Another characteristic letter:
“Dr. dear sir. please send two roals fielt (rolls of felt) one Roal Ruber Hide (rubberoid) one ten Patent for Paenting Moter Boat some glass for the bearn (barn) thanks veary mutch for the food you sent me. Glad two have James Home and his Leg so well you made a splended Cut of it this time I will all way Pray for you while I Live Potatoes growing well on the Farm Large Enough two Eaght all redey. But I loast my Cabbages Plants wit the Big falls rain and snow i the first of the summer, but I have lotes of turnips Plants I have all the Caplen (a small fish) I wants two Put on the farm this summer.
“dr—dear sir I want some nails to finesh the farm fance I farn.”
In a fisherman’s house in an interval between examinations of children for tonsils and adenoids the Doctor related this incident to a spellbound group. He never has any trouble holding an audience with stories that grow out of his work, and the fishermen delight as he does in his informal chats with them and with their families.
“We had a long hunt for a starving family of which we had been told by the Hudson Bay Company agent, on an island at Hamilton Inlet in Labrador. The father was half Eskimo. He had a single-barrelled shotgun with which he had brought down one gull. With his wife and his five naked children he was living under a sail. The children, though they had nothing on, were blue in the face with eating the blueberries, and they were fat as butter. The mate took two of the little ones, as if they were codfish, one under each arm, and carried them aboard. There were tears in his eyes, for he had seven little ones of his own, and he was very fond of children. Both were carefully brought up at our Childrens’ Home and one of them, who can now both read and write, is aboard at present as a member of the crew of the Strathcona.”
After evening prayers on Sunday, at which the Doctor has spoken, he has treated as many as forty persons.
In one place after removing a man’s tonsils it was a case of eyeglasses to be fitted, then came one who clamoured to have three teeth extracted. The teeth were “hauled” and a bad condition of ankylosis at the roots was revealed. Then a girl had a throat abscess lanced, and she was followed by a boy with a dubious rash and a tubercular inheritance. The Doctor is ever on the lookout for the “New World” smallpox: but the stethoscope detected a pleuritic attack, and strong supporting bandages were wound about the lower part of his chest.
Another group was this:
1. An operation on a child’s tonsils. A local anaesthetic was given—10 per cent. cocaine. A tooth was also removed. The total charge was $1.00.
2. A fisherman came for ointments—zinc oxide and carbolic.