“Yes, Doctor.”
“Sweat a lot?”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“You mustn’t get wet without changing your clothes. Now, when you eat potatoes I want you to eat them baked, with the skins on. I don’t mean eat the skins. But the part right under the skins is very important.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
As one listens to such catechizing it becomes clear that the Doctor lays great stress on fresh air and fresh food as medicines, “Cold is your friend and heat is your enemy” is his oft-reiterated dictum to consumptives.
Once he said to me, “I attach great importance to the sun-bath. I believe in exposing the naked body to all it can get of the air.” In the nipping cold of the early morning on the Strathcona I emerged from beneath four double blankets to hear the Doctor joyfully cry: “I’ve just had my bucket on deck. You could have had one too, but I lost the bucket overboard.” It has been a pastime of his to row with a boatload of doctors and nurses to an iceberg and go in swimming from the platform at the base of the berg.
Sometimes the Macedonian cry comes by letter.
Here is a pencilled missive from an old woman who evidently got a kindly neighbour to write it for her, for the signature is misspelled:
“Pleas ducker grandlield would you help me with a little clothing I am a wodow 85 yars of age.”