Dr. R. L. Spittel - Hail Lanka!

Dr. R. L. Spittel - Hail Lanka!

  June 16, 2011    @SuVi

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Hail Lanka!

Let others belaud the ways of the West,

Or homeland or township, wherever it be,

However mighty, however blest -

Lanka, my Island, you are all to me.

When homeward I keel from travels afar,

And your mountains arise like wraiths from the sea,

By rose of the dawn or beam of the star:

Oh, Island mine, you are heaven to me.

And from the Peak and the table-land

That brave the blue dome's immensity,

From tree-girt shore and glittering sand,

The emerald Island calls to me.

Ancestral strains on her breezes blown

Steal out of her solitudes eerily:

The tales that are shrined in legend and stone

Are the songs the old Island sings to me.

But oh for the trails that the wild men tread,

For the hills that are haunts of the hiving bee,

For the twittering bill and the branching head:

Oh Island, wild Island, you are home to me.

By Dr. R. L. Spittel

Richard Lionel Spittel, CMG, CBE, FRCS (commonly known as Dr. R. L. Spittel) (December 9, 1881 – September 3, 1969) was a British Ceylonese (Sri Lankan) physician, naturalist and author. He was one of the foremost experts on the veddah community.

In 1910 he was appointed as Third Surgeon at the General Hospital Colombo. Going on to be a senior surgeon and a lecturer at the Ceylon Medical College, he retired in 1935, yet worked as a consultant surgeon and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1942 and a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1950 for his services for medicine. A life long member of the British Medical Association, he was the president of the Ceylon Branch from 1940 to 1946.
An avid naturalist, Dr Spittel made many trips to the jungles of Ceylon, gaining much knowledge into the flora and fauna and the aborigines of the island, the veddahs. His studies on the veddahs made him and expert on this little understood people. Based on his studies he authored several books, that gain much fame during his own lifetime. His works included novels, poems and academic studies.
Dr Spittel married a fellow student Claire Van Dort, daughter of one of Ceylon's most distinguished physicians, Dr W G Van Dort and they had two daughters.

Novels

• Wild White Boy
• Wild Ceylon
• Savage Sanctuary
• Far off things
• Where white sambur roams

Poem collections

• Leaves of the Jungle

Medical books

• A Basis of Surgical Ward Work
• Framboesia Tropica
• Essentials of Surgery