Excerpt from draft of "Apostle to the Pygmies – The Doctor Jerry Galloway Story”
I was unable to perform any surgeries the last week of September due to a small abscess under my right thumbnail that caused a lot of pain. After hot soaks and antibiotics, the abscess healed. In the rainforest, even the smallest wound could easily get infected. I often saw many patients that had enormous abscesses and infected wounds. The week prior, I saw a seven-year-old boy in Ngondo Banga who had an enormous abscess on his thigh along with a high fever.
I told his father to bring him to the hospital to have it lanced and to receive antibiotics. The father refused, because he was afraid of even the smallest operation, so I gave Luba some antibiotics to take to the boy, along with some ointment that would help to bring the abscess to a head. A few days later, I took some sterile instruments and went to the village. The father agreed to allow me to lance the abscess, and the whole village came to watch. I removed a half pint of green pus, and the little boy screamed wildly. Afterward, the boy felt much better, and he sat on my lap, smiling from ear to ear.
The people asked me if I would circumcise the boys of the village, as the man who used to do the procedure had died. When the boys were seven to twelve years-old they were circumcised. They were held down, no anesthesia was used, and the circumcision was done with a machete. Afterward, they would smear red hot pepper on the wound and wrap it in banana leaves to stop the bleeding. Circumcisions were always done in the dry season when there were a lot of fish to eat so that the body would have iron to replace the blood that was lost. I told them that I did not have the heart to do circumcisions without the use of anesthesia.
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