Johnson was also extremely busy when they went in, and so was Maxwell, who attended to the maps and charts. So the boys seated themselves quietly and listened to the conversation that was going on over the radio.
This, they soon found, was of absorbing interest. The doctor had been summoned to the wireless room by a call from a steamer two hundred miles away. It was a merchant vessel, and while it had an adequate supply of ordinary drugs on board, it had no medical officer.
A seaman on the vessel had developed an abscess that had formed in the tear duct of one of his eyes. He was suffering intensely, and it was feared that he might lose the sight of the eye. The captain was at his wit’s end as to how to handle the case. Could the surgeon on the Meteor help him?
Dr. Fisher could and did. With Marston to send the message, the doctor rapidly and concisely gave directions about the application of the proper lotions and other treatment needed. He finished by directing the captain to call him up again in the morning and report on the progress of the case. Then, as he turned away from the instrument, he caught sight of the boys.
“Hello,” he said, with a smile. “Didn’t know you were listening in on my long distance clinic.”
“It was mighty interesting,” said Bob. “Do you have much of that kind of work to do?”
“Lots of it,” replied the doctor. “As a matter of fact, I think I do more prescribing for people off the ship than I do on it. A Government ship these days is nothing more nor less than a traveling dispensary. Scarcely a day passes without some call of this kind.”
“I should think it would be especially hard when you can’t see your patient,” remarked Joe.
“It is,” the doctor admitted. “I can’t feel their pulse, I can’t note their temperature, I can’t judge by their appearance, I can’t do a dozen things a doctor likes to do when he’s treating a case. I have to depend on descriptions, more or less intelligent. But with all those handicaps, an immense amount of service can be rendered over the radio. A great many lives have been saved and a great deal of suffering relieved by means of wireless that wasn’t possible before it was invented.
“Just a little while ago, I got a call from a ship, one of whose seamen was temporarily paralyzed through lack of proper circulation in the legs. Another man who had intestinal troubles I had put in ice packs. I prescribed medicines in addition, and a little later, when the vessels were on their return voyages, I received messages of thanks that told me both had been rapidly cured. Those are only a few scattered instances. I could mention dozens of the same kind. And what I’ve been able to do in that direction is being done in other instances by hundreds of ship’s doctors every day.