42 POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
There were persons among them celebrated as 
oculists, but their skill principally consisted in 
removing foreign substances from the eye; and 
when applied to for this purpose, they, as well as 
others, received the payment or fee before they 
commenced their operations; but if the present did 
not please them, they, to satisfy their employers, 
sometimes took one splinter, &c. out of the eye, and 
left another in, that they might be sent for again. 
Their surgeons were remarkably dexterous in 
closing a cut or thrust, by drawing the edges 
carefully together, and applying the pungent juice 
of the ape, arum costatum , to the surface. This, 
acting like caustic, must have caused great pain. 
A fractured limb they set without much trouble ; 
applying splinters of bamboo-cane to the sides, 
and keeping it bound up till healed. A disloca ¬ 
tion they usually succeeded in reducing ; but the 
other parts of their surgical practice were marked 
by a rude promptness, temerity, and barbarism, 
almost incredible. A man one day fell from a 
tree, and dislocated some part of his neck. His 
companions, on perceiving it, instantly took him 
up : one of them placed his head between his 
own knees, and held it firmly; while the others, 
taking hold of his body, twisted the joint into its 
proper place. 
On another occasion, a number of young men, 
in the district of Fare, were carrying large stones, 
suspended from each end of a pole across their 
shoulders, their usual mode of carrying a burden : 
one of them so injured the vertebra, as to be 
almost unable to move ; he had, as they expressed 
it, fati te tua , broken the back. His fellow-work¬ 
men laid him flat on his face on the grass; one 
grasped and pulled his shoulders, and the other his 
