Spittel, surgeon of Wycherley and the wilderness

by Chandana Dissanayake

'If you wish to have a photo of me please send your photographer over any morning at 8am!' R.L Spittel wrote thus to the Editor of Times of Ceylon on September 6, 1936 when the latter wished to publish a write-up on his career; he had retired from the health service as the Second Surgeon of the Colombo General Hospital in 1935.

Surgeon and teacher

Born in Tangalla on December 9, 1881, Spittel was the son of Dr. Frederick George Spittel and Zilla Spittel. He was educated at Rev. W.J.P Waltham's School in Kurunegala, All Saints' School in Galle and at Royal College, Colombo. Having passed out from the Ceylon Medical College, Spittel undertook appointment as the House Surgeon to Dr. S.C. Paul at the Colombo General Hospital in 1905.

Dr. R.L Spittel

From 1906 till 1909 he was away in England, qualifying himself as Ceylon's third FRCS and became the Third Surgeon at the General Hospital in1910. The Health Department promoted him to Grade I in his career in 1919. Till his retirement on November 20, 1935, Spittel served as a Visiting Lecturer at the Colombo Medical College, dealing at first with anatomy and then clinical surgery. He was President of the Dutch Burgher Union, President of the Rotary Club and a founder of the 80 Club.

Anthropologist and writer

In her biography of her father, Surgeon of the wilderness, Christine Spittel Wilson refers to his first encounter with the country's indigenous community, the Veddahs. Spittel as a child had accompanied his doctor father to a postmortem examination held within a semi-wilderness. 'The quiet crack of a twig made him turn. Near him, framed by the jungle, stood a man. His body was the colour of earth, his eyes restless as the eyes of animals, his movements silent as those of a forest beast.

Half naked except for a span of cloth of beaten bark, he stood, and as the eyes of the boy met his their gaze locked. His face with its low brow-ridge and strongly marked cheekbones above hollow cheeks, were like none other Richard had known.' (p.26)

It was this first encounter that subsequently led to annual visits to Vedda country that resulted in numerous notebooks and cine films and Spittel envisaged employing social anthropology in producing works of Lankan English fiction. As stated in the preface to Vanished Trails (1950) '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 employed in 'depicting the lives of three generations of Veddahs in their transition from troglodyte, food-gathering stage to the crude beginnings of the hut-dweller and food-producer' (p.v) The genre of the ethnographic novel was probably not known at the time, yet Savage Sanctuary (1941) and its sequel Vanished Trails (1950) easily fall within this category.

Spittel's work on the Veddahs was preceded by the seminal study on the community carried out by Charles and Brenda Seligmann (as part of the former's PhD research) that led to the publication of the social anthropological study The Veddahs in 1911. Having read the publication, a friend, Professor A.S Barnes, wrote to Spittel: 'The anthropological treatise of a few years ago dissected out and dealt separately with the language, hunting, customs, etc. of such primitive races as the Veddahs. This is entirely scientific, but it does not show us the life of the Veddah-what time Mrs. Veddah wakes up in the morning, if she washes herself or not, what she has for breakfast, when Mr. Veddah starts for business, and what he does and thinks. I sincerely hope you will give us as nearly as you can a 'whole' view of the Veddah life, as I am sure it will be a most valuable and entrancing story.' (Savage Sanctuary, p.9)

Comic incongruity

While one agrees with Wilfrid Jayasuriya ('Sri Lanka's Modern English Literature: A Case Study in Literary Theory', 1994) that there is comic incongruity in terms such as 'Mrs. Veddah' and 'breakfast', it is pertinent to note that Spittel's work marked a departure from the medical/anthropological approach of the Seligmanns. His aim, as declared in the Preface to 'Savage Sanctuary' was 'to present an anthropological story from within, with individuals speaking for themselves, revealing their natures by their words and actions: to unveil, in however small a degree, the soul of a people, rather than to measure their bodies; to paint them in the setting of their austere environment; to give the "whole" view.' (p.9)

The content of his several works displays a unique effort at conveying the reader to the remotest parts of Sri Lanka in search of the Veddahs, with their lifestyle, thoughts and innermost feelings interwoven into the narrative. Spittel's firsthand accounts, compiled over a 40 years, of three generations of Veddah life carry a wealth of information with regard to the origins and the subsequent disappearance of some tribes within the Vedda community. As Christine Wilson observes in 'Surgeon of the wilderness': 'He knew now that he was urgently driven in the race against time to record the habits of those living most nearly the life of their prehistoric forebears before it became too late. Every year, every month, counted.' (p. 57)

Vanished Trails like its predecessor Savage Sanctuary can be classified as a documentary/ethnographic novel and according to Spittel's Preface 'is the true story of the last remnant of Ceylon's most primitive aborigines...' Through authorial presence in the novel, Spittel highlights his first encounter as an adult with Ceylon's indigenous people: 'With nervous expectancy the Veddahs awaited the meeting. Soon the stranger was before them, and for the first time I saw these aboriginal inhabitants of Ceylon. I was as excited by the sight of these Veddas as they were because of me. After many a disillusioning expedition through Ceylon's wildest jungles, that punctuated half - dozen years of a busy surgeon's life, I had my reward. Here for me was the realisation of a dream beyond my imagining-Poromola, Gama, Kaira, as fine a group of savage hunters as survived from a bygone age...'(p. 145)

Besides, Spittel considered Veddah country a source of regeneration, of spiritual renewal. He had once stated: 'The jungles renew me. After the bustle and stress of Colombo, the anxieties of looking after my patients, being with these simple people who know no other man from civilisation but myself is like a balm to my soul. Here, amid nature, and a people untouched by civilisation, the reality of life comes into focus again. I find renewed faith and strength to go back to my work regenerated.' (Surgeon of the Wilderness, p.97)

Wycherley

Many episodes of this 'busy surgeon's life' were cast in his sprawling home at Buller's Road (now Bauddhaloka Mawatha), constructed to house the family and his consulting rooms, laboratory and nursing home. Designed by architect Claessen, a friend and patient, the house was named Wycherley and it now houses an educational institute by that name.

It was at Wycherley that Dr. Richard Spittel, honoured by then with CMG and CBE, breathed his last forty three years ago, around noon on September 3, 1969. He was buried at the Anglican Section of the General Cemetery the following evening.