The Dutch surgeon who loved Sri Lankans

by Amal Hewavissenti

Reginald Lionel Spittel was a Dutch medical professional who lived in Sri Lanka and who had a boundless attachment to the people and landscape of Sri Lanka. His intense enthusiasm in delving into the Peculiar lifestyle of the Sri Lankan aborigines (Veddahs) compelled him to visit jungles continually and call on Veddah people. He endeavoured to walk in hardly accessible wilderness in spite of his severely injured left hand.

R.L. Spittel's works Vanished Trails and Savage Sanctuary deal fairly with his own liberal ponderings and studies on life and culture of the Veddah people in Sri Lanka. Apart from that, his highly readable narrative "White Wild Boy" is indeed a graphic representation of life in the wildness.

Spittel managed to have hairbreadth escapes from fatal accidents on his perilous walks in the jungle out this only increased his never-ending passion to explore and haunt the jungle.

This clever surgeon ever stayed poised to direct his sympathy and encouraging support for the poor people living amidst the atrocities of nature and especially Sri Lankan aborigines (Adivasi) living in hardly accessible regions in Vanni.

He endeavoured to put across his premise that Sri Lankan Veddah people typically constitute an integral part of our community and by no means should they be considered outcasts or primitively under developed people.

Apart from that, he established his premise that Sri Lanka and India were on the same geographical location during prehistoric times and later Sri Lanka was separated from India through the process of sea erosion.

According as Spittel says, Veddah people immigrated to Sri Lanka from India thousands of years previously when Sri Lanka and India existed as one country. He believed that Veddah people in Sri Lanka bear anthropological affinities, to some extend, to certain cultural traits of Indian communities.

Yet, he took particular care to welcome other versions or interpretations regarding the origin of Veddah people in Sri Lanka. The life of this surgeon itself is filled with interesting episodes.

His father Frederic George Spittel was the regional surgeon for Tangalle but he had served in a number of districts such as Puttalam, Hambantota and Kurunegala. Young Spittel was much more exposed to the life and people of Sri Lanka as he had gained more opportunities to travel to various regions with his father.

Spittel married Calribel Vendette Francis the daughter of G. Vendette, a brigadier. His role as a lecturer at Ceylon Medical College and his contribution at Colombo General Hospital was a national mission.

It is said that Spittel's treatments had a surprisingly magical effect on the patients who began to recuperate on the first dose of medicine administered by him.

An occasions he was seem nursing a Veddah child in Colombo with the same genuine love he would have nursed his own child with.

His contribution to Sri Lankan medicine is rated superb. His inventions, explanations and varying researches have been immortalised in the history of Sri Lankan medicine. The insightful ideas and discoveries with his own conclusions still remain unchallenged.

R.L. Spittel's impressive discoveries in the field of surgery are recorded in his books titled Surgical Ward Work, Essentials on Surgery and Framboesia Tropic. These books were subsequently used as authentic hand books by medical students during the decades 1920-1930.

He assumed duties as the chief medical officer in charge of the accident ward of Colombo General Hospital. Furthermore, he was recognised to be an internationally reported surgeon who was consequently honoured with the award CBE for an enlightening article published in the British Medical Journal.

In addition, Spittel practically pioneered blood transfusion in Sri Lanka and his suggestions based on new methodologies on treating a wounded patient were completely effectual.

Christine Spittel Wilson, his one and only daughter too was a born writer who had inherited much of her father's calibre for recording personal experiences picturesquely. She compiled her father's biography with all the exciting events in his life in Sri Lanka.

Spittel's novel "The White Wild Boy" is woven round an actual episode in the life of a Dutch boy marooned on an island (Sri Lanka) when his ship has been ripped apart by a typhoon.

He wrote about his dramatic experiences in Far Off Things, and Wild Ceylon - two books that were dedicated to his father Frederick George Spittel who impressed on young Spittel an inexhaustible love for jungle.

Christine Spittel later published his book titled "Leaves of the Jungle" - a poetic recording of his own impression of life in wilderness.

The surgeon launched an environmental research in the form of a magazine in 1937. The magazine titled "Loris" was published chiefly to raise awareness about the vitality of jungles and the wild animals and to highlight man's responsibility of preserving them. He was mainly instrumental in the establishment of the wild life park of Wilpattu.

He loved not only the jungle but also the animals in it. For the first time, he declared that protected jungles, tanks, waterways are essential for the balance existence of wildlife and even went to the extent of delivering public lectures on the importance of wild animals and jungles for human existence.

This great man who showed himself in different forms - as a poet, a surgeon, a writer, a humanist and lover of jungle breathed his last on September 3, 1969.