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The Collective Concussions
of Tarzan of the Apes: PART I

by Alan Hanson

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Part One

In the fall of 1907, a nineteen-year-old Tarzan of the Apes came upon a group of natives digging a pit in the forest. Later, realizing its purpose, Tarzan saved his friend, Tantor the elephant, from falling into the pit. The elephant escaped into the jungle, but when Tarzan stepped away from the side of the pit, the dirt at its edge gave way, sending him tumbling backwards into the ditch. When the natives returned, hoping to find an elephant trapped in the pit, they found instead an unconscious naked white giant.

“There was no scar upon his body. None of the sharpened stakes had pierced him — only a swollen spot at the base of the brain indicated the nature of his injury … They had carried him but a short distance toward their village when the ape-man’s eyelids quivered and raised. He looked about him wonderingly for a moment, and then full consciousness returned.” (Jungle Tales of Tarzan)

That day Tarzan suffered a concussion, the first of many such brain injuries he would experience in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ tales of the ape-man.

In recent years, the danger of concussions, in particular to high-level athletes such as football and soccer players, has received increased coverage in the media. A “concussion” occurs when a fall or a collision causes the brain to bang against the inside of the skull. It can result in a bruised brain, torn blood vessels, and injured nerves. These injuries can cause a temporary loss of normal brain function, which almost always was the case when Tarzan suffered concussions.

In most cases, a single concussion does not cause long-lasting impairment. However, a second concussion soon after the first can cause permanent damage. Tarzan suffered two more head injuries within six months after his first one noted above. The second occurred when Tarzan was showing off his new rope to his ape tribe.

 “Wide and far swung Tarzan of the Apes, until at last, as he reached the highest point of the arc the rope, which rapidly had frayed on the rough bark of the tree limb, parted suddenly … Tarzan fell quite forty feet, alighting on his back in a thick bush … Tarzan was lying quite still when she (Kala) found him, embedded deeply in the bush … He was not even badly injured. The bush had broken the force of the fall. A cut upon the back of his head showed where he had struck the tough stem of the shrub and explained his unconsciousness.” (Jungle Tales of Tarzan)

A couple of days later, a third concussion occurred while he was sheltering under a tree during a thunder and lightning storm. Riven by a bolt of lightning, the tree collapsed upon Tarzan. After the witchdoctor Bukawai found Tarzan unconscious, he bound him with the ape-man’s own rope and threw some water in his face. It took a second application before “Tarzan opened his eyes and looked about.”

And the concussions kept on coming to Tarzan. Three weeks later, when he, disguised as a lion, tried to teach his ape tribe a lesson about community safety, his friend Taug “met him with a huge fragment of rock as large as a man’s head, and down went the Lord of the Jungle beneath the stunning blow.” After a few minutes, the unconscious Tarzan opened his eyes. “He looked about him at the surrounding apes and slowly there returned to him a realization of what had occurred.”

A year later, in mid-March 1909, Tarzan suffered the fourth concussion of his young life, when a bullet from French Lieutenant Paul D’Arnot bounced off the side of the ape-man’s head in Tarzan’s own cabin on the West African coast.

“With the report of his gun, D’Arnot saw the door fly open and the figure of a man pitched headlong within onto the cabin floor … Carefully he lifted Tarzan to the cot, and then … examined the wound. The bullet had struck a glancing blow upon the skull. There was an ugly flesh wound, but no signs of a fracture of the skull. D’Arnot breathed a sigh of relief, and went about bathing the blood from Tarzan’s face. Soon the cool water revived him, and presently he opened his eyes to look in questioning surprise at D’Arnot.” (Tarzan of the Apes)

(Note: Tarzan’s first four concussions, all suffered during a 15-month period before he turned 21, were of the worst kind. Symptoms from “mild” and “moderate” concussions can last from momentary to longer than 15 minutes, but unconsciousness for any amount of time puts a concussion in the “severe” category. There is no set number of concussions that a person can have before they suffer permanent damage of some type. However, people who have multiple concussions are at increased risk of long-term impairment, including memory loss, inability to concentrate, difficulty balancing, and impaired eyesight. In the long term, they can lead to dementia.)

Of course, Edgar Rice Burroughs didn’t have the benefit of modern medical science’s knowledge concerning the dangers of concussions. If he had, it’s doubtful he would have allowed his ape-man to continue taking blows to the head. How many concussions did Tarzan suffer in Burroughs’ tales of the ape-man? By my count, Tarzan suffered a total of 30 concussions spread over 17 of Burroughs’ Tarzan stories! And each of them rendered him unconscious for varying amounts of time, classifying them all as “severe” concussions.

 Bullets Rattled Tarzan’s Brain

Tarzan’s head injuries were the result of various causes. The bullet from D’Arnot’s gun was not the only one that bounced off Tarzan’s head, rendering him unconscious. Four other times, bullets glanced off Tarzan’s skull, with the same result. In the Return of Tarzan, a band of Arabs hunted Tarzan in the mountains of North Africa.

“He called aloud in French, asking what they would of him. His reply was the flash of a long gun, and with the sound of the shot Tarzan of the Apes plunged forward upon his face … Tarzan, who had regained consciousness, was tied to a spare horse, which they evidently had brought for the purpose. His wound was but a slight scratch, which had furrowed the flesh across his temple.” (The Return of Tarzan)

Tarzan next received a head wound from gunfire when Russian conspirator Paul Ivitch, mistaking the ape-man for a leopard, raised his gun and fired into the forest.

“The body of Tarzan of the Apes lunged from a tree … blood trickling from a bullet wound in his head as the sunshine played upon the leopard spots of his loin cloth … It was the morning of the day following that upon which he had been shot before Tarzan regained consciousness. He felt weak and sick, and his head ached horribly.” (Tarzan the Invincible)

The next villain to bring Tarzan down with a headshot was Tom Crump, the notorious African ivory poacher. When Crump raised his rifle and took careful aim, he knew exactly whom he was shooting at, and he shot to kill. Tarzan fell forward to the ground with blood pouring from a head wound. A great ape picked up the unconscious Tarzan and carried him into the jungle.

“Tarzan’s lids fluttered and then opened. He looked dazedly up into the faces of the great apes. He looked about the clearing. His head ached terribly. Weakly, he raised a hand to a temple, feeling the caked blood of an ugly wound. He tried to raise himself on an elbow, and Ungo put an arm beneath him and helped him. He saw then that his body was splotched with dried blood … Tarzan recovered quickly from the effects of the wound which had creased his skull but had not fractured it.” (Tarzan and the Madman)

Tarzan received his fourth, and final, bullet wound to the head in Tarzan and the Castaways. While confined in a cage on a ship’s deck in the South China Sea, a Lascar sailor snuck up behind the cage and fired his pistol at Tarzan. “The bullet that had dropped Tarzan had merely grazed his head, inflicting a superficial flesh wound and stunning him for a few minutes; but he had soon recovered.”

“Watch Out for That Tree!”

Unlike George of the Jungle, Tarzan felt secure among the branches of his tropical forests. Unfortunately, the vagaries of that lifestyle occasionally resulted in the ape-man suffering a few more concussions related to trees. The first was the aforementioned occasion in Jungle Tales of Tarzan when a bolt of lightning caused a tree, under which the ape-man sheltered from the storm, to collapse upon him and knock him unconscious. More common, though, were head injuries suffered after Tarzan crawled out too far on an unstable tree limb. The first time it happened was when he ventured out on a branch to get a close look at a native village.

“When he reached a point far out upon the limb, it snapped close to the bole of the tree without warning … as he lunged downward his foot caught in a looped creeper so that he turned completely over and alighted on the flat of his back in the center of the village street.” (Tarzan the Untamed)

At first the natives thought he was dead, but it turned out he was only stunned when his head hit the ground. They carried him to the hut and threw him on the floor. Another captive in the hut, British Lt. Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick, “presently noticed that his eyelids were moving. Slowly they opened and a pair of gray eyes looked blankly about. With returning consciousness the eyes assumed their natural expression.”

Burroughs multiple times used the same tactic of having Tarzan fall from trees into native villages and land on his head. The author next used the plot strategy on his adult ape-man in Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle.

“The thunder crashed with deafening reverberation. There was a blinding flash of light and the branch upon which Tarzan squatted sagged and hurtled to the trail beneath. Stunned, the ape-man lay where he had fallen, the great branch partially across his body.”

Momentarily, Tarzan’s life was in danger, but he regained consciousness before an American hunter with a grudge could shoot him. On another occasion, the broken limb gambit even allowed a gang of pygmies to capture Tarzan.

“Tarzan of the Apes had no quarrel with the little men. He had accomplished that for which he had come and was ready to depart, but as he turned to descend from the tree there was a rending of wood, and the limb upon which he was standing broke suddenly from the stem of the tree and crashed to the ground beneath, carrying the ape-man with it. The fall stunned him momentarily, and when he regained consciousness he found his body overrun by pygmy warriors who were just completing the act of trussing his arms and legs securely.”

Tarzan just never seemed to learn how to judge the sturdiness of branches he chose to venture out upon. He was in his mid-fifties in Tarzan and “The Foreign Legion” when the same thing happened to him. The ape-man was trying to secretly observe a band of Dutch outlaws in Sumatra.

“Tarzan decided that the less he had to do with these people the better. And then the branch on which he sat snapped suddenly, and he fell to the ground within a hundred feet of them. His head struck something hard, and he lost consciousness. When he came to he was lying beneath a tree, his wrists and ankles bound. Men and women were squatting or standing around him.”

On another occasion, a sturdy, low hanging branch caused Tarzan to suffer another concussion. In the opening scene of Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle, the ape-man was peacefully lying on the back of Tantor, when an Arab fired his rifle at the elephant.

“As Tantor surged forward at the sound of the report Tarzan started to spring to an upright position, and at the same instant the pachyderm passed beneath a low hanging limb which struck the ape-man’s head, sweeping him to the ground, where he lay stunned and unconscious.”

While Tarzan was out cold, the Arabs decided to tie him up. They were just finishing the job, “when Tarzan opened his eyes and looked them slowly over. He shook his head, like some great lion, and presently his senses cleared.”

A Whack to the Back of the Head

Another way Tarzan suffered multiple concussions was by being struck on the back of the head by some object wielded by an adversary. The first occasion occurred in Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar, when Tarzan got into an argument with a Belgian officer. When the dispute got physical, one of the officer’s Congo Free State soldiers snuck up behind Tarzan and delivered a heavy blow to his head with the butt of a rifle. “When he regained consciousness he found himself securely bound.”

Bertha Kircher (aka Patricia Canby) delivered the next close-quarters blow to the ape-man’s head. “Almost blindly, she swung the weapon (pistol) up and struck Tarzan heavily upon the back of the head with its butt. Like a felled ox he dropped in his tracks.” The resulting concussion was obviously serious. A friendly lion (Numa of the pit) found the ape-man lying face down in the dust.

“Then he placed a huge paw upon it and turned it over with its face up. Again he smelled about the body and at last with his rough tongue licked Tarzan’s face. It was then that Tarzan opened his eyes … His brain was still numb from the effects of the blow that had felled him and so he did not, for a moment, recognize the lion that stood over him as the one he had so recently encountered.” (Tarzan the Untamed)

Tarzan suffered another concussion while he was engaged in hand-to-hand combat with some gorillas. One of them used the butt of his battle axe to deliver a blow to the side of Tarzan’s head, rendering the ape-man senseless. He must have been unconscious for some time, for he awoke just in time to avoid death in another form.

“On the roof one of the bodies stirred. The eyes opened. It was a moment before the light of consciousness quickened them; then the man sat up. It was Tarzan. He leaped to his feet. All about him was the roaring and crackling of the flames. The heat was intense, almost unbearable.” (Tarzan and the Lion Man)

Several other times, Tarzan received concussion-causing blows when thrown objects hit his head. Twice that object was a “club.” The first time was in Pal-ul-don. He was holding his own against 20 Waz-don warriors, when a thrown club felled him. “For a moment he stood swaying and then like a great pine beneath the woodman’s ax he crashed to earth.” Burroughs provided a stage-by-stage depiction of Tarzan’s recovery from that blow.

“Tarzan of the Apes opened his eyes. He was conscious of a pain in his head, and at first that was about all. A moment later grotesque shadows, rising and falling, focused his arousing perceptions. Presently he saw that he was in a cave. A dozen Waz-don warriors squatted about, talking.” (Tarzan the Terrible)

In one of Tarzan’s final adventures on a South Seas island inhabited by Mayan descendants, the flying object that brought him down in the city of Chichen Itza was a rock.

“He was free at last, but then he had never had any doubt but what he would be free, for he looked with contempt upon these little men, primitively armed. How could they hope to hold Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle. Just then a stone from one of their slings struck him on the back of the head; and he fell forward upon his face, unconscious. When Tarzan regained consciousness, he found himself in a wooden cage in a room dimly lit by a single window … He did not know that he had been unconscious a long time and that night had passed and that it was day again.” (Tarzan and the Castaways)

“Fasten Your Seatbelt!”

Tarzan suffered two more concussions at times when he fell out of the sky. The first occurred when an abrupt end came to his first solo airplane flight. Burroughs actually identified Tarzan’s head injury in the crash as a “concussion.” His long period of unconsciousness and his short-term memory loss are both indications that it was a “severe” concussion, not a “slight” one, as Burroughs noted.

“Fortunately for the Lord of the Jungle the fall through the roof of the forest had been broken by the fortuitous occurrence of supple branches directly in the path of his descent, with the happy result that he suffered only from a slight concussion of the brain. Already he was slowly regaining consciousness, and not long after the Alali young had left him his eyes opened, rolled dully about the dim interior of his prison, and closed again. His breathing was normal and when again he opened his eyes it was as though he had emerged from a deep and natural slumber, the only reminder of his accident being a dull aching of the head.” (Tarzan and the Ant Men)

Tarzan suffered that concussion at the age of 30 in the early months of 1920. A dozen volumes of adventures and 14 years later, he would suffer another concussion involving an aircraft. That time, though, the situation was quite different. The plane was an American bomber named “The Lovely Lady” and, unlike in the previous crash, Tarzan would recover from his blow to the head in the mid-air and would land, not in Africa, but on an Indonesian island.

“The ship careened, throwing Clayton from the catwalk. His body struck the side of the bomb bay and then rolled out into thin air. Unconscious, he hurtled toward death. Through heavy, enveloping clouds his body fell. Lovely Lady, her three motors still roaring, raced past him.

“But momentarily stunned, Clayton soon regained consciousness. But it took several seconds before he realized his situation. It was like awakening in a strange room. He had passed through the cloud bank, and was now in a torrential tropical rain below it. Perhaps it was to the cold rain that he owed his salvation. It may have revived him just in time to pull the rip cord while there was still a margin of seconds.” (Tarzan and “The Foreign Legion”)

Rock Hard Knocks

Rocks were plentiful in Tarzan’s Africa, and on multiple occasions Tarzan suffered concussions when his head and stones unexpectedly crossed paths with each other. A well-aimed rock thrown by an enemy could scramble Tarzan’s brain momentarily, as noted earlier when a Mayan adversary felled Tarzan with a thrown stone in Tarzan and the Castaway. Also previously mentioned was the occasion in Tarzan’s youth when fellow ape Taug knocked Tarzan unconscious with a hand-held large rock. Several times, though, rock walls, minding their own business and without the help of human hands, knocked Tarzan senseless. The following is one example.

“The great Tarmangani had not even the satisfaction of striking a blow in self-defense. A veritable avalanche of savage beasts (Xujan lions) rolled over him and threw him heavily to the ground. In falling his head struck the rock surface of the cliff, stunning him. It was daylight when he regained consciousness. The first dim impression borne to his awakening mind was a confusion of savage sounds which gradually resolved themselves into the growling lions, and then, little by little, there came back to him the recollections of what had preceded the blow that had felled him.” (Tarzan the Untamed)

Then there was the time Nkima accidentally sent his friend tumbling down a steep, rocky mountainside.

“At the turn where the footing was narrowest a stone gave beneath Tarzan’s foot, throwing him off his balance for an instant and at that same instant Nkima, thinking that Tarzan was falling, shrieked and leaped from his shoulder, giving the ape-man’s body just the impetus that was required to overbalance it entirely.

“The mountainside below was steep, though not perpendicular … he lunged headforemost down the embankment, rolling and tumbling for a short distance over the loose rock until his body was brought to a stop by one of the many stunted trees that clung tenaciously to the wind-swept slope … the ape-man lay motionless, a tiny stream of blood trickling from a cut on his temple into his shock of black hair.” (Tarzan and the Lost Empire)

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