Journals and reminiscences of James Douglas, M.D.

Introduction

The following sketch of the life of my father is in part autobiographical and part drawn from my own recollections.

He was bom with the Nineteenth Century and lived till its eighty-sixth year. His earliest recollections were of the boisterous rejoicings over Nelson's great victory at Trafalgar. He was a surgeon's appren* tice when Waterloo was fought. His first professional employment was in 1818 as surgeon to a whaler, which was fortunate in penetrating the Arctic Circle nearer to the North Pole than any ships prior to that date, except those under the command of Sir John Ross. So near did he live to the empire-making epoch of the eighteenth century that Warren Hastings had not been dead two years when he entered the service of the East India Company. He knew Carey and Marshman and therefore witnessed the early efforts of modem missionary enterprise and its success toward securing the abolition of sutteeism and other cruel customs. He was one of the first pupils of Robert Liston, the father of modern surgery and one of the first to apply his teachings on this continent. He thus not only witnessed but took a humble part in the great revolution by which surgery has been bereft of its terrors, which has mitigated the horrors of the operating table by the introduction of anesthetics, and whose crowning triumph has been the application of antiseptics, rendering it possible for the modem surgeon to perform operations which, despite the greater dexterity of his predecessor it would have been sheer murder on his part to attempt. He also, though not a homeopathist, rejoiced in the victory of the rational school of medicine, which banished from the pharmacopoeia a host of magical drugs, and from the practice of physic those copious and noxious doses, unless drenched with which our forefathers considered themselves neglected by their family physician and unless supplied with which they considered themselves defrauded of the tangible value for which they paid their medical attendant so much per annum. After a short residence in the East Indies the impulse of independence and the promise of higher pay tempted him in 1824 to join, as surgeon and physician, one of those ill-considered and ill-fated colonization expeditions to Central America, for which British enthusiasm over the emancipation of Spanish America from the rule of England's old rival, Spain, made it so easy for speculative promoters between 1820 and 1830 to gain support from the British public. How this failed, by what a strange chain of accidents he came finally to settle in Canada, after a short residence in Utica, fills the most interesting and profitable chapter of his active life.

Thus, and in a hundred other ways, he saw the old system of government, of social and commercial life

INTKODUCTION 11

and of science, pass away and give place to the new. One generation after another was born and died while he lived on; but the longer he lived the more his thoughts reverted to the past, which to us was history, but to him was more real than the present.

In this shifting scene he played a very inconspicuous part. He possessed intellectual ability and force of will which would have made him a leader of men, had be been ambitious and had he sought a sphere where the full blaze of publicity would have fallen upon him; for in the practice of his own profession of surgery he was original and skilful to an eminent degree. And when he undertook any public work or advocated any public measure, which, however, he did only when the work or the measure fell within the sphere of his professional activity, he threw his whole strength into the enterprise or its advocacy, with such impulsive energy that he bore down all opposition and carried his point by sheer force of attack. Though overbearing, there lay in his nature a depth of tenderness, which never came to the surface more attractively than in the presence of pain. "While intolerant of disobedience or querulousness on the part of his patients, many a sufferer lay in unrest for hours waiting for his visit and for the luxury of being lifted and turned by his strong arms, and encouraged by his unfaltering and sincere opinion, even if adverse. His office was a clinic for the poor, long before the word was used in its present sense. One reason why he inspired confidence was that he never exhibited that doubt as to what is the matter with their patients, which some unfortunate practitioners cannot conceal, and which all very often feel. He acted always up to the wise maxim :

Look wise,

Say nothing,

An unerring way

When doctors nothing have to say.

He shunned popularity. He wrote a clear and concise style, yet never contributed a single article to even a medical journal. He was a fascinating story teller and a consummate actor, and with practice would have been an able speaker; yet he foreswore politics, both municipal and national, during the years of his active professional life. Nor did he thus isolate himself from indolence, but from obedience to self-imposed rules of life. He looked upon himself as the servant of his patients and at liberty to follow no extraneous occupation, and to allow his mind to be distracted by no pursuit which might absorb the time and thought which he considered to be theirs, without subtraction. He was a superb man, endowed not only with remarkable gifts of mind, but a massive and wellbalanced frame. Every feature of the face, the size and contour of the head, even the bushy crop of hair, which refused to be smoothed, but stood erect and defiant, bespoke strength of purpose and activity of intellect.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, after once meeting him, said he did not know whether most to fear or to admire him, but that in his head and figure he was the nearest approach to a Jupiter Olympus of any man he had ever seen. He had many of the qualities of greatness, for his character possessed the elements out

INTRODUCTION 13

of which either a man of wide professional repute or a statesman of commanding influence might have been compounded, and therefore those who knew him well wondered that he remained obscure. Perhaps he knew himself better than others knew him, and may have suspected that the strong properties of his nature were mingled with others so inconsistent that the resultant was a character too eccentric and full of contradictions to bear the scrutiny of the public eye. It is just such anomalies that give individuality to human life. They make some public men picturesque, but they more often make them dangerous. Not a little of the evil work of the world is done by its strong men, honest and conscious of their perfect integrity, but using their strength amiss under the impulse of some extravagant whim, grotesque fancy, or overweening confidence in the infallibility of their judgment.

He left these fragments of his recollections of his life, but they were written when he was more than seventy years of age and when his memory and descriptive powers had become unfortunately impaired. If he could but have thrown into his narrative the phrases, emphasis and gesture which made him so attractive as a story-teller, his reminiscences would have been unique. But alas, the fine flavor of conversation is as incommunicable as tact and experience. Mere words cannot preserve them. They die with us, just as there dies with an old doctor, the more perhaps is the pity, that marvelous medical skill and keen instinct, which a practitioner, who has been for half a century in contact with disease, acquires, he knows not how, and which he cannot describe or communicate. It must be buried with him, to be gathered afresh through experience by the next generation. It is perhaps weU that it should be so, for with it is buried all his prejudices and faulty conclusions.

James Douglas

Chapter I His Boyhood And Apprenticeship To A Surgeon

**Now on the verge of seventy-nine years I realize that time has told and is daily telling upon my mental and physical powers. Some of them have been cut off by it altogether, and some are fading away.'* Thus my father prefaced the story of his life. His recollections of long-past events were vivid, and they are confirmed by journals which he kept of three of his earliest professional engagements.

My father's narrative commences in the conventional way:

*'In writing an autobiography, it is usual to give an account of the writer's progenitors. In accordance with this custom, I have to state that my Father was the Son of Mr. Richard Douglas, a Gentleman who had retired with a competence from business as an Architect and Builder. My recollections of my paternal Grandfather, are of a tall old Gentleman, with a white wig, and a gold headed cane, who used to interest me with accounts of his acquaintance and intercourse with John Wesley. He died at Winlaton, at the age of ninety-eight. My Father was his second son, born in 1769, brought up among the early followers of Jolm Wesley, and having personal knowledge of that remarkable man, he became strongly attached to him, and to his doctrines. I cannot do better than give an extract from the minutes of the Wesleyan Conference of 1853, which announced my Father's death:

** 'His earliest associations being with John Wesley and his followers, and being also greatly influenced by the councils and the Christian example of his Mother, he united himself with the Methodists, and, at the Conference of 1793 was appointed to a Circuit, and continued humbly, laboriously, and faithfully, to discharge his duties as a Christian Minister. While praying with a dying woman, he was seized with paralysis, and exchanged mortality for life, on February, 1853, in the 89th year of his life, and in the 60th of his Ministry , .'

''During the years 1798-9 and six years after his induction into the Ministry, my Father was stationed at Aberdeen, in Scotland, and there became acquainted with Mr. James Mellis, a retired Brewer, whose wife, nee Mary Stuart, was of an old Roman Catholic family ; they had two Children, a son and a daughter. As was usual then, as now, the Son accompanied his Father to the Scotch Church, and the daughter went with her Mother to the Catholic Church. However, 'Amor vincit omnia.' Miss Mary Mellis became the Wife of the Rev. George Douglas. They were married in Aberdeen on the 4th day of July, 1799, by the Rev. Rt. Doig, and I was bom in Brechin in Angus, on 20th of May, 1800, and my birth is registered in the City of Aberdeen. Dur-

BOYHOOD AND APPRENTICESHIP 17

ing the thirteen years subsequent to my birth, my Father was stationed successively in Brechin, in the Isle of Man, in Carlisle, and in Dumfries, in which two latter places I received the principal part of my education.

"My Father was very fond of rod fishing and among my early recollections are those of accompanying him on his fishing excursions. At Carlisle, and at Dumfries, there was capital trout fishing, but, as a Methodist Minister could not well be seen going thro' the Streets with a rod and a basket, I had always to join him at the rivers side with these necessaries.''

My grandfather left a short account of himself. Judging from it, his life was spent in one long process of introspection and self -dissection. Judging from my father's account of him, he was a kindly, considerate and a very hard working, earnest, simple minded man, not without his weaknesses and foibles ; ruled by his children rather than ruling them. When I saw him, only a month before his death, he looked like John Wesley personified.

He had the same strong features we are so familiar with in the likeness of John Wesley that prefaced his hymn book. His hair was long and flowed in thick white curls over his shoulders. The old gentleman, though in his 89th year, was vigorous in body but much enfeebled in mind. His only literary work had been collecting religious anecdotes. Early in the last century religious anecdotes were as popular among those attached to evangelicalism as were the Percy anecdotes in secular circles. His collection filled several volumes and passed througli several editions. The anecdotes were grouped under headings in the usual disjointed manner of compilations of that kind, the doings and sayings of saints side by side with those of sinners, each anecdote carrying its appropriate theological moral.

Napoleon Bonaparte and Lady Huntington, though in very different spheres, had been both prominent characters in his day and afforded material for many of his anecdotes. When I had the privilege of being with him, just before his death, he spent hours telling me stories, all composed of the shattered fragments of his old stock, linked together in the most grotesque and incongruous combination. Napoleon and Lady Huntington were still uppermost in his mind, and they figured together in the same narrative in exquisitely amusing situations. As in the case of most aged people the imagination survived the memory. When the dear old gentleman went in search of his hat and cane to visit his parishioners, all of whom had been for a generation in their graves, the only means of diverting him was to give him a clew which started him on a round of his anecdotes.

My father's Journal continues:

** During the winter of 1812-13, I was sent to the Wesleyan College at Woodhouse Grove in Yorkshire, and there placed in Sallust; certainly, I was in the first class, but, having left the Academy in Dumfries, where I was advanced in Virgil, I found myself losing time. Having in vain urged my Father to re-

BOYHOOD AND APPRENTICESHIP 19

move me, I took French leave, and started for Dumfries on foot."

The father submitted to what the boy of twelve dictated, to the irreparable injury of the character of the lad and the future man. A strong disposition, uncontrolled in early life, became in later life objectionably wilful. When under the strain of overwork, and when irritated by confreres, who were professionally his inferiors, he was apt to yield to unbecoming displays of temper and to offensive arbitrariness. An unhesitating reliance on his own judgment remained as a prominent trait of his character. And he possessed to an eminent degree the faculty of self-justification which accompanies most self-reliant natures. The Journal continues:

''At the ensuing Conference, my Father was stationed at Penrith in Cumberland, and I was bound there for five years, as an apprentice to Dr. Thomas Law, an uncle of the late Lord Ellenborough. My endenture is dated on October 3rd, 1813.

''Penrith was in the centre of the Lake country. The county was studded with the castles, the halls, and the mansions of many of the nobility and gentry — the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Lonsdale, Earl Thanet, Lady Brougham, Sir Henry Dacre, and others. As Dr. Law was the principal Medical Man, he as was then the custom, made up and dispensed his own prescriptions, I therefore found myself fully occupied.

"Medical pupillage in England sixty years ago, was different to what it now is, and very different indeed to what it is in Canada. A statement of my duties and my privileges as an apprentice, will best illustrate this. During the second year of my time, I had charge of the Surgery, and made up the prescriptions. I had to visit the pauper class, as well in the country as in the town, and to report on any emergency or on the appearance of any grave symptom. Unless occupied in the Surgery, I was allowed between eight and nine o'clock in the evening for recreation, and occasionally a day's holiday, for trout fishing in the river Eamont, or in one of the neighbouring lakes, or for rook-shooting in the woods of Lowther Castle or of Brougham Hall.

**As perquisites, I had the shilling, which was the fee for blood-letting or tooth-drawing. That for blood-letting particularly was very remunerative as it was the custom of the country people, generally to be bled every Spring, and of many, every Spring and Autumn. These perquisites, during three and a half years of my apprenticeship rendered me independent of my Father, for the expense of clothes and pocket money. In the Autumn of 1818, having completed my indenture, I left Penrith with many pleasant reminiscences of the time I had spent there, and of the kindness of Dr. Law and of his amiable wife.

'*I am not generally a laudator temporis acti, but I must say, that, in my opinion, the training of Medical Students sixty years ago, was calculated to turn out more efficient and practical men, than the system of pupillage of the present day. The former gave them a more thorough and minute knowledge of the materia medica, and of its use and effects in grave disease, as well as in trifling ailments ; it moreover gave them habits of thought, of reflection, and of self -re-

BOYHOOD AND APPRENTICESHIP 21

liance and responsibility, which were a solid ground work for general practice. In Minor Surgery, the training of the pupil in the treatment of injuries, in the application of bandages, and in the numerous little offices for alleviating the effects of disease, gave him, as a general practitioner, a great advantage over a student, whose medical and surgical education is restricted to lectures, and to witnessing the ordinary practice in the wards of an hospital, — whose knowledge of drugs is confined to books, and who is unable to distinguish between arsenic, tartar emetic, and common salt."

Dr. Law cancelled the indenture on September 1, though it did not expire till October 3, that my father might spend a month at home before entering himself as a student of medicine at Edinburgh. The original of his indenture is in my possession. It is as follows:

INDENTURE DULY MADE ON THE 3IID DAY OF OC- TOBER, 1813 APPRENTICING James Douglas, Son of the Reverend George Douglas of Penrith, Cumberland, to Thomas Law, Surgeon and Apothecary, for the term of five years.

THIS INDENTURE Made the third Day of October in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and thirteen Between The Reverend George Douglas of Penrith in the County of Cumberland And James Douglas of the same place the son of the said George Douglas of the one part and Thomas Law of the same place Surgeon and Apothecary of the other part WITNESSETH That the said James Douglas of his own free Will and by and with the Licence and Consent of the said George Douglas his natural and lawful father and Guardian testified by his being a party to and Signing and sealing these presents Hath put placed and bound himself Apprentice to the said Thomas Law to learn and be taught the trade art mystery or business of a surgeon Apothecary and Manmidwife V^Haich he the said Thomas Law now practices and to continue with and serve him as an apprentice from the day of the date of these presents for and during and unto the full end and term of five years from thence next ensuing and fully to be completed and ended. AND the said George Douglas Doth for himself his Heirs Executors and Administrators and for each and every of them and for the said James Douglas his Son Covenant promise and agree to and with the said Thomas Law his Executors Administrators and Assigns by these presents in manner and form following (that is to say)

That he the said James Douglas shall and will diligently and faithfully serve him the said Thomas Law, his Secrets keep, his lawful Commands do and perform, Damage to his said Master he shall not do nor Willingly permit to be done by others, the goods of his said Master he shall not Waste, nor lend them without his Consent to any, he shall neither buy nor sell without his Masters leave, Taverns Inns or Alehouses he shall not frequent. At Cards Dice or any unlawful game he shall not play, Fornication Commit nor Matrimony contract nor from the service of his said Master Day or night shall Absent himself, but in all things as an honest and faithful apprentice shall and will demean and behave himself towards his said Master and all his during all the said term of five years. ALSO That he the said George Douglas shall and will during all the said Term of five years find provide and allow for the said James Douglas his son sufficient and proper Meat Drink Wearing Apparel Washing and Lodging AND the said Thomas Law in Consideration of the premises and for and in Consideration of the Sum of five Shillings of good and lawful money of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Current in England in hand well and truly paid by the said George Douglas at or before the signing and sealing of these preesnts The Receipt Whereof is hereby Acknowledged Doth for himself his Heirs Executors and Administrators and for each and every of them covenant promise and agree to and with the said George Douglas and

BOYHOOD AND APPRENTICESHIP 23

James Douglas That he the said Thomas Law according to the best of his power skill and knowledge shall and will teach and Instruct or cause to be taught and Instructed him the said James Douglas in the said Trade, Art, Mystery and business of a Surgeon Apothecary and Man Midwife and in all things Whatsoever incident and belonging thereto in such manner as he the said Thomas Law now or at any time hereafter during the said term of five years shall use practice teach or deal in the same IN WITNESS WHEREOF the said parties to these presents have hereunto set their hands and seals the day and year first above written. Signed Sealed and delivered (being first duly stamp't)

GEORGE DOUGLAS (SEAL) (Sd) Henry Law JAS. DOUGLAS (SEAL)

(Wm.) Jackson THO. LAW (SEAL)

Penrith Sept. 1, 1818.

I hereby certify that James Douglas has faithfully completed his Apprenticeship to this day and that I give him the remainder of his service that he may visit his Father and Friends.

Tho. Law.

Chapter II

STUDIES MEDICINE IN EDINBURGH AND SPENDS HIS SUMMER HOLIDAYS AS SURGEON OP A SPITZBERGEN WHALER

The Journal gives with some detail the account of his first years at Edinburgh University :

* ' In October, 1818, I arrived in Edinburgh, and took lodgings with a respectable widow in Niddry Street. My menage was of an humble description, I paid four shillings a week for my room, lodging, and cooking; I found myself; and on the whole, I passed the winter comfortably. My curriculum at the University, comprised the practice of the Hospital, the lectures on the practice of Physic by Dr. Gregory,— on Chemistry by Dr. Hope,— on Obstetrics by Dr. Hamilton and on Anatomy by Dr. Barclay. My memories of these professors are very vivid. Dr. Gregory was a magnificent specimen of a Scottish gentleman; tall, stately and dignified, urbane in manner, and with the faculty of impressing his class with the matter of his lecture. Dr. Hope conveyed an impression of extreme self importance. He was intolerant of the least noise or interruption, and perceiving this, the scamps of students took advantage of it, by stamp-

26 MY FATHEK'S JOURNAL

ing, and making noisy demonstrations on the result of each experiment. Dr. Hamilton was a small and rather fidgety gentleman, very impressive in manner, and a good lecturer. There was another Dr. Hamilton, a square built, stately old gentleman with a cocked hat, and a dress of ancient cut ; he was distinguished from Dr. G. Hamilton, the Obstetrician, by the sobriquet of Cocky Hamilton. But my beau ideal of a lecturer was Dr. Barclay, a quaint, active, and impulsive little man, who gave two separate and distinct courses of lectures each session, one of them at 11 A. M., and another at 6 P. M. daily. He went into the matter of his lecture and demonstrations with his whole heart and soul. In the middle of a demonstration, if he had occasion to refer to some authority, he would take the scalpel between his teeth, while he turned over the leaves of the book. ' '

Short as the session was, he cut it shorter to accept the position of surgeon to a Greeland whaler.

His Journal of that, to him, eventful voyage was published in the Transactions of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec for 1873, and was considered of sufficient interest by that most critical of weeklies, the Saturday Review, to deserve a long article, in which the information it contained was summarized with considerable amplitude. The critic says: "We have before us the 'Transactions of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec' for the session of 1873. . . . Perhaps the most interesting paper in this series is the 'Journal of an Arctic Voyage' made by the surgeon of a whaler fifty-five years ago. The stripling of nineteen years, who was thus entrusted with the health and lives of fifty men, is now an M. D. of seventy-four, and cherishes in a Canadian home the memories of a youth passed in Britain. The author sailed from Hull, which was then largely concerned in whaling. It is not wonderful that the supply of northern whales should have failed under the systematic persecution of which this Journal furnishes an example. Even the surgeon had an interest in the fishery, being entitled to a guinea on every whale caught. The government allowed a bounty. The system of bounties has been long since condemned, but if any trade deserved encouragement it was that of whaling, without which scientific voyages to the Polar Sea would not have been made.''

I reproduce the Journal, omitting a few unimportant paragraphs:

A WHALING VOYAGE TO SPITZBERGEN IN 1818. By JAMES DOUGLAS, M.D.

[The perusal of a journal which was kept in high northern latitudes fifty-five years ago, may not be without interest at this time, when so great attention is being given to the late discoveries in the Arctic regions, and to the expeditions now being fitted out in the confident hope of reaching the North Pole, through the open water which is supposed to exist to the north of Spitzbergen.

This journal is given verbatim et literatim, as written at the time; and allowance must be asked for it as the unaided production of a youth of eighteen years of age, who went out as surgeon of a whaler, which, in pursuit of the objects of its voyage, reached the high northern latitude of 81.

It w!\.a written currente calamo, without any pretensions

28 MY FATHEK'S JOURNAL

to style or scientific knowledge, and without any idea of its being seen by any excepting the members of the writer's own family.

The intrepid Arctic navigators — ^the brothers Dannatt, the Scoresbys (father and son), Capt. Sadler, and others, who navigated the Polar regions at the close of the last century and at the early part of the present, have passed away, and, excepting the younger Scoresby, have left no record behind them. I perfectly recollect, however, that Capt. Ed. Dannatt and Capt. Ashe expressed their belief in the existence of land at or in the vicinity of the Pole. They based their belief on the appearance of the heavy ice and on the detached icebergs which, during the summer season, were drifted by the current to the southward.]

While a medical student in Edinburgh, during the winter session of 1818, I received an appointment as surgeon of the ship Trafalgar, of Hull, Captain E. Dannatt, commander, during a voyage to the Arctic regions; and at the same time was notified to report myself at Hull on or before the 12th March, for the purpose of submitting myself to the medical examiner appointed by Government to examine into the qualifications and fitness of candidates. This examination is not very strict, and consisted in ascertaining that I had served an apprenticeship of five years to Dr. Tho. Law (an uncle of Lord Ellenborough ) , and that I had parsed a session at college in Edinburgh. However, with my certificate of qualification, I entered into office at once, at a salary of four guineas a month, one guinea for every whale caught, and one guinea for every thousand seals killed. I was supplied with everything needful, with the exception of clothes and bedding.

March 13th. — The King's ofiicers came on board this morning and mustered the crew, to the number of 36. This is done by the Government, which allows a bounty of £300 to each ship, as well as the spirits, tea, coffee, sugar, and all other dutiable articles, duty free. On their part, the owners are bound to carry and man at least seven boats, with seven men to each boat. As this, during war-time, is difficult, and as

Government is extremely desirous to encourage the fishery, it exempts the requisite number of harpooneers, boat-steerers, and other skilled hands, from the press-gang; and obliges the owners to fill up the requisite crew by taking Shetland-men, in passing: these are a hardy race of men, and, from their almost amphibious habits, are admirably adapted for boat-work.

The fresh provisions and other stores being got on board, the Trafalgar left dock, passed the Spurn-lights with a fair wind, and got fairly to sea with a light S.W. wind, which continued until the 20th, when we made Fair Island, a very rocky, barren, and mountainous-looking place, inhabited by a few poor fishermen, who certainly surprised me by their faculty of keeping their souls and bodies together. In the afternoon of the same day, Sunbrough Head, the most southerly point of Shetland, came in sight; and we were boarded by a pilot, who took us in due time into Brassa Sound. During my stay in Lerwick I was most hospitably entertained by Mr. Morrison, an agent, who made my stay there a very agreeable one. Next day being Sunday, I attended divine service, where I heard a most eloquent and impressive sermon by a venerable old man, in a church far inferior in architectural beauty to an ordinary barn.