The cataract campaign on the North Coast of Atjeh was the series of village eye-operations carried out by the Dutch ophthalmologist Dr. J. Tijssen in the kampongs of the North Coast of Atjeh, in which eighty-three persons were operated on in twenty-six days. It was recounted by Tijssen to the journalist C. Graadt van Roggen aboard the steamer Baloeran in February 1933 and published in Een strijd in Atjeh (1934).
Method
Tijssen had gone into the Acehnese kampongs with a Javanese assistant and had searched for the blind there “zooals een ander goud in Klondike” — as another man searches for gold in the Klondike — setting them in a row “zooals werkloozen om te stempelen” (as unemployed men queue to sign on). He examined their eyes and said to some “Jou kan ik helpen, kom morgen maar terug” and to others “Jou niet!” Asked what those refused did, he answered that they placed themselves at the back of the queue again for a second chance.
The next day the summoned returned and the doctor operated: three, four, ten eyes darkened by grauwe staar (grey cataract) a day, on a table in an administrative office, in a pasangrahan (rest-house), in a march bivouac, in a buffalo stable. To the journalist’s admiration he answered, laughing, that the lamp he had bought for five guilders was better than the lamp with which Donders had worked in his day, and that his sterilisation apparatus in the rimboe (jungle) was perfect compared to his.
The campaign of 1932 and the young ophthalmologist at Koeta Radja
Tijssen related that at Koeta Radja he had found a young eye doctor eager to work who had waited four months for his first cataract. Tijssen himself then went to the kampongs on the North Coast and operated on eighty-three persons in twenty-six days, in a small polyclinic building, in an administrative office and in a buffalo stable. “Wat ik kan, kan ieder ander,” he said — what I can do, anyone else can do. It had cost the government very little money, though a little was needed, for spectacles, travelling money and dressings.
The earlier survey of 1923 and the Idi operations of 1931
The same account records two earlier stages of the work. In 1923 Tijssen had had the blind of four small villages on the North Coast of Atjeh brought together; there were two hundred and twenty-six of them. In November 1931 he was at Idi, where among twenty-five blind persons forty-five cataractous eyes were operated on; he left twenty-three people behind with a sight sufficient for their needs. The treatment was carried out in a small sick-room and the patients came in on the rumour of it.
It was from the experience at Idi that the new plan ripened: to come still closer to the population than the little sick-room allowed, which he came to see as the only way to the maximum result. He knew from earlier experience that the number of blind in the kampongs must be far greater than the portion which let itself be roused from “de doffe gelatenheid waarmee de Inlander het leed dat hem wordt opgelegd, draagt” — the dull resignation with which the native bears the suffering laid upon him.
The encounter with Teukoe Oemar van Bernoen
The most fully told episode of the North Coast work is Tijssen’s dealing with Teukoe Oemar van Bernoen, “een typisch conservatief ouderwetsch Atjehsch hoofd.” Observing the etiquette to which a personage of his weight had a right and on which he set store, Tijssen asked leave to speak with him and requested him to bring together the next day all the blind he could find.
The chief was out of humour, for reasons personal and general; he had suffered much from the malaise — the world economic depression. He therefore raised numbers of objections: it would help little and would give so much soesah (trouble) all for nothing. When Tijssen told him that it would indeed cost him very much trouble, he went off grumbling — but his sense of honour had been heavily struck.
The following morning Teukoe Oemar had arranged everything; it was in perfect order. Out of the great crowd he had gathered, Tijssen picked eight unfortunates and ordered them for the next morning. Five of them were operated on at once: five cataracts. Five days later, as fortune helped him, all could see. Then came the great rush, so great that Teukoe Oemar himself took pleasure in it and exerted himself to help.
But at Tijssen’s departure the chief “beleedigde” him, as finely as only an Acehnese can insult. Showing himself extremely astonished that all his blind had been treated free of charge, and talking of it in their last conversation, Teukoe Oemar bent over to him very confidentially and asked whether he might put a question. Told that he might, he asked: “Is mijnheer een Hollander?” — Is the gentleman a Dutchman? Assured that he was, he asked again: “Blanda betoel?” — A real Dutchman? Tijssen’s comment was: “Voelt u de beleediging? Ik heb niet te veel gezegd. Staaroperaties hebben soms een politieke zijde. Oogen gaan open. Niet alleen voor het licht der wereld. Ook voor ons.”
Attribution of the method
Tijssen expressly denied originality. The Indies papers spoke of a “methode-Tijssen,” which he said was not correct: the operation he performed was one thought out by great thinkers in the course of centuries and done every year in every eye hospital; in a middling university clinic as many operations were performed in a year as he did in a month, so rich was the material in the country where he worked. Nor was the idea of going into the villages and operating on the spot in the least original: some years before, the ophthalmologist Hoogerheide, who died too young, had taken his doctorate under Prof. van der Hoeve on a dissertation concerning three thousand eyelid operations on Java — material that could never have been assembled by work in hospitals — and Hoogerheide too had worked in the kampong and operated in all possible and impossible places. Elliot had gone on tour in Britsch-Indië and delivered the blind of their cataract, letting them go with a bandage and a pair of spectacles; they did not come back, being cured, and he came to London with figures that raised astonishment and disbelief in professional circles, astonishment since given way to belief and admiration.
See Also
- J. Tijssen
- Teukoe Oemar van Bernoen
- C. Graadt van Roggen
- Een strijd in Atjeh (1934)
- Seven juvenile cataracts of Atjeh’s Westkust
- Noordkust van Atjeh
- Long Poetoe
- Idi
- Koeta Radja
- Vereeniging SIMAVI
- 1923
- 1931
- 1933
Source
Een strijd in Atjeh (Een oogarts op het oorlogspad), door Mr. C. Graadt van Roggen, met een voorrede van den heer H. Wanting, redacteur Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant (Rotterdam: N.V. Drukkerij Korteweg, uitgave van de Vereeniging „SIMAVI”, 1934), pp. 3–10, 12.
Acknowledgement of sources. The material in this article derives from Een strijd in Atjeh (Een oogarts op het oorlogspad) by Mr. C. Graadt van Roggen (Rotterdam: N.V. Drukkerij Korteweg for the Vereeniging „SIMAVI”, 1934). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.