Dr R.L. Spittel: The well-known anthropologist and naturalist

Dr. R.L. Spittel has written several books starting with Wild Ceylon (1924) described as "a great classic of the Ceylon jungles, also depicting in vivid language the life of Veddahs of Ceylon, a fast dying-out aboriginal race which yet retains many of its primitive customs." It was hailed as the first authoritative work after Prof. Seligmann wrote his monumental book on the Veddahs.

Dr. R. L. Spittel in his preface to the book, traces the origin of Veddahs as an off-shoot of one of the wild, autochthonous tribes in India, who crossed over to Ceylon, in prehistoric times, when the two lands were one, and subsequently got cut off by the inroad of the sea. Stating that the Veddahs appear to be very akin to the Gonds of India, he mentions that the description of a Gond well applies to the Veddah - "A man of small sturdy build, with piercing eyes and a free athletic carriage... axe hitched on shoulder, bow and arrows in hand." Dr. Spittel's well-known book, Savage Sanctuary was written in 1941, followed by Vanished Trails.

The latter is a story depicting the lives of three generations of Veddahs in their transition from the troglodyte, food-gathering stage to the crude beginnings of the "The device of presenting social anthropology in the form of a novel that stresses the human interest, rather than after the severely detached manner of the purely scientific investigator, was begun in my previous book, and has been continued in Vanished Trails with more success," he says in his preface written in 1944.

Even in his first book, Wild Ceylon he described the Veddahs and the Veddah country in a most readable manner in the form of a narrative of a long journey. His description of Bintenne, the traditional home of Veddahs, is vivid.

"Cosy homes and boutiques nestle under shady trees. Chained monkeys and caged parrots are ubiquitous and may be purchased for a song. Laden tavalam teams rest here on their way to the interior. It being April, every tree has its nesting bird - bee-catchers, bulbuls, drongos, coppersmiths and all the rest of them; hungry little squirrels chirp spasmodically for food; song fills the air."

Other books written by Dr. Spittel are Where the White Sambhur Roams and Wild White Boy. Some of his books have been translated into Sinhala thereby providing the Sinhala reader an opportunity to enjoy good writing.

When he returned, he was appointed as the third surgeon at the General Hospital in Colombo. He retired from government service in 1935 as a Senior Surgeon, and a lecturer at the Ceylon Medical College, but continued as a Consultant Surgeon.

He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1942 and a Companion of the Order of St. George in 1950, for his invaluable service in Medicine.

Though he was a Medical Doctor, his inner urge was always towards anthropology. As an avid naturalist, Dr. Spittel's love was the jungles of Ceylon, gaining a store house of knowledge on its fauna and flora and also the native aborigines called the Veddahs.

He penned many books of which some of the well-known ones were Wild Ceylon, Wild White Boy, Vanished Trails , Where The White Sambhur Roams which detailed jungle adventures and Savage Sanctuary which is a biographical novel based on documentary sources collected by Spittel himself on a Veddah outlaw called Tissahamy.

His white skin and his medicine man role made him so acceptable to the Veddahs as a hero.

Dr. Spittel was a perfect "spot on surgeon", despite his physical handicap of an arm that had to be treated for a septecaemia for nine months. His love for wildlife so enhanced his life that he recorded unedited footage of the Veddahs on 16 mm cine camera and which had been donated to the British Museum with copies to the Edinburgh Museum.

These are today of immense anthropological value. He was a surgeon par excellence, doing wonders with limited facilities and instruments, considered archaic today. He even undertook the first skin graft in Ceylon using his own blood for the first blood transfusion.

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