A Labrador Doctor Part 25

The Governor, the representatives of our Council, the Honourable Robert Watson and the Honourable W.C. Job, and my many other fast friends, however, soon made it possible for me to forget the matter.

If protest breeds opposition, it in turn begets apposition, and a good line of demarcation--a "no man's land" between friend and foe--and gives a healthy atmosphere in so-called times of peace.

In the year 1915 a large cooperative store was established at Cape Charles near Battle Harbour, which bred such opposition amongst certain merchants that it proved instrumental also in obtaining for us the Government commission of inquiry sent down a few months later.

After a thorough investigation of St. Anthony, Battle Harbour, Cape Charles, Forteau, Red Bay, and Flowers Cove, summoning every possible witness and tracing all rumours to their source, the commissioners'

findings were so favourable to the Mission that on their return to St.

John's our still undaunted detractors could only attribute it to supernatural agencies.

My colleague at Battle Harbour, Dr. John Grieve, who with his wife had already given us so many years' work there, and whose interest in the cooperative effort at Cape Charles was responsible for its initial success, had worked out a plan for a winter hospital station in Lewis Bay, and had surveyed the necessary land grant. Through the resignation of our business manager, Mr. Sheard, and the selection of Dr. Grieve by the directors as his successor, only that part of the Lewis Bay scheme which enables us to give work in winter providing wood supplies has so far materialized.

In 1915 also, at a place called Northwest River, one hundred and thirty miles up Hamilton Inlet from Indian Harbour, a little cottage hospital and doctor's house combined was built, called the "Emily Beaver Chamberlain Memorial Hospital." Thus the work of Dr. and Mrs.

Paddon has been converted into a continuous service, for formerly when Indian Harbour Hospital was closed in the fall, they had no place in which they could efficiently carry on their work during the winter months. Before Dr. Paddon came to the coast, Dr. and Mrs. Norman Stewart gave us several years of valuable service, spending their summers at Indian Harbour and returning for the winter to St. Anthony, according to my original plan when I first built St. Anthony Hospital.

An old friend and worker at St. Anthony, Mr. John Evans of Philadelphia, who had helped us with our deer and other problems, having married our head nurse, the first whom we had ever had from Newfoundland, found it essential to return and take up remunerative work at home.

The increasing number of patients seeking help at St. Anthony made it necessary to provide proportionately increasing facilities. As I have stated elsewhere, the sister of my splendid colleague, Dr. Little, in 1909 had raised the money for the new wing of the hospital for the accommodation of the summer accession of patients. The clinic which had now grown so tremendously, due to Dr. Little's magnificent work, was maintaining a permanent house surgeon, Dr. Louis Fallen, who had faithfully served the Mission at different times at other stations. We had also regular dental and eye departments.

The summer of 1917 was saddened for us all by the loss to the work of my beloved and able colleague, Dr. John Mason Little, Jr., who had given ten years of most valuable labour to the people of this coast.

He had married, some years before, our delightful and unselfish helper, Miss Ruth Keese, and they now had four little children growing up in St. Anthony. The education of his family and the call of other home ties made him feel that it had become essential for him to terminate his more intimate connection with the North, and he left us to take up medical work in Boston. The loss of them both was a very heavy one to the work and to us personally, and we are only thankful that we have been able to secure Dr. Little's invaluable a.s.sistance and advice on our Board of Directors in Boston. This coast and this hospital owe him a tremendous debt which can never be repaid, for it was he who put this clinic in a position to hold up its head among the best of medical work, and offer to this far-off people the grade of skilled a.s.sistance which we should wish for our loved ones if they were ill or in trouble. For Dr. Little offered not only his very exceptional skill as a surgeon, but also the gift of his inspiring and devoted personality.

The winter of 1917-18 was extremely severe, not only in our North country, but in the United States and Canada also. I was lecturing during this winter in both these latter countries, though during the months of December and January travelling became very difficult owing to the continuous blizzards. I was held up for three days in Racine, Wisconsin, as neither trains, electric cars, or automobiles could make their way through the heavy drifts. Had I had my trusty dog team, however, I should not have missed three important lecture engagements.

Life in the North has its compensations.

At Toronto I was unfortunate enough to contract bronchitis and pleurisy, and I understand from competent observers that I was an "impossible patient." Be that as it may, so much pressure was brought to bear on me that at last I was forced to obey the doctors and leave for a month's rest in a warmer climate.

Owing to ice and war conditions we did not arrive in St. Anthony until the first of July. In arriving late we were all spared a terrible shock. The previous day some of the boys from the Orphanage had gone fishing in the Devil's Pond, about a mile away, and a favourite resort with them. Unfortunately that afternoon they were seized with the brilliant idea of kindling a fire with which to cook their trout. Greatly to the astonishment of the would-be cooks, the fire quickly got beyond the one desired for culinary purposes, and, panic-stricken, they rushed home to give the alarm. Every man ash.o.r.e and afloat came and worked, and the obliteration of the place was saved by a providential change in the wind and wide fire-breaks cut through few and ill-to-be-spared trees. Everything had been taken from our house--even furniture and linen--and dragged to the wharf head, where terrified children, fleeing patients, and heaps of furnishings from the orphanage and elsewhere were all piled up. Schooners had been hauled in to carry off what was possible, and the patients in the hospital were got ready to be carried away at a moment's notice. Only the most strenuous efforts saved the entire station. Now all our beautiful sky-line is blackened and charred. All day long the gravity of the debt was in our hearts, for if the wooden buildings had once had the clouds of fiery sparks settle upon them, the whole of those dependent upon us would have been homeless. Surely in a country like this, the incident of this fire puts an added emphasis upon our need of brick buildings. Grat.i.tude for our safe return, for all G.o.d's mercies to us, and joy over the outcome of the at one time apparently inevitable disaster, made our first day of the season a never-to-be-forgotten event.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LABRADOR DOCTOR IN WINTER]

Mr. W.R. Stirling, our Chicago director, who had personally visited the hospitals, insisted that a water supply must at all costs be secured both for hospital and orphanage. This was not only to avert the reproach of typhoid epidemics, two of which had previously occurred, but also to better our protection for so many helpless lives in old dry wooden buildings, and to economize the great expense of hauling water by dogs every winter, when our little surface reservoir was frozen to the bottom. This water supply has only just been finished; and now we cannot understand how we ever existed without it.

But it is an unromantic object to which to give money, and the total cost, even doing the work ourselves, amounted to just upon ten thousand dollars. According to the Government engineer's advice we had a stream to dam and a mile and a quarter of piping to lay six feet underground to prevent the water freezing. It is only in very few places that we boast six feet of soil at all on the rock that forms the frame of Mother Earth here. Hence there was much blasting to do.

But the task was accomplished, and by our own boys, and has successfully weathered our bitter winter. The last lap was run by an intensely interesting experiment. The a.s.sistant at Emmanuel Church in Boston brought down a number of volunteer Boy Scouts to give their services on the commonplace task of digging the remainder of the trench necessary to complete the water supply. When they first arrived, our Northern outside man, after looking at their clothes of the Boston cut, remarked, "Hm. You'd better give that crowd some softer job than digging." But they did the work, and a whole lot more besides. For their grit and jollity, and above all their readiness to tackle and see through such side tasks as unloading and stowing away some three hundred tons of coal were real "missionary" lessons.

The ever-growing demand for doctors as the war dragged on made it harder and harder to man our far-off stations. The draft in America was the last straw, doctors having already been forbidden to leave England or Canada. Dr. Charles Curtis had taken over Dr. Little's work at St. Anthony, and stood n.o.bly by, getting special permission to do so. Dr. West, who had succeeded our colleague, Dr. Mather Hare, at Harrington, when his wife's breakdown had obliged him to leave us, had already given us a year over his scheduled time, for he had accepted work in India at the hands of those who had specially trained him for that purpose.

We had been having considerable trouble in the accommodation of the heavy batches of patients that came by the mail boat. They were left on the wharf when she steamed away, and only the floors of our treatment and waiting-rooms were available for their reception. For all could not possibly go into the wards, where children, and often very sick patients, were being cared for. The people around always stretched their hospitality to the limit, but this was a very undesirable method of housing sick persons temporarily. Owing to the generosity of a lady in New Bedford and other friends, we were enabled to meet the problem by the erection of a rest house, with first and second cla.s.s accommodation. This was built in the spring of 1917, and has been a G.o.dsend to many besides patients. It makes people free to come to St. Anthony and stay and benefit by whatever it has to offer, without the feeling that they have no place to which they can go.

Moreover, this hostel has been entirely self-supporting from the day that it opened, and every one who goes and comes has a good word for the rest house. It is run by one of our Labrador orphan boys, whose education was finished in America, and "Johnnie," as every one calls him, is already a feature in the life of the place.

Among the advances of the year 1918 must also be noted that more subscribers and subscriptions from local friends have been received than ever before. Our X-ray department has been added to. We have been able also to improve the roads, a thing greatly to be desired.

Look where we will, we have nothing but grat.i.tude that in the last year of a long and exhausting war, here in this far-away section of the world, the keynote has been one of progress.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE FUTURE OF THE MISSION

What is the future of this Mission? I have once or twice been an unwilling listener to a discussion on this point. It has usually been in the smoking-room of a local mail steamer. The subtle humour of W.W.

Jacobs has shown us that pessimism is an attribute of the village "pub" also. The alcoholic is always a prophet of doom; and the wish is often father to the thought.

In our medical work in the wilds we have become a repository of some old instruments discarded on the death of their owners or cast aside by the advancing tide of knowledge. Seeing the ingenuity, time, and expense lavished on many of them, they would make a truly pathetic museum. Personally I prefer the habits of India to those of Egypt concerning the departed. If the Pharaoh of the Persecution could see his mummy being shown to tourists as a cheap side show, I am sure that he would vote for cremation if he had the choice over again.

It sounds flippant in one who has devoted his life to this work to say, "Really I don't care what its future may be." I am content to leave the future with G.o.d. No true sportsman wants to linger on, a wretched handicap to the cause for which he once stood, like a fake hero with his peg leg and a black patch over one eye. The Christian choice is that of Achilles. Nature also teaches us that the paths of progress are marked by the discarded relics of what once were her corner-stones. The original Moses had the spirit of Christ when he said, "If Thou wilt, forgive their sin--and if not, I pray Thee, blot me out of Thy book." The heroic Paul was willing to be eliminated for the Kingdom of G.o.d. It seems to me that that att.i.tude is the only credential which any Christian mission can give for its existence. If I felt that my work had accomplished all it could, I would "lay it down with a will."

As in India and China the missionaries of the various societies are uniting to build up a native, national Church which would wish to a.s.sume the responsibility of caring for its own problems, so when the Government of this country is willing and able to take over the maintenance of the medical work, this Mission would have justified its existence by its elimination. All lines along which the Mission works should one day become self-eliminating. Until that time arrives I am satisfied that the Mission has great opportunities before it. I am an optimist, and feel certain that G.o.d will provide the means to continue as long as the need exists.

Some believe that the future of this population depends solely on the attention paid to the development of the resources of the coast. Not only are its raw products more needed than ever, but even supposing that unscientific handling of them has depleted the supply, still there is ample to maintain a larger population than at present. This can only be when science and capital are introduced here, combined with an educated manhood fired by the spirit of cooperation.

In large parts of China a famine to wipe out surplus population is apparently a periodical necessity. An orphanage in India for similar reasons does not seem to be as rationally economic as one for the Labrador children. I never see a cliff face from which an avalanche has removed the supersoil and herbage without thinking in pity of the crowded sections of China, where tearing up even the roots of trees for fuel has permitted so much arable land to be denuded by rains that the food supply gets smaller while the population grows larger.

The future of all medical work depends on whether people want it and can arrange to get it paid for. If all the world become Christian Scientists, scientific--which we believe to be also Christian--healing will everywhere die a natural death--and possibly the people also. But history suggests that the healing art is one of considerable vitality.

My own belief is that in the apparently approaching socialistic age, medicine will be communized and provided by the State free to all. If education for the mind is, why not education for the body?

Certain subtle and very vital psychic influences are probably the best stock in trade of the "Doctor of the old school." These qualities appear at present less likely to be "had for hire" in a Government official. The Chinese may yet return the missionary compliment by teaching us to adopt their method of paying the doctor only when and as long as the patient is cured.

Out of the taxes, the major part of which is paid by the people of the outport districts in this Colony, the Government provides free medical aid in the Capital, presumably because those who have the spending of the money mostly reside there. The Mission provides it in the farthest off and poorest part of the country, Labrador and North Newfoundland, because there is no chance whatever at present for the poor people to obtain it otherwise. Our _pro rata_ share of the taxes, if judged by the paltry Government grant toward the work, would not provide anything worth having. The people here pay far better in proportion to their ability for hospital privileges than they do in Boston or London; the Government pays a little, and the rest comes from the loving gifts of those who desire nothing better, when they know of real need, than to make sacrifices to meet it.

One feels that the Chinese and j.a.panese and all nations will be able some day to pay for their own doctors, whether they do it on individualistic or communistic principles. In the present state of the world I believe the missionary enterprise to be entirely desirable, or I would not be where I am. But being a Christian with a little faith, I hope that it may not be so forever. If anything will stimulate to better methods, it is example, not precept, and perhaps the best work of this and all missions will be their reflex influences on Governments through the governed.

To carry on the bare essentials of this work an endowment of at least a million dollars is necessary. Toward this a hundred and sixty thousand dollars is all that has been contributed, and in addition we can count annually upon a small Government grant. Even if this million dollars were given, it would still leave several thousand dollars to be raised by voluntary subscription each year, a healthy thing for the life of any charitable work. On the other hand, the certainty of being able to meet the main bills is an economy in nerve energy, in time and in money.

Among our patients brought in one season to St. Anthony Hospital was the mother of ten children on whom an emergency operation for appendicitis had to be done--the first time in her life that a doctor had ever tended her. She came from a very poor home, for besides her large family her husband had been all his life handicapped by a serious deformity of one leg caused by a fall. She reminded me of how some years before a traveller had left her the rug from his dog sledge, as, without any bedclothes, she was again about to give birth to a child; how she had actually been unable at times to turn over in bed, because her personal clothing had frozen solid to the wall of the one-roomed hut in which she lived.

In April, 1906, in northern Newfoundland I found a young mother near St. Anthony. She was twenty-six years old, suffering from acute rheumatic fever, lying in a fireless loft, on a rickety bedstead with no bedclothes. She had only one shoddy black dress to her name, and no underwear to keep her warm in bed in a house like that. The floor was littered with debris, including a number of hard buns which she could not now eat, but which some charitable neighbour had sent her. She had a wizened baby of seven months, which every now and then she was trying to feed by raising herself on one elbow and forcing bread and water pap, moistened with the merest suspicion of condensed milk, down its throat. None of her four previous children had lived so long. She had been under my care three years before for sailor's scurvy. Her present illness lasted only a week, and in spite of all that we could do, she died.

The desire of the people to be mutually helpful is undoubted, whether it is to each other or to some "outsider" like ourselves. I question if in the so-called centres of civilization the following incident can be surpa.s.sed as evidencing this aspect of their character.

In a little Labrador village called Deep Water Creek I was called in one day to see a patient: an old Englishman, who was reported to have had "a bad place this twelvemonth." As I was taken into the tiny cottage, a bright-faced, black-bearded man greeted me. Three children were playing on the hearth with a younger man, evidently their father.

"No, Doctor, they aren't ours," replied my host, in answer to my question. "But us took Sam as our own when he was born, and his mother lay dead. These be his little ones. You remember Kate, his wife, what died in hospital."

After the cup of hot tea so thoughtfully provided, I said, "Skipper John, let's get out and see the old Englishman."

"No need, Doctor. He's upstairs in bed."

Upstairs was the triangular s.p.a.ce between the roof and the ceiling of the ground floor. At each end was a tiny window, and the whole area, windows included, had been divided longitudinally by a single thickness of hand-sawn lumber. Both windows were open, a cool breeze was blowing through, and a bright paper pasted on the wall gave a cheerful impression. One corner was shut off by a screen of cheap cheesecloth. Sitting bolt upright on a low bench, and leaning against the part.i.tion, was a very aged woman, staring fixedly ahead out of blind eyes, and ceaselessly monotoning what was meant for a hymn. No head was visible among the rude collection of bedclothes.

"Uncle Solomon, it's the Doctor," I called. The ma.s.s of clothes moved, and a trembling old hand came out to meet mine.

"No pain, Uncle Solomon, I hope?"

"No pain, Doctor, thank the good Lord, and Skipper John. He took us in when the old lady and I were starving."

The terrible cancer had so extended its ravages that the reason for the veiled corner was obvious, and also for the effective ventilation.

"He suffers a lot, Doctor, though he won't own it," now chimed in the old woman.

When the interview was over, I was left standing in a brown study till I heard Skipper John's voice calling me. As I descended the ladder he said: "We're so grateful you comed, Doctor. The poor old creatures won't last long. But thanks aren't dollars. I haven't a cent in the world now. The old people have taken what little we had put by. But if I gets a skin t' winter, I'll try and pay you for your visit anyhow."