LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF

HISTORICAL BULLETIN Notes and Abstracts Dealing with Medical HistOf)

Issued Quarterly by the Calgary Associate Clinic as a Supplement to its monthly "H istorical Nights."

VOL. 8 C AL GARY F EDRUARY, 1944 A L DERTA No. 4 . THOMAS WAKLEY (1795-1862) Medical Editor and Reformer "Hang your reforms !" said Mr. Chichely. "There's no greater humbug in the worl d. You never hear of a reform but it means some trick to put in new men. I hope you are not one of the Lancet's men, Mr. Lydgate." "I disapprove of W akley," interposed Dr. Sprague, "no man more : he is an ill-intentioned fellow, who would sacrifice the respectability of the profession, which everybody knows depends on the London Colleges for the sake of gettir;i g some notoriety for himself. There are men who don't mind being kicked blue if they can only get talked about. But Wakley is right sometimes," the Doctor added judiciously, "I could mention one or two points in which Wakley is in the right." G!loRG!l ELIOT : Middlemarch. T has been written-"Who are the· English? W hat are the Engli sh? They are Saxons who love the land, who love I their liberty, and whose .sole claim to genius is their common-sense." The subject of this sketch (to use the old tag) is an Englishman of this classic breed, a characteristic Victorian, a thorough-going reformer and a life-long fighter. He has been unaccountably slighted by history and-more surprisingly-by medical history. Few of the modern medical generation know the name of the man whose battle honors in the cause of medicine would fill a ,page. You are likely to · look in vain in the roll of the medical Valhalla for the name of the man who has done as much as any other to bring into being high standards of rpedical education and practice, and to increase the stability and dignity of ~edicine as a career. This " forgotten man" of medical history is Thomas Wakley, the founder and militant editor of The Lancet and stqrmy petrel of British medicine in the nineteenth century. His life is an exciting if not a comfortable chronicle. He is that rare phenomenon in public life-a successful reformer. Virile and vehement, dogmatic as a railway time-table, exuberant and optimistic, he is a characteristic figure of one of the great ages in British history. · Wakley was born in 1795 and his early years saw the re­

2 THOMAS WAKLE:Y 1795 • 1862 . I farmer and de!:icendant of a long line of landowners. Our Wakley was thus what is known as a "West Country" man. They are of a tough breed, these men of Devon, Somerset and Dorset, seamen, downright and blunt men of the land, men who have known uprisings in the past. He attended grammar schools in the district but did not , excel in book learning. As a boy he wanted to go to sea but a voyage to Calcutta in an East Indiaman when he was still a lad settled this ambition. At fifteen he was apprenticed to a Taunton apothecary, then trans£ erred as apprentice to his brother-in-law, Mr. Phelps, surgeon of Beaminster, and later as pupil to Mr. Coulson at Henley-on-Thames. In 1815 he went to London and entered as student at the united schools of St. Thomas's and Guy's, known as the Borough Hospitals. He gained the most thorough part of bis medical training at the private school of anatomy in Webb Street (the Grainger School), was a pupil in the joint anatomy classes of Henry Kline and Sir at Thomas's, attended Sir Astley Cooper's lectures on the prac­ tice of surgery at Guy's where he did surgical dressings and ward work. As a student be was a hard worker, energetic and hearty. A keen sportsman, he excelled in cricket, quoits and billiards. His rigorous West Country training made him a brilliant boxer and he had many bouts in the common meet­ ing-place of the students of the day-the "pubs". A very loose system of medical instruction, examination ' . and licensing prevailed at the time. The requirements for a degree were five years' study (including apprenticeship) which included two courses of lectures on anatomy, two courses of dissecting and one year's practice in the wards of the city hospitals. Wakley took the course in his stride and in 1817, now twenty-two years of age, he passed his examina­ tion for membership in the Royal College of Surgeons and walked home to Membury to announce the news. We may look at the young pedestrian as he tramps along the Dorset roads. A man of strong individuality, of great physical strength and vitality. Conversation with him will quickly reveal that he is possessed of the bluff directness of his country upbringing, that he has above all a deep sense of justice and the Englishman's love of fair play. Having grown up as the youngest among brothers who were fine jovial sportsmen and countrymen, he has few illusions and hates all shams. But what is unusual in a man destined to be a great controversialist, there is the combination of firmness and a direct manner with good-tempered courtesy. We may suppose 3 ·that this happy circumstance he owed to the influence of his five older sisters. It was to exert a powerful influence in his career in later years. The young doctor looked over the country about his home, and finding no promising location for practice, returned to London. During the year 1818 he stayed at Gerard's Hall in· Basing Street, read and studied diligently, usually rising at . 4 a.m. for this purpose. He had now to make his way I I ' unaided in the practice of medicine. How was it to be done ? · As he surveyed the profession he saw that it was firmly in the hands of the privileged classes. He noted that to be a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians one must have a ~egr e e from Oxford or Cambridge which meant family posi­ _tion and wealth (the fellowship fees were high), one must be a member of the Church of England (no dissenter could be a Fellow). He found that all hospital appointments were made from this body of Fellows with personal influence weigh­ ing heavily. He noted further that the chief appointments in surgery were similarly made from an influential group of . Fellows in the Royal College of Surgeons and that these men . saw to it that their friends and relations were elected to all Important posts by canvassing the hospital governors. It was :thus evident that men obtained plates in the medical world by purchase and by influence and not by merit. What made matters worse, they took the salaries and fees of such posts but did not do the work,· farming it out to assistants. : · Worlds removed from this select group was the rank and ·file of the profession made up of licentiates of the Royal . College of Physicians, members of the Royal College of Surgeons and licentiates of the Society of Apothecaries. · ·These men had no prospects of advancement and their stand­ . ards of practice were for the most part deplorable. Wakley, not being of the privileged classes, found himself relegated ·to the ragtag and bobtail of the profession. This he resented, and the resentment was the spark which later kindled the fire of his reforming zeal. For he was presently to go forth as ·David against the hosts of the Philistines.

FIRST PRACTICE In 1819 assisted by Joseph Goodchild, a merchant in the city and his fiancee's father, Wakley purchased a West-end practice at the top of Regent Street, took a house at No. 5 Argyle Street nearby, married on February 5th, 1820 and wci.s arJparently happily launched on his career. For six months everything went well and then on the night of August 26th, disaster struck. At 1 :30 a.m. he was

ELECT.ION TO p ARLIAMEN'l' We now come to the year 1835 (Wakley was 40 years of age) which proved to be the turning point in his career. To date he had shown that hospitals were managed for the few, that medical men as a whole were wronged by their leaders : he had improved hospital practice by exposing incompetence, had decided the question of copyright to public lectures, had initiated a movement for reform in the medical colleges. \i\Thile doubtless he had shaken public confidence in medicine and had stirred up much bad blood, more good than harm had been done. His journal was a financial-success; he had moved his office quarters. to Essex Street, Strand, and was his own publisher; his father-in-law gave him incre_ased financial backing. Men were attracted by his eloquence, his audacious defence of private rights, his determination, his self-:confidence and withal his kindliness of manner. All this time the tide of reform was rising. The great Reform Bill . of 1832 had stirred the nation. It was not surprising, therefore, that Wakley should decide to carry the cause of medical reform to Parliament-and in 1835, backed by Cobbett, he was elect ~ ed for Finsbury, a great London constituency. 8 . THE SOCIAL TEM·PER OF THE TIME These were the early .days of the industrial revolution. , The increasing population, the growth of towns, the increasing ease of travel, the spread of industrial inventions, the advance of education, all these foretold a world which was rapidly turning away from the eighteenth century. Industrial changes were causing slum towns to grow up whose inhabitants had little hope except in evangelistic religion and radical politics. Men and women could be hanged for theft. Soldiers were flogged for misdemeanors. Children worked long hideous hours in factories. There was terrible distress in Lancashire and in the south of England following a series of bad harvests. The angry suffering people were treated so ruthlessly that the bolder spirits in the nation were roused. In particular the state of agricultural laborers. was pitiable. With falling prices, these men and their families were reduced to desperate conditions of living. · And when in 1830 farm laborers rioted in the south counties, the law punished them in a .manner that became a burning memory to the masses. To correct this steady growing tide of stresses, reform was rapidly culminating in three great political movements - Chartism, repeal of the Corn Laws and Irish Reform. The trade union movement was born after the Luddite disorders and the Peterloo massacre. As prices rose, the Speerhamland Act provided a dole in aid of wages. Agitation for free trade began under Cobden and Bright. In these turbulent conditions the great humanitarian move­ ment which was to become the glory of England was gaining momentum. Wilberforce and the anti-slavery movement set the pattern. Public discussion, pamphleteering and popular demonstrations were the means of agitation-all within the framework of constitutional government. The public mind gradually became more active and more independent. Rapidly the movement invaded one province after another. · These were the days of Bentham and Brougham, Cobden and Bright, Shaftesbury, Robert Owen, Charles Dickens, and Daniel O'Connell, of the reform bills, factory laws and prison reform. This then was the stage on to which VI/ akley now moved. In Pai:liament he found himself one of a handful of radicals. He was a doctor which gave him no standing in that day. He was a journalist and therefore in popular opinion a vulgar fellow probably not averse to bribes. He was above all "middle-class" and therefore somewhat of an Ishmaelite among the elegant Tories and Whigs of the House. His liberalism was heresy to the aristocratic Whiggery of men 9 such as Melbourne. But time and change were on his side for he was in the vanguard of the new ruling class which grad­ ually took over the government of England, the aristocracy of the middle class soon to be solidified into a ruling reality in Victorian England. Within six months of his election, Wakley had his first great opportunity in the celebrated case of the six Dorset laborers. ·

THE ToLPU'DDLE MARTYRS It should be remembered that a \tVhig party was in power and presumably a party sympathetic to reform. But the gov­ I erning classes were afraid of a rural insurrection. In each district the combination of squire, vicar and resident farmer formed a dictatorship, adamant against trade unionism in rural England. Labourers must not -forget · their places and chal­ lenge their b'etters, the propertied classes. This explains the Tolpuddle incident, one of the great chapters in the story of labor reform. . The condition of agricultural labourers, as we have seen, was wretched, their homes mere hovels. These poor folk saw in the trade union movement a means of bettering their wages. At this time in Dorsetshire wages were 10s. a week, but in Tolpuddle, a little hamlet of three hundred souls near Dor­ chester, the labourers received only 9s. a week. After protests the farmers promised to bring the wage up to the county level but instead reduced it to 8s. and, after the labourers held · a public meeting in Dorchester, reduced it to 7s. The labourers met and George Loveless, a self-educated man of their number, after receiving advice from two London labour workers formed a group, 'The Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers.' James Frampton, the Dorchester magistrate and himself a landowner, was determined to put the movement down. He corresponded with Lord Melbourne, then Home Secretary, and plans were laid to prosecute and punish the men under an act which had been passed to deal with the Nore naval mutiny, an act which was virtually obsolete. Accordingly on the early morning cf February 24, 1834, six farm labourers-George Loveless, James Loveless, James Hammett, Thomas Standfield, John Standfield (son of Thomas) and James Brine-were arrested, taken to Dor­ chester and committed to gaol. The trial took place on March 15th. The charge was based on an act which made it punish­ able to swear oaths of allegiance in secret societies. Sir Staf- 10 ford Cripps in a recent study of the trial has characterized it as 'a travesty of justice.' The judge was biased. The jury was made up of land-owners and ·magistrates. The men were found guilty and sentenced to seven years' transportation. They were sent in chains to the prison ship at Plymouth and thence to Australia and Tasmania. All underwent appalling hardships on board ship and in the penal colony. Protests against the sentence grew in intensity. Petitions poured into Parliament. Meetings were called and finally a great demonstration was held at Copenhagen Fields, London, attended by over 100,000, the crowd being handled by 7,000 constables. Led by Robert Owen and Dr. Arthur Wade, vicar of Southwark Church, the crowd marched through London to Whitehall to present a petition carried on the shoulders of twelve men to Lord Melbourne, the Home Secretary. Funds were raised for the families of the condemned men who had been refused help under the Poor Law. vValdey as a vv est county man and a Radical was picked to · champion the cause in the House of Commons. On March 7, 1835 he presented a petition with 13,000 names and_ gave notice that in three months he proposed to move that the sentence be commuted. On that day, Lord John Russell, the Home Secretary, requested him to postpone his motion as the government had already recommended partial remission of sentence. Wakley refused and rose to face a hostile House. He spoke for two and a half hours. He criticized the grounds of conviction and the· packing of the jury. He charged bias because two of the men were Wesleyan lay preachers. The motion was lost 310-84. His speech however proved the turning-point in the campaign. Undaunted by the verdict, Wakley with others continued to agitate in public and raise subscriptions, and nine months after his speech the government announced full freedom and transportation of the men home at public expense-this after nearly two years. of agitation. On April 25th, 1836 a public dinner was held to celebrate the victory when Wakley and Daniel O'Connell received a great ovation. Throughout the whole fight, conducted with great vigor and skill, Wakley had shown a passionate hatred of injustice. He had shown also that, though he handled his opponents roughly, he was free from personal malice. WAKLEY IN p ARLIAMENT By this time ·wakley was becoming known throughbut Eng­ land and enjoyed great popularity as a friend of the people~ He was a man of great strength, with clean-shaven, florid face,

II blue eyes and golden hair hanging to his shoulders. We see him as a 'gentleman of the forties,' dressed in long surtout with velvet collar, low-cut flowered waistcoat, nankeen trous­ ers, lofty-crowned beaver. There is a contemporary picture of hirn in an article which appeared in Fraser's Magazine. "Mr. Wakley has extraordinary energy both physical and mental. To see him bringing up his portly frame along the floor of the House of Commons, with swinging arms, and rolling, almost rollicking gait-his broad fair face inspired with good humour, and his massive forehead set off by light, almost flaxen hair, flow­ ing in wavy freedom backwards around his head, and the careless eai;;e of his manly yet half-boyish air, as though he had no thought or care beyond the impression or impulse of the moment; to watch the frank hearty goodwill with which he greets his personal friends as he throws himself heedlessly into his seat, and interchanges a joke or an anecdote, or perhaps some stern remarks on the passing scene, with those around; then, in a few minutes afterwards, rising to make, perhaps, some important motion, laying bare some gross case of pauper oppression, or taking up the cause of the medical practitioners with all the zeal of one still of the craft; to witness the freshness and vigor with which he throws himself into the business before him, you would little guess the amount of weary­ ing labor and excitement he has already gone through during the day; yet he has perhaps been afoot from the earliest hour, has perchance presided at more than one inquest during the morning, listening with a conscientious patience to the evidence, or taking part with an earnest partisanship in the case, then off as fast as horses could carry him down to the committee rooms of the House of Commons, there to exhibit the same restless activity of mind, ·the same persevering acuteness, the same zeal and energy; and after hours, perhaps, spent in this laborious duty, rendered still more irksome by a heated atmosphere and the intrigues of baffling opponents, returning home to accumulate the facts necessary for the exposure of some glaring abuse in the Post Office or the Poor Law Commission, or to manage the multifarious correspondence which his manifold public duties compel him to embark in. Yet such is often the daily life of this hardworking man: he is absolutely indefatigable ; nothing daunts him, nothing seems to tire him." ['Wakley in the H.01ise' by G. H. FRANCIS.] The more outstanding of \ Vakley's achil:vements while ir.. Parliament may be briefly summarized to show how far he achieved his aim of bringing about reform through constitu­ tional means. He secured the passage of the Medical Witness Bill by which doctors were to receive remuneration for court duties and for post-mortem and inquest work. He led the battle which resulted in the reduction of newspaper stamp duties, he supported Poor Law amendments, he campaigned for wider latitude in Sunday observance. He advocated repeal of the Irish union, opposed the Corn Laws and supported the Chartist principles but did not approve of their methods of violence. His point of view was soundly English. He felt that laws against consequences of social evils were useless; legislation must attack the basic causes. Not doles for the working class, he argued, but better wages and food and · sanitary environment. In 1846 he did his greatest parliamen- 12 tary work in bringing in a "Bill for the Registration of Quali­ fied Medical Practitioners and for amending the Law relating to the Practice of Medicine in Great Britain and Ireland." This Bill led finally to the Bill of 1858 which is now the legal basis for English medical practice. Wakley wa:s now widely known a$ a radical politician as well as a medical reformer. 'Punch' founded in 1841, had many a 'go' at him and constantly satirized him in its pages. After 18 years' service he retired from Parliament in his 57th year. He had continued to represent the popular constituency of Finsbury for this period.

w AKLEY AS CORONER There was still another role in which Wakley was even better known to the public of his day. For years he preached in The Lancet that the formal inquest was a dreary farce and urged that the coroner be a medical man, publishing and commenting upon ill-considered verdicts of coroners' inquests. Finally in 1839 he was elected as coroner for West Middlesex and proceeded at once to practise what he had preached. The number of inquests was increased in the face of bitter criti­ cism from complacent office-holders. He made a point of investigating all deaths in public institutions, asylums, prisons and poorhouses, and his instructions to the police covering those cases which must be notified to the coroner brought a tremendous storm about his head. He insisted upon notifica­ tion of all women dying in labour or a few hours after, which was a bold advance. He was determined, he said, to protect the public against incompetent medical practice, ignorant mid­ wives and enterprising quacks. He endeavoured to raise the status of coroners' juries and the whole tone of proceedings at inquests. Some weeks he conducted as many as fifteen in­ quests. His methods were searching. In the Austin case from Hendon work-house when officials disputed the identity of the individual, Wakley replied: "If that is not the body of the man who was killed in your vat, pray sir, how many paupers have you boiled?" In this particular case a magis­ trate's report supported Wakley's conclusions. Such thorough­ going methods make trouble, and his enemies finally forced a Parliamentary investigation of his coronership, but the Com­ mittee's report completely exonerated him. And now Wakley was fairly launched among the Amalekites, smiting them hip and thigh. Gradually his skill and evident sincerity in con­ ducting inquests won over a grumbling public. In 1841 he gained the praise of Charles Dickens who served as a member of the jury at an inquest over which Wakley presided. Dickens 13 praised Wakley's handling of the popular court and stated that as coroner he had shown how an official should behave to the poor. The famous Hounslow inquest sent Wakley's name through­ out the British Isles. On June 15th, 1846 at Cavalry Bar­ racks, Hounslow Heath, a private of the 7th Hussars, Fred­ erick James White, received 150 lashes administered by two regimental farriers, the sentence of a court-martial for as­ saulting a sergeant. The man was flogged in the presence of his colonel and Dr. Warren, the regimental surgeon, was then sent to hospital where after a few days he developed cardiac and pulmonary complications, paralysis of the lower extremities and loss of bladder function, and eventually died. The post-mortem was carried out by three army surgeons who certified death due to pleurisy and pericarditis not connected with the flogging. The vicar of Heston refused to permit burial without the authority of the coroner. Wakley appointed a surgeon to do another necropsy, was not satisfied with his report, and asked Mr. Erasmus Wilson, then a rising young pathologist, to .review the necropsy findings. Wilson gave it as his opinion that death was due to the flogging. Wakley supported him and the jury brought in the same verdict with a strong rider condemning flogging. The case caused great excitement, and modifications in · army punishment were at once introduced, leading to the abolition of flogging in the Army Act of 1881. 01'HE;R REFORMS All this time The Lancet continued to flourish and present­ ly had a panel of the most eminent medical contributors in the country. The reforms which Wakley urged in public and in Parliament were forcefully supported in his role of editor. In 1851 he launched an analysis of foodstuffs, publishing the results in The Lancet. This led to a parliamentary investiga­ tion and the passing of the Adulteration Act in 1860, the pre­ lude to all our present laws concerning food adulteration. He was equally effective in his exposure of charlatans. The famous John St. John Long who had developed a great follow­ ing with his cure for "consumption" and lived in great style in Harley Street was brought to justice through Wakley's efforts. He exposed Chabert the "fire-eater" by challenging him before a popular audience to swallow prussic acid. Dr. , a physician of note and senior physician of University College Hospital, succumbed to a belief in mes­ merism. Wakley thereupon conducted a public investigation of the claims and at a seance showed that poor Elliotson had been duped by two hysterical girls. 14 A PERSONAL NOTE Wakley was not a family man. His many interests absorb­ ed him completely. He worked fifteen to sixteen hours a day, driving between office and editorial duties, inquests and the House of Commons, and working on an improvised table in his carriage. He possessed that tremendous capacity for work and the driving zeal for a cause that marked so many of his Victorian contemporaries-qualities that not a few disillusion­ ed men of our own century have been busy sneering at until the present war silenced such glacial judgments. As a result of this fury of work he suffered a serious breakdown in 1851. His wife died in 1857. In 1860 he developed a cough and hemoptysis and the following year spent some time at Brigh­ ton and then went to Madeira where he improved. A sudden pulmonary hemorrhage, however, was followed by death on May 16th, 1862, Wakley then being in his 68th year. Tlie body was brought back to England for burial in Kensal Green, London. He had three sons. The eldest became the senior proprietor of The Lancet and the youngest succeeded his father as editor. For 83 years The Lancet was edited by Wakley and his descendants, maintaining always the high standards set by the founder. * * * * * Wakley was born into an era of reform and proved to be the medium by which the medical profession was changed by the great currents of the time. Like the other great reform­ ers of the age he was a practical reformer. He was not mere­ ly the prophet thundering his denunciations in the market­ place and then gloomily retiring to his cell to brood on the future of men. If ever a man bore witness to the motto, "The truth shall set you free," it was Thomas Wakley. He exhibited in full measure the belief of the great Victorians in the gospel of Work-the gospel that Carlyle thundered to his generation: "Produce! Were it but the pitifulest- in­ finitesimal fraction of a product, produce it in God's name." For him man makes his circumstances, and spiritually as well as economically he is the artificer of his own future. Wakley's warfare was all public. He had no private enmities and no vendettas. He was rough in controversy, but never showed petty spleen, and many who were his enemies, such as the unhappy Mr. Bransby Cooper, lived to become his friends. He belonged to his age, but he flattered no man, and because he reverenced the common man and not the · "gilded Popinjays or soot-smeared Mumbo-jumbos" he did 15 , I I not die with his age. Personally he was a cheerful, hearty and plain-spoken man-none of your sour, quarrelsome fel­ lows hugging reform to a misanthropic breast. Dr. John Brown has a pleasant story of a countryman who, being asked · to account for the gravity of his dog, replied, "Oh, sir, life is . full of sairiousness to him-he can just never get enough o' fechtin'." None of the spirit of this saddened dog clouded \Vakley' s outlook. He may be regarded as one of the first great editors who have made the Fourth Estate a power in the world. He sprang to editorship fully equipped, having never written a line before. Journalism as he practised it was leadership. For the journal­ ism which caters to shifting opinion as the dressmaker follows the fashion, he felt and expressed a withering contempt, a quality, we may suppose, which stemmed partly from his in­ tellectual self-respect and partly from his West-county tradi­ tion of independence. He was not a great writer. He had the scorn and the righteous anger of the born reformer. But he was not a social prophet like Ruskin. He was practical and hard-headed. He not only wrote but he carried his ideas through to action, first in organization and personal example, and then by Parliamentary action. He was thus as much a man of action as a writer. Reformers are only remembered if they are great characters like Wilberforce or Cobden, or brilliant writers like Wakley's witty, reforming contem·porary, Sidney Smith who is still read when the reforms for which he wrote are forgotten. In this sense the reformer as prophet or artist outlives the .re­ former as social propagandist. Wakley's stature hardly en­ titles him to a place in either of these categories. He was not a Wilberforce nor was he a writer of the calibre of Sidney Smith. That is probably why he has faded into the mists of history. But it has seemed worth while to recall him for a space. For he presents the singular phenomenon of being a medical man and at the same time a reformer. Physicians are seldom iconoclasts and for the most part they have been content to allow society to force the changes in medicine. Here was a man who brought the ·critical judgment of his time to bear on his profession and with something of the superb faith and fire of the greatest reformers of his race. Such men have been the salvation of the world in the past and are its hope in the future. With the prophets they may agree that "the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked," but at the same time the vision of a new heaven and a new earth never fails them. In every age they have been wrong-headed in 16 many things but with the shocks and explosions of their fire­ works how magnificently do they light up the darkness of their generation! And always they fight consistently for social justice against narrow class privilege and personal sel­ fishness. They constantly testify to the dignity of man. Thomas Wakley is a humble member in such ranks. -E. P. SCARLETT. REFERENCES The Book of the Martyrs of Tolpuddle (1834-1934)-Trades Union Congress (London). The Life and Times of Thomas Wakley-Sprigge. Longmans and Co. (London). Thomas Wakley-Dictionary of National Biography. English Social History-G. M. Trevelyan. Longmans and Co. (Lon­ don) .

MEDICAL PIONEERING IN ALBERT A Tm-: MEDICAL ANNALS oF

HIS column has sketched from time to time some of the personal characteristics of many of Alberta's pioneer Tpractitioners; and again it has often referred to incidents related in a general way to medicine in Alberta during the years that are past and gone. This article is an endeavor to give in chronological summary the names of those pioneer doc­ tors_ and to set out the dates of the beginnings of some Al­ berta hospitals and medical organizations which are serving the profession and the public so well today. Some of the data have been secured from the several excellent papers which Dr. Heber Jamieson has contributed to the profession from .time to time, and we are also indebted to Dr. Geo. R. Johnson, Registrar of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, for confirmation of some of the dates. Our thought is that this article when included in the file with the past numbers of the Bulletin, will provide a record which may be used for refer­ erice purposes whenever occasion may demand. Space in this issue forbids ~laboration of much highly interesting historical information; we hope however to continue in future issues our past endeavours along these lines. 1795 Fort appears to have existed as far back as 1795, and Father Lacombe opened his mission there in 1857. 17 1820 The first record of any doctor setting foot in what is now Alberta was that of Dr. John Richardson who was medical officer with Sir John Franklin's Polar Expedition in 1820. Later Dr. John Rae came to Moose Factory from Edinburgh and joined the Hudson's Bay Company in 1834.- He accom­ panied Dr. Richardson in 1848 on his expedition to search for · Pranklin, dead or alive, lost in the Arctic. (See Bulletin, Vol. 2, No. 3). 1832 Dr. William Todd joined the Hudson's Bay Company in 1816, and was first at Red River and later at Fort Wedder­ burn on Lake Athabasca, about one mile from the present Fort Chipewyan. He was Alberta's first physician, for it is recorded that in 1832 he confined the wife of Sir George Simpson in her first labour. 1857 Dr. James Hector accompanied the famous Palliser Expedi- tion. (See Bulletin, Vol. 6, No. 3.) 1863 Dr. Cheadle made his record exploration trip to the Pacific Coast via the Yellowhead Pass, in company with Lord Milton.

21 The following living doctors in Alberta have been registered for 40 years or over : A. M. Lafferty, Lethbridge ------February 27, 1889 E. A. Braithwaite, Edmonton ------March 5, 1892 E. M. Sharpe, Lacombe ------March 4, 1895 A. Hamman, Taber ------April 29, 1895 G. H . Malcolmson, Edmonton ______September 5, 1898 P. M. Campbell, Lethbridge ------May 22, 1900 W. J . Simpson, Millet------June 8, 1900 C. H. Lawford, Smoky Lake ------April 2, 1901 G. R. Sutherland, Leduc ------April 30, 1901 G. D. Stanley, Calgary ------October 1, 1901 A. A. Drinnan, Clive ___ _: ______October '29, 1901 F. W. Crang, Edmonton South ------November 9, 1901 T. O'Hagan, Jasper ------April 28, 1901 E. G. Mason, Calgary ------July 24, 1902 J. Hislop, Edmonton------November 4, 1902 E. A. Blais, Edmonton ------January 17, 1903 J. A. Creighton, Nanton ------April 24, 1903 R. Parsons, Red Deer ------July 23, 1903 A. E. Archer, Lamont ------December 31, 1903 -G. D. STANLEY.

JOHN N. E . BROWN, M.D. ( 1864-1943)

IN MEMORIAM The late Dr. John N. E. Brown of Toronto was always a helpful adviser of The Bulletin and a cherished friend of the writer since the latter's boyhood days .in the old home town of both, St. Mary's, . Dr. Brown's passing does cause a tugging at our heartstrings. - G.D. S.

22 A MEDICAL MISCELLANY From the Commonplace-Book of a Medical Reader

ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW !DEAS The world and the individual are always changing. As Heraclitus said, you cannot step twice into the same river. But there sometimes comes a time when the pace of change is speeded up almost beyond human comprehension. It is our fate to live in such a time. The war has smashed the old world to bits and we are entering a period of social at:1.d political change more profound and difficult than any since the Reformation; the storm signals indicate that medicine is about to share in the upheaval. To weather the storm we must again learn. and apply the greatest of political lessons­ to carry out a revolution without strife or injustice, "with a minimum of hardship and a maximum of gain." Above all there will be .no place in the medical order for the reactionary, the member of the Drone's Club, the narrow individualist. Medical privilege is going to be attacked vigorously. Our business as physicians is to see that values are preserved in the building which the new world is to inhabit. We might all remember the story of the wife of the Worcester Cathedral canon who listened to the first announce­ ment of the theory of evolution with consternation. "Descend­ ed from the apes!" she exclaimed. "My dear, we will hope it is not true. But if it is, let us pray that it may not become generally know.n !" * * * * To Busy MEDICAL MEN EVERYWHERE There is an old saying that if you want something done, get the busy man to do it. This has never seemed a counsel of consolation, but at a time when physicians everywhere are busier than at any time in their proverbially harassed exist­ ence, it may comfort some at least to realize that it is only when one is geared ·up to full activity that most of us can accomplish first-rate work. There are a few fortunate souls . who can produce in relative idleness, but even here it is an alert indolence that few men can achieve. For the majority there must be the compulsion of work in full flood. In his memoirs the Swiss anatomist and embryologist, Wilhelm His ( 1831-1904) points out this fact in a peculiarly memorable way. He writes: 23 "In later years, however, it has been my fundamental experience that for the progress and success of one's own intellectual labors it is more advantageous to be burdened 'With a moderate .number of obligations than to possess absolute freedom. In particular I have often found that at the begin­ ning of a desired vacation, simultaneously with the appear­ ance of the ability to dispose freely of one's time there is also a relaxation of mental tension which can only be overcome gradually and by compulsion. The most dangerous aspect of this development is the desire to wait for a favorable mood in which to start working. Such truly fruitful moods can sometimes occur quite unexpectedly; more frequently, how­ ever, they can be achieved only after one has violently fought his way through barren and apparently unfruitful beginnings. But once the goal has been clearly perceived, one soon learns to utilize as fully as possible even the smallest periods of time that occur in the course of the day's work." (Lebenserinne­ rungen, Leipzig, 1903.) * * * *

PROFESSIONAL WORK What is called professional work is, in point of severity, just what you choose to make it: either commonplace, easy, and requiring only extensive industry to be lucrative; or else distinguished, difficult, . and exacting the fiercest intensive industry in return, after a probation of twenty years or so, for authority, reputation and an income only sufficient for simple habits and plain living. The whole professional world lies between these two extremes. George Bernard Shaw: On Going to Church, The Savoy, January, 1896. * * * *

FISCHERISMS Make a diagnosis and get hanged for it. You can't sail a boat on your impressions of where the north is. · The popular conception of a strengthening diet is a chicken wrung out in hot water. When you no longer know what headache, heartache or stomach-ache means without cisterna punctures, electrocardio­ grams, and six x-ray plates, you are slipping. Dr. Martin H. Fischer. -E. P. SCARLETT. 24