If, in the depths of the forest, an Indian breaks his leg or arm (said Dr. Kingston in his address at the British Medical Association meeting at Nottingham, 1892), splints of softest material are at once improvised. Straight branches are cut, of uniform length and thickness. These are lined with down-like moss, or scrapings or shavings of wood; or with fine twigs interlaid with leaves, if in summer; or with the curled-up leaves of the evergreen cedar or hemlock, if in winter; and the whole is surrounded with withes of willow or osier, or young birch. Occasionally it is the soft but sufficiently unyielding bark of the poplar or the bass-wood. Sometimes, when near the marshy margin of our lakes or rivers, the wounded limb is afforded support with wild hay or reeds of uniform length and thickness. To carry a patient to his wigwam, or to an encampment, a stretcher is quickly made of four young saplings, interwoven at their upper ends, and on this elastic springy couch the injured man is borne away by his companions. When there are but two persons, and an accident happens to one of them, two young trees of birch or beech or hickory are used. Their tops are allowed to remain to aid in diminishing the jolting caused by the inequalities of the ground. No London carriage-maker ever constructed a spring which could better accomplish the purpose. A couple of crossbars preserve the saplings in position, and the bark of the elm or birch, cut into broad bands, and joined to either side, forms an even bed. In this way an injured man is brought by his companion to a settlement, and often it has been found, on arrival, that the fractured bones are firmly united, and the limb is whole again. This is effected in less time than with the whites, for the reparative power of these children of the forest is remarkable. In their plenitude of health, osseous matter is poured out in large quantity, and firm union is soon effected. The reparative power of the aborigines, when injured, is equalled by the wonderful stoicism with which they bear injuries, and inflict upon themselves severest torture. They are accustomed to cut into abscesses with pointed flint; they light up a fire at a distance from the affected part (our counter-irritation); they amputate limbs with their hunting-knives, checking the hæmorrhage with heated stones, as surgeons were accustomed to do in Europe in the time of Ambroise Paré; and sometimes they amputate their own limbs with more _sang froid_ than many young surgeons will display when operating on others. The stumps of limbs amputated in this primitive manner are well formed, for neatness is the characteristic of all the Indian’s handiwork.