A Yankee doctor in paradise

by S. M. Lambert

******

Taking charge of the native hospital, although it was added to my duties in the field, was the job I liked best of all I had—new things turning up every day, and plenty to swing to.

I swung to Colonel Honman with ever increasing faith, for he was my mainstay when it came to an argument with Governor Wisdom. The Governor’s troubles were piling up on him, and I never blamed him for his stubborn spells. If Wisdom’s moods interfered with urgent medical work, it was the Colonel’s delight to set his artificial teeth firmly and jump into the scrimmage. He wasn’t afraid to go to the mat with the Governor, and at the finish he usually came out winner. I cannot forget his loyalty to me any more than I can forget a set of eccentricities peculiarly his own.

Here is one of my favorite pictures of the Colonel in action. I was in charge of quarantine while he was away, and always on the qui vive for any alarm that might come in. Early one morning a disturbing cable came: bubonic plague had broken out in Brisbane, and we must keep a strict lookout for ships from that port. The Colonel was away, making a trip around the group, so when the regular boat from Brisbane pulled in I went aboard and talked it over with a worried skipper. How was he to unload her? Certainly it would be inconvenient if he had to dump his cargo on lighters and move it piecemeal to the dock. I saw his point, and was wondering if I should take chances and let her come in before dark, when I saw the Medical Chiefs ship poking around the heads. I went over to it and found the Colonel in his pajamas. I asked him what we were supposed to do about the caller from Brisbane. He hadn’t put in his false teeth yet, and his mouth was sunken like a dead crater. “Keep her out in the thtream,” he lisped. So I carried the orders back to the Australian skipper, and went home to breakfast. But I said to my wife, “Eloisa, I’ll bet that ship will be alongside the wharf before noon.” It was; and I knew why. Down in the Australian’s hold there was a new Ford sedan for the Colonel, and he wasn’t going to risk having it unloaded on a lighter, away out in the stream.

Colonel Honman had his faults, but I grew to love and admire them, with the firm belief that “even his failings leaned to virtue’s side.”

******

We had more and more cases of yaws sent in and were administering intravenous arsenicals. The natives called these injections “needla,” and it became a popular craze with them—a craze which spread over the South Pacific. It was better than magic; a native would gladly have anything poked under his skin through a needle, no matter what. In Rabaul the native orderlies were always there on injection days; their tongues hung out with eagerness to get a shot of any salvarsan solution that happened to be left over. I have heard them arguing, “Why waste that bully stuff on a lot of ignorant bush fellows who are no good to anyone?” White men were queer in their preferences.

******

The primitive Melanesians have a holy horror of mutilation—except when they mutilate their noses for decorative purposes, or their foreskins from custom. The man who has lost an arm or leg is damned eternally, for he must go to the local heaven armless or legless and be the laughingstock of the gods. This belief is a nuisance to the surgeon down there. A native with a gangrenous limb will fight against the knife, tooth and claw. Slow and painful death by blood poisoning is far preferable. Die with both your legs on and you can walk into Paradise, a true man....

When a white man has anything artificial, like a glass eye, a realistic wooden leg, or a set of false teeth, the back-country fellow looks upon him as a miracle worker. One of the oldest stories along this line originated in Papua—how the plantation manager took out his glass eye and put it on a stump to glare at his lazy field hands while he was absent; it kept the crew busy until a native genius thought of just the right thing—he put a hat over the magic eye, and they all went back to sleep.