The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1902-07-13
HARDEST MEDICAL
PRACTICE IN THE WORLD D.
brave and Blessed Work of the Lit
tie Hospital ship "StrathcOna."
The Land of Pain.

The hardest medical practice in the
world is in swing again this month.
While most of US in this latitude are
dreaming of hammocks and cool drinks
only few days sail from our Northern
Atlantic ports a little steamer is roll
ing and tumbling through great seas
| and fields of ice foes. And never cast
| away sailor saw delivering ship ap-
proach with such prayers of gratitude
as rise from mems lips when the hos
pital ship Strathcona is sighted work
| ing her way along the terrible coasts
of Labrador.
| Men and women and little children
white, Indian and Eskimo-are strain
ing their eyes seward while you read
| this, looking for the only help that
ever comes to them in their solitudes.
where ice and gale lock them away
! from all their human kind. Scattered
| along more than one thousand miles
of coast fishing smacks, crowded not
| only with men, but with women who
! are driven by need to fish for a. living,
hail the little ship as the only place
of refuge for any who become ill or
| manned in the hard calling t
There Is no spot on the, globe where
| life is harder or serious accidents of
| all kinds are more frequent than along
| that stormy stretch of coast from St.
Johns, Newfoundland, to Cape Childey
| at the opening into Hudson Strait. The
| intense cold, far below zero for the
greater part of the year, causes innu-
merable cases of frost bite, that, with
| no surgical help, soon develop into
| gangrene. Every year there is a lack
| of food, and starvation weakens the
| people until they are easy prey to ty-
| phoid, consumption and intestinal dis
eases of almost all the painful kinds
| known to medical SCIENCE The
only methods for obtaining food
are seal hunting, whaling and
| fishing. Generally they are car
| ried on in poor craft. and frightful in
| Juries from broken bones to gunshot
| wounds are necessarily frequent. For
nowhere is the pursuit of either ami
mails or fish SO fraught with difficulty
| and peril.
Yet, although the barren land is in
habited by nearly $1,000 persons, while
from twenty to twenty-five thousand
| sail to 1t every year in June and July
| to fish for cod, there was not sin
gle doctor to be found in all it's thou
sand miles until ten years ago, when
the Royal National Mission to Deep
Sea Fishermen sent a little 97ton sail
ing vessel, the Albert, there under Dr.
| Wilfred Grenfell.
And it was the most fortunate thing
| that every happened to Labrador. For
| the misery that DR.. Grenfell encoun-
tered, the hopeless suffering he found,
so cried out to him that he decided
then and there to devote his life to
bringing what alienation he could to
the unhappy souls that were impris-
| oned in ice for half the year, and
| cursed with privation and sickness al
ways.
Month after month the little Albert
worked her way through ice and snow
| and gale, through hundreds of miles
of uncharted and unlighted waters,
over reefs pounded by mountain seas,
seeking out whom she might succor
When her sail was seen, men came in
skin kayaks, in birch canoes, in all
sorts of craft, crazy or stanch, bear
ing their sick and wounded to the Wis
itors.
Too often the visitors were too late
to do more than ease the dying mo-
| ments of some poor wretch. They
| found whole settlements that had been
wiped out by diphtheria. In one place
| they saw the rude graves, scooped into
| the hard Laurentian rocks, of twenty
| nine persons who had died absolutely
without any attempt at saving them.
Wounds, no matter how frightful.
were treated by squirting tobacco
juice into them and binding tightly
with an old rag. But even tobacco
and rags were wanting in many
places, for the Albert found settlements
where the children were almost naked,
and had to live in the very back of
the novels to escape freezing to death.
Frightful story.
They found one man whose little one
! had frozen both her feet. There was
nothing in the whole settlement with
which to help her, and before long
both feet began to gangrene. And when
the Albert returned to ST.. Johns she
| carried back the terrible story Of how