of blood, is rigorously exacted among them, every injury, even a fatal one, 

 having its established price. M. Martin mentions that he has seen men upon 

 whom trephining had been j^racticed five or six times, so that their heads 

 were monstrously disfigured. It is to be borne in mind that in these cases 

 the operation was performed at intervals of time for different injuries. 



A remarkable case has been recently published in which the patient 

 was trephined five times within five years.^^ The disease of the bone for 

 which these successive operations were performed originated in blows 

 received in a brawl in 1875. The last trephining took place in 1880, and, 

 so far, ajDpears to have been successful. 



In Otaheite, the 'operator's armamentarium consists of pieces of broken 

 glass bottles for scraping, or, sometimes, of flints, shark's teeth for incisions, 

 and pieces of gourd with shark tendons for strings with which to cover the 

 opening prodvxced. A missionary at Uvea, one of the South Sea Islands, 



^ A case of repeateil trephining. By P. B. McCutcLou. New Orlcaus Med. & Surg. Journal, 1881, 

 ix, 259-261. 



