When wild eyes met his eyes

In the late 1880s, a young boy with a burning am- bition to become a doctor stood in a jungle clearing watching his surgeon-father perform an autopsy. From the undergrowth a Veddah suddenly appeared. The eyes of the boy and the Veddah met for one brief yet significant moment before the latter hastily withdrew into the jungle. It was Richard Lionel Spittel's first encounter with a member of this ancient race - an encounter that would have a profound effect on his life.

He was not to know then that apart from reaching the highest pinnacle of his career as a surgeon, he would become as well the foremost living authority on the Veddahs. Dr. R.L. Spittel was to be their champion and through his unstinting efforts did much to help them. Similarly, his interest in wildlife led him to crusade tirelessly for the conservation of the fauna and flora of then Ceylon.

He was as proficient with his pen as with his scalpel. His vast knowledge of Ceylon, gathered from his exhaustive travel and voracious reading, found expression in a number of excellent anthropological books and historical novels, which gained him an international reputation as an author.

These are but a few facets of this remarkable man who led life to the full despite considerable physical handicap. Dr. R. L. Spittel dedicated his life to the people and natural heritage of Ceylon. As a result, the medical profession, rural communities and all those who take pleasure from the island's wildlife and wilderness areas, have reason to be grateful to him today.

So begins the script of Surgeon of the Wilderness. My brief was to introduce the younger generation of Sri Lankans to Dr. Spittel and his work, to convey the importance of his achievements, and to evaluate his life in the context of the present and the future.

Richard Spittel disembarked from the ship at Colombo with the distinction of being newly qualified as a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, England. He had returned to Ceylon to take up his appointment as Third Surgeon at the General Hospital. He was in love with Clarie Van Dort, daughter of one of the country's most distinguished physicians. As fellow students they had met at the turn of the century at the Ceylon Medical College, where they both qualified as doctors. Now the year was 1910, Richard Spittel was 29 and eager to put all he had learned into practice.

Soon after commencing his career, though, he caught septicaemia as a result of operating with his naked hands. Tragically, surgical rubber gloves had not then reached Ceylon. Fourteen operations and nine months later, his shoulder was disfigured and permanently immobilised. It seemed to be Richard Spittel's destiny, however, to win against seemingly insurmountable odds.

In boyhood he had suffered an accident to his left arm, which had lost him the free use of his elbow and fingers. Now he had to accept the fact that he had two disfigured arms. Yet incredibly, his determination was such that he was able to resume his career as a surgeon, his surgical skills unimpaired and undiminished.

But then he came from tough, pioneering stock. In 1760 the first Spittel was to land in the spice island of Zeilan, after sailing from Holland in the service of the Dutch East India Company. The second son of a family of nine, Richard was born in 1881 at Tangalle. His father was a Provincial Surgeon whose favourite pastime was to commune with nature. It was he who was largely responsible for Richard Spittel's love for the jungles and their inhabitants.

Amazingly, at one time Richard Spittel had been a keen hunter. After septicaemia, though, he was no longer able to shoot - nor indeed did he wish to. Paradoxically, like many who have hunted, he was to become a fervent wildlife conservationist. At some point the innocence of nature strikes the hunter with unexpected force. In Richard Spittel's case it came after killing a deer and then finding to his self-disgust a young fawn standing nearby. It was one of many jungle scenes that he would capture in his poignant poetry:

The Wounded Doe

A hunter, happening on a glade,
Beheld a quietly browsing doe
That rooted gaze with eyes afraid
At levelled gun but feared to go.
The gun sang death - but even her pain
Gave to her halting feet no wing:
The woods rang out to death again,
Again the poor beast felt the sting.
She ambled off some screen to find -
While from the scrub leapt to her side
A gentle, frightened, little hind
The man till then had not espied.
It smote the hunter's heart with awe;
He could not end the deed he'd done.
With anguished, shaken soul he saw
His house, his wife, his little one.

A few years ago I was fortunate enough to come across a personal copy of Richard Spittel's privately published and rare volume of poetry, entitled Leaves of the Jungle (Colombo: 1953). This heartfelt anthology celebrating the wild Ceylon that Spittel understood so well is dedicated to his daughter, Christine. Allan Cameron - a tea planter - superbly illustrates the work. Richard Spittel's poetic vision is evident throughout his verse. Contained in this slim volume are some of the finest poems ever written about the island, such as To the Elephants Doomed at the Kraal, The Wounded Doe, To a Veddah Child Suffering from Hydrophobia, Do You Remember Us? and Hail Lanka!

To the Elephants Doomed at the Kraal (excerpts)

Hail, O ye wild ones,
Now we come nigh you
Lords of our jungles,
Pride of our land.
Your day like the mammoths',
Declines to its ending,
Your forests resound
To engines of man.
That's in the future:
But now do we hound you
For pride in the chasing
And lust for the show.
Afar in your arbours,
Songful with wild birds,
Heard you no omens
Of anguish and woe?
Pardon O doomed ones,
The wrongs that we do you:
Lords of our jungles,
Pride of our land.

The hunter turned conservationist had to find a new and definitive objective in his beloved jungles. During his long months in hospital he had remembered, as if in a dream, his first encounter with a Veddah. He consequently read the anthropological study of the race by Professor C. G. Seligmann, published in 1911. One passage struck him forcefully. "Here," Professor Seligmann wrote, "are at least four families living the life their forefathers had lived for generations without perceptible change."

It excited him more than anything had in a long time. Here in Ceylon was one of the most anthropologically important types of the human race. And at that time, of course, little scientific information was known about them. Richard Spittel became obsessed with finding the Veddahs and learning as much about them as he could.

When he had married Clarie Van Dort he warned her that he would visit the jungles whenever he had leave. She had come to accept the fact that the wilderness renewed and invigorated his spirit. Now he planned a voyage of exploration few had ever attempted at that time - a journey up the Mahaweli Ganga by canoe. Richard Spittel's objective was Gunner's Quoin, a huge rock rising out of dense forest at Dimbulagala. Here he hoped to find the Veddahs.

His quarry was at first maddeningly elusive. Then, one day, three men approached him in single file. He saw the brief span cloths, the axe over one shoulder, the wild eyes. Though the time when they had worn tree-bark was gone, they were close examples of traditional Veddahs. Eagerly he went with them to their dwellings. He noted the rampant symptoms of malnutrition, malaria and yaws, realising that as a doctor there was much work for him to do in the future.

In addition he was aware of the need to record, before it became too late, the customs of those Veddahs living closest to the lives of their prehistoric ancestors. He understood that the forces of change that have characterised the 20th century would soon rob the Veddahs, and the world, of their cultural history. Haunted by his experience, Richard Spittel was determined that wherever there were Veddahs, he would go. It was the beginning of a long, self-imposed and committed task - the documentation of the Veddahs final phase of traditional life, as well as assistance with their transition into the modern world. It was not the cold dispassionate urge of the scientist that drove him, but a strange affinity and a strong compassion.

While Richard Spittel's written documentation of the Veddahs may be familiar to some, very few are aware that he exposed much 16mm cine footage of the tribe during the 1940s and 1950s. The unedited reels that resulted were donated to the British Museum, with copies sent to the Edinburgh Museum. Needless to say, this footage is of great anthropological significance.

During this period of his life it was as a doctor and surgeon that Richard Spittel received increasing recognition. However, he was no society physician. When he joined the General Hospital he had chosen to work in the most undesirable section - the dreaded ulcer ward with its cases of syphilis and cancer. Soon he started a private practice as a specialist of some repute in venereal disease. His studies in this field resulted in him making valuable contributions to the investigation of yaws, about which little was then known.

Surgery, however, was Richard Spittel's greatest love. He achieved wonders in conditions and with instruments that would be considered primitive and totally inadequate today. In an age when speed was vital due to the limitations of anaesthetics, he was one of the fastest - yet surest - of surgeons. Not wishing to let his surgical skills stagnate, he was to return to England to keep abreast of the latest advances and techniques. Consequently he was a pioneer, the first surgeon in this country to attempt many new life-saving operations and surgical procedures. For instance, he undertook the first skin graft in Ceylon and administered the first blood transfusion - using his own blood.

But his greatest works of healing were probably in the jungles, earning him the tag Surgeon of the Wilderness. Often he would perform emergency operations under the most difficult of conditions. His intensive treatment was almost completely to cure the people of the Vanni of venereal disease and malaria. In every corner of Ceylon the dostara hamuduruo became famous for helping the Veddahs and other remote village communities.

In addition to his professional work, Richard Spittel now wrote compulsively. The urge to preserve in print the Ceylon he knew was to become almost as great as his dedication to his profession. His first book, Wild Ceylon, published in 1924, contains an exceptional introductory verse by him about the Veddahs:

In the dim waste lands of the Orient stands
The wreck of a race so old and vast
That the greyest legend cannot lay hands
On a single fact of its tongueless past

Over the next 40 years, in spite of considerable pain, Richard Spittel was to write many other books on the Veddahs as well as historical novels of Ceylon. Some were published abroad and all generated much critical acclaim. As his works on the Veddahs appeared, his name became widely known among the leading anthropologists of the world.

The complete list of his anthropological and historical books reads: Wild Ceylon (Colombo: 1924), Far Off Things (Colombo: 1933), Savage Sanctuary (London: 1941), Vanished Trails (Oxford: 1950), Where the White Sambhur Roams (London: 1951), Wild White Boy (London: 1958) and Brave Island (Colombo: 1966), co-authored with Christine Wilson.

The Evening Gazette wrote about Where the White Sambhur Roams that the book "Out-Tarzans Tarzan" while the Manchester Evening News that it was, "In the best tradition of Ballantyne." And the reviewer at the B.B.C. Home Service said of it: "The whole story has been beautifully written. It is the best jungle book I've read since the 'Jungle Book' itself."

Apart from his considerable achievements as an author, Richard Spittel was to encourage other, aspiring writers to record the natural heritage of Ceylon. One such was the late Lala Adithiya. I first met Lala Adithiya, author of that intriguing historical travelogue, Search for Sugala (Colombo: 1980) and the unpublished manuscript Footprints in the Jungle (1981), during the research for the script.

An architect by vocation Lala was, like his mentor, a Colombo professional who hankered after the jungles. The study of his house in Melbourne Avenue showed much evidence of his devotion to the jungles. His bush hat and jacket hung from the back of the door, while camping equipment and other gear - much of which had once belonged to Spittel - filled the corners. The most interesting of Spittel's items was his travelling box, complete with all its original paraphernalia. Lala kindly loaned much of this equipment for use in the documentary, as the director (my wife Sharmini) wished to recreate several scenes of Richard Spittel on his jungle treks. I played the part of the great man, presenting a passable resemblance in long shot or with my back to the camera.

Part 2 - next week

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