A Labrador Doctor / The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

by Sir Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

In the course of many years' practice the methods for the treatment and extraction of offending molars which have come to my attention are numerous, but none can claim a more prompt result than the following: First you attach a stout, fine fish-line firmly to the tooth. Next you lash the other end to the latch of the door—we do not use knobs in this country. You then make the patient stand back till there is a nice tension on the line, when suddenly you make a feint as if to strike him in the eye. Forgetful of the line, he leaps back to avoid the blow. Result, painless extraction of the tooth, which should be found hanging to the latch.

Although there have been clergyman of the Church of England and Methodist denominations on the coast for many years past—devoted and self-sacrificing men who have done most unselfish work—still, their visits must be infrequent. One of them told me in North Newfoundland that once, when he happened to pass through a little village with his dog team on his way South, the man of one house ran out and asked him to come in. "Sorry I have no time," he replied. "Well, just come in at the front door and out at the back, so we can say that a minister has been in the house," the fisherman answered.

Even to-day, to the least fastidious, the conditions of travel leave much to be desired. The coastal steamers are packed far beyond their sleeping or sitting capacity. On the upper deck of the best of these boats I recall that there are two benches, each to accommodate four people. The steamer often carries three hundred in the crowded season of the fall of the year. One retires at night under the misapprehension that the following morning will find these seats still available. On ascending the companionway, however, one's gaze is met by a heterogeneous collection of impedimenta. The benches are buried as irretrievably as if they "had been carried into the midst of the sea." Almost anything may have been piled on them, from bales of hay—among which my wife once sat for two days—to the nucleus of a chicken farm, destined, let us say, for the Rogues' Roost Bight.

As the sturdy little steamer noses her way into some picturesque harbour and blows a lusty warning of her approach, small boats are seen putting off from the shore and rowing or sculling toward her with almost indecorous rapidity. Lean over the rail for a minute with me, and watch the freight being unloaded into one of these bobbing little craft. The hatch of the steamer is opened, a most unmusical winch commences operations—and a sewing machine emerges de profundis. This is swung giddily out over the sea by the crane and dropped on the thwarts of the waiting punt. One shudders to think of the probably fatal shock received by the vertebræ of that machine. One's sympathies, however, are almost immediately enlisted in the interest and fortunes of a young and voiceful pig, which, poised in the blue, unwillingly experiences for the moment the fate of the coffin of the Prophet. Great shouting ensues as a baby is carried down the ship's ladder and deposited in the rocking boat. A bag of beans, of the variety known as "haricot," is the next candidate. A small hole has been torn in a corner of the burlap sack, out of which trickles a white and ominous stream. The last article to join the galaxy is a tub of butter. By a slight mischance the tub has "burst abroad," and the butter, a golden and gleaming mass,—with unexpected consideration having escaped the ministrations of the winch,—is passed from one pair of fishy hands to another, till it finds a resting-place by the side of the now quiescent pig.

We pass out into the open again, bound for the next port of call. If the weather chances to be "dirty," the sufferers from mal-de-mer lie about on every available spot, be it floor or bench, and over these prostrate forms must one jump as one descends to the dining-saloon for lunch. It may be merely due to the special keenness of my professional sense, but the apparent proportion of the halt, lame, and blind who frequent these steamers appears out of all relation to the total population of the coast. Across the table is a man with an enormous white rag swathing his thumb. The woman next him looks out on a blue and altered world from behind a bandaged eye. Beside one sits a young fisherman, tenderly nursing his left lower jaw, his enjoyment of the fact that his appetite is unimpaired by the vagaries of the North Atlantic tempered by an unremitting toothache.

But the cheerful kindliness and capability of the captain, the crew, and the passengers, on whatever boat you may chance to travel, pervades the whole ship like an atmosphere, and makes one forget any slight discomfort in a justifiable pride that as an Anglo-Saxon one can claim kinship to these "Vikings of to-day."

Life is hard in White Bay. An outsider visiting there in the spring of the year would come to the conclusion that if nothing further can be done for these people to make a more generous living, they should be encouraged to go elsewhere. The number of cases of tubercle, anæmia, and dyspepsia, of beri-beri and scurvy, all largely attributable to poverty of diet, is very great; and the relative poverty, even compared with that of the countries which I have been privileged to visit, is piteous. The solution of such a problem does not, however, lie in removing a people from their environment, but in trying to make the environment more fit for human habitation.

The hospitality of the people is unstinted and beautiful. They will turn out of their beds at any time to make a stranger comfortable, and offer him their last crust into the bargain, without ever expecting or asking a penny of recompense. But here, as all the world over, the sublime and the ridiculous go hand in hand. On one of my dog trips the first winter which I spent at St. Anthony, the bench on which I slept was the top of the box used for hens. This would have made little difference to me, but unfortunately it contained a youthful and vigorous rooster, which, mistaking the arrival of so many visitors for some strange herald of morning, proceeded every half-hour to salute it with premature and misdirected zeal, utterly incompatible with unbroken repose just above his head. It was possible, without moving one's limbs much, to reach through the bars and suggest better things to him; but owing to the inequality which exists in most things, one invariably captured a drowsy hen, while the more active offender eluded one with ease. Lighting matches to differentiate species under such exceptional circumstances in the pursuit of knowledge was quite out of the question.

A visit to one house on the French shore I shall not easily forget. The poor lad of sixteen years had hip disease, and lay dying. The indescribable dirt I cannot here picture. The bed, the house, and everything in it were full of vermin, and the poor boy had not been washed since he took to bed three or four months before. With the help of a clergyman who was travelling with me at the time, the lad was chloroformed and washed. We then ordered the bedding to be burned, provided him with fresh garments, and put him into a clean bed. The people's explanation was that he was in too much pain to be touched, and so they could do nothing. We cleansed and drained his wounds and left what we could for him. Had he not been so far gone, we should have taken him to the hospital, but I feared that he would not survive the journey.

Although at the time it often seemed an unnecessary expenditure of effort in an already overcrowded day, one now values the records of the early days of one's life on the coast. In my notebook for 1895 I find the following: "The desolation of Labrador at this time is easy to understand. No Newfoundlanders were left north of us; not a vessel in sight anywhere. The ground was all under snow, and everything caught over with ice except the sea. I think that I must describe one house, for it seems a marvel that any man could live in it all winter, much less women and children. It was ten feet by twenty, one storey high, made of mud and boards, with half a partition to divide bedroom from the sitting-room kitchen. If one adds a small porch filled with dirty, half-starved dogs, and refuse of every kind, an ancient and dilapidated stove in the sitting part of the house, two wooden benches against the walls, a fixed rude table, some shelves nailed to the wall, and two boarded-up beds, one has a fairly accurate description of the furnishings. Inside were fourteen persons, sleeping there, at any rate for a night or two. The ordinary regular family of a man and wife and four girls was to be increased this winter by the man's brother, his wife, and four boys from twelve months to seven years of age. His brother had 'handy enough flour,' but no tea or molasses. The owner was looking after Newfoundland Rooms, for which he got flour, tea, molasses, and firewood for the winter. The people assure me that one man, who was aboard us last fall just as we were going South, starved to death, and many more were just able to hold out till spring. The man, they tell me, ate his only dog as his last resource."