A YANKEE DOCTOR
IN PARADISE
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR]
A YANKEE DOCTOR
IN PARADISE
BY S. M. LAMBERT, M.D.
[Illustration]
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY
1941
COPYRIGHT 1941, BY S. M. LAMBERT
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE RIGHT
TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK OR PORTIONS
THEREOF IN ANY FORM
FIRST EDITION
_Published May 1941_
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
DEDICATION
_To my father, William Walter Lambert, who made
sacrifices for my education, who never harassed me
with advice; I did the things he would have liked
to do._
AND TO
_Eloisa Tays Lambert, my wife, who has packed and
unpacked in a hundred homes, nursed me when I
was sick, made me go on when I wanted to quit;
there wouldn’t be any story without Eloisa._
FOREWORD
In 1927 there were two plump New York-Californians vacationing in Fiji:
Martin Egan and Wallace Irwin. It thrilled me to meet the creator of my
boyhood’s admiration, “Hashimura Togo,” and I was pleased if unprepared
when he wanted me to put my adventures--then half completed--into
a book. I remember our three days’ trip to Mbengga to see the
fire-walkers; all the way I was enthralled with his experiences as a
writer on the other side of the world; he could talk two hundred words
to the minute, a record that surpasses mine. Our meeting resulted in a
desultory correspondence that covered several years. When I came home
with a trunkful of my own data I naturally turned to him for help; and
I want to thank him for the patient editorial advice through which I
have been able to assemble a quantity of rather mixed material, and to
put it into some form.
I have so many to thank besides those mentioned in the text--few have
been other than helpful. Probably I am the most grateful to the British
in the South Pacific colonies, officials and laymen. If a Britisher had
come to an American colony and assumed the critical role to which my
job compelled me, he would have been tarred and feathered and ridden
out of bounds. Their long tolerance reminds me of the Arizona saloon
motto: “Don’t Shoot the Pianist. He’s Doing His Damndest.”
We were made to feel welcome in the various communities as we moved
along. My daughter, Sara Celia, was born in Suva, Fiji; I owned a house
there, and on momentous occasions had my vote solicited by Henry Marks,
Alport Barker and Pat Costello. I belonged to the Fiji Club. Uncle Bill
Paley and I settled mine and the world’s affairs in a few minutes every
morning. What more has the future to offer?
Space did not permit me to emphasize the admiration I have for New
Zealand’s high conduct in native affairs. I had the best advice
and cooperation, from the Permanent Head of the Prime Minister’s
Department and the Director General of Health down through the Civil
Service.
If I had the privilege of making out my Personal Honor Role I should
certainly put Fiji’s Colonial Sugar Refining Company close to the
head of it. Without their W. P. Dixon and F. C. T. Lord I could not
have progressed far in my Fijian endeavors; for in 1922 the island
communications were next to nothing, and almost every hookworm district
was over the cane lands they controlled, and opened up for me. We
lived in their quarters, used their track-cars and railroad, had the
assistance of the managers and underofficials of this whacking big
Australian concern, operating in both Fiji and North Queensland.
And I want to thank my Field Inspectors, young fellows who knew how
to do about anything--except complain; men like Chris Kendrick, Kenny
Fooks and Bill Tully,--whose Irish mother said, “Doctor, you’ll take
care of Willie, won’t you?”--and the wild American lad, Byron Beach.
And Malakai, the Fijian practitioner with an inflexible medical
conscience. In jungle, swamp or canoe, nobody would wish for a stronger
heart or a better brain.
I was just an item in the Rockefeller Foundation’s globe-circling
humanitarianism. Dr. Victor Heiser gave me my first job in the South
Pacific; Dr. Sawyer, now Director for the International Health
Division, turned the tide for me when my favorite plan seemed about to
fail. With Dr. Heiser I have tramped over Fiji and Samoa, agreeing or
disagreeing on various questions of tropical health. Once or twice he
turned to me and asked, “Lambert, why don’t you write a book?”
Well, this is the book.
S. M. L.
_Walnut Creek, California_
CONTENTS
_PART ONE_
Foreword vii
I Short Notice for a Long Chore 3
II By the Ram’s Horn Route 10
III Where the Dead Men Talk 19
IV They Walk along Dreams 27
V Just This Side of the Moon 37
VI A Chapter on Contrasts 59
VII Where New Guinea Was New 74
VIII I Say It in Pidgin 90
IX “Me Cuttim Wind, Me Cuttim Gut!” 95
X King Solomon’s Gold 105
XI “So You’ve Come to Fiji!” 113
XII A Doctor Ex Officio 125
XIII How the Answer Came 131
_PART TWO_
I Death and the Devil 147
II Gilbert and Sullivan, 1924 164
III A Little Kingdom and a Great Queen 181
IV The Land of the Talking Men 202
V Pig Aristocracy 222
VI New Zealand’s Little Sister 249
VII Half a Loaf and a Slice Off 270
_PART THREE_
I Old Brandy and New Eggs 279
II Another Island Night’s Entertainment 284
III Through the Solomons to Rennell 315
IV The Fate of a Race 335
V Such a Little School 357
VI In Retrospect 377
Index 387
PART ONE
CHAPTER I
SHORT NOTICE FOR A LONG CHORE
“Lambert, I’ve got a good one for you this time. I’m sending you to
Papua.”
Dr. Victor G. Heiser, the Rockefeller Foundation’s famous Director of
the East, made this announcement as if Papua were across the street.
“That’s fine, Doctor,” I said, “perfectly fine.”
Papua? Where was Papua? Vainly I fished for scraps of geography and
pulled up impressions of palmy islands where black warriors asked
guests how they liked their missionary, rare or well done.
Dr. Heiser sat behind a modest desk in one of the smallest rooms at
61 Broadway, delivering a sort of curtain speech to an act that had
taken longer than a Chinese play, an act which had played through the
war summer of 1918. I had finally found a successor and resigned my
superintendency of the United Fruit Company’s hospital in Costa Rica; I
was in New York to offer my services. But Uncle Sam wasn’t looking for
medical officers with weak eyes.
Now Dr. Heiser’s kindly voice was praising and instructing one of the
family, for at last I had joined up with the Foundation. There he was,
kneeing his desk, telling me nothing about Papua, saying that my Costa
Rican and Mexican experience had particularly fitted me for work with
the International Health Board, not mentioning that war had taken away
many of their physicians. He dwelt on the preparatory three months’
hookworm training I had already taken, under the Foundation’s auspices,
among the hillbillies of Mississippi ... kept me moving, didn’t it,
canvassing from door to door?... Lambert, you can work a lot faster
down in the South Pacific, where you’ll lecture and treat in batches
of from fifty to five hundred.... You’ll have to cover a lot of ground
down there.... Take along plenty of khaki, and no evening clothes....
Get your family ready and start day after tomorrow.
“And on your way to Papua, Lambert, you’d better report to Waite,
who’s in charge of our work in Australia. There’s quite a hookworm
campaign going on in North Queensland. Good place to brush up on what
you’ll need in Papua. You’ll find the Australians good fellows, like
our Westerners, rough and generous and tolerant--they haven’t had to
jam together in big cities and get small-minded.”
During our argumentative stage, I had told Dr. Heiser about a mining
syndicate’s offer to take me down to Peru. I didn’t bring that up
again, or mention General Gorgas’ half-promise to forgive my blinky
eyes and commission me in the venereal section of the Medical Corps.
When I left that morning I was under the spell of the Heiser charm;
a charm that has sent armies of scientific men, great and small, to
follow jungle trails all over this planet, and work until they drop.
In later years I walked with him along some of those trails, and my
admiration for him increased every step of the way. There is a godlike
something about Heiser that will never let him fall from the pedestal
he deserves. Grant him clay toes if you wish, he is still a colossus
who has bestridden the field of public health for twenty years--and
been the target of much professional jealousy. In 1937 when I was at a
League Conference in Java I heard an envious Yankee voice say, “Yes,
I’ve read his _American Doctor’s Odyssey_, and I wonder why he didn’t
call it _Alone in the Orient_.” Which gave me the luxury of a reply:
“Did you watch him inaugurate public health work in the Philippines?
_Alone in the Orient_ describes it rather well.”
* * * * *
I found an atlas and looked up Papua. Rather dully I was informed that
Papua lay on the southeastern edge of New Guinea, the second largest
island in the world--the Australian Continent’s hottest neighbor, no
doubt, since its northern shoulder jogged the equator. The extremely
savage names of its numerous tribes, the aimless fertility of its soil,
its wealth of gold, copper and pearls, struck only dull fire on my
imagination. I was going to a place called Papua, not to flirt with
rubber-bellied brunettes in grass skirts, but to search sensibly for
yaws, malaria, dysentery, tuberculosis and intestinal parasites. And
to rout out the hookworm as tamely as I had poked him up in polluted
Mississippi.
That was 1918, when a trip to Paris and back was something to talk
about. The armistice hadn’t yet sent back a million doughboys with a
smattering of obscene French. The world cruise hadn’t risen as a major
industry. Today any debutante who has sauntered around the globe can
tell you more about Fiji fire-walking and Arabian sword-swallowers than
anybody but a professional explorer knew then.
* * * * *
No, the hereditary Lambert is not a geographer. We are a homebody
family, and I often wonder how the colonial Lamberts ever found courage
to cross over from England to seventeenth-century New Jersey. They
certainly stayed put when they got here; nothing but hunger and Indian
raids could budge them. My father, who was a tanner and often used his
best leather trying to teach me civility, was looked upon as something
of a sea rover because he once drove mules along the Delaware and
Hudson Canal towpath. Relatives in Ellenville, New York, where I was
born, paled when they learned that Father was moving us to Little Falls.
Our pious Methodists always regarded Father as a freethinker; and
wasn’t it like him to want Sylvester to be a doctor? Mr. Babcock, head
of our Free Academy in West Winfield, was even more radical. A boy
ought to have a college education before he started studying medicine.
I had worked with the tannery gang long enough, and had learned too
many of the rich, brown oaths they spat out with their chewing tobacco.
Hamilton College was the place to smooth me out for medical school.
Hamilton College! My mother’s hands went up at the spectral idea of a
place so remote that Sylvester would have to go overnight, by train.
I entered with the class of 1903, and the thought of all my father
sacrificed to send me there made me a rather earnest student--that, and
his threat of more tannery, if I didn’t make good. I am thankful that
Hamilton and the Syracuse Medical, which I later attended, were both
small, for in small classes the instructor knows the needs and failings
of every student. I was a hard worker, but not a grind. I found time
for football, which toughened the tannery boy for harder years to come.
Trips with the team to rival colleges were early adventures in foreign
travel. Colgate, swollen with toothpaste money, was easy fruit for us
then. Williams rubbed our noses in the mud to the tune of 4-0--and I
wept, limping off the field.
Sometimes in my late middle age I awake from sleep swearing. I have
been dreaming of a game with the Carlisle Indians. That big Injun, Red
Water, is on the line opposite me, tall as a church, never losing his
grin. The ball is snapped and his long arm reaches tenderly over me,
gets the seat of my britches....
In 1904 I was prepared for Johns Hopkins, but Mother wanted to know
what I’d be doing with myself, ’way over in Maryland. Syracuse was in
New York State, anyhow, and that was far enough for anybody.
Syracuse had a faculty disproportionately large and able for so small
an enrollment. The ideal of scholarship was Spartan; if a student’s
nose roved from the grindstone it was pushed back again. The quizzes
were little inquisitions, the recitations no place for a sleepwalker.
To study under Elsner, Jacobson and Levy was to appreciate Jewish
respect for scholarship. Dr. Steenson, of the Department of Pathology,
had a time-keeper’s complex and you missed his eight-thirty bell at
your own risk. We called him “Johnnie Cockeye,” for his devotion to
the gonococcus germ. I stared through the microscope for interminable
hours, seeing but little on the slides. My eyes were already going,
but I could read easily. Before I came to class I knew, theoretically,
what I was supposed to see under the glass--and that’s how I coped with
Steenson’s sudden quizzes.
* * * * *
The very distinguished Dr. Frank William Marlow, graduate of the Royal
College of Surgeons, is dead now, but he crowned his career with a book
called _The Relative Position of Rest of the Eyes_. A course under him
put my eyesight, quite literally, on the blink. And this is how it came
about.
Toward the end of my third year my brother became seriously ill,
and I had to take him to Arizona. There I discovered, to my bald
astonishment, that this Lambert had a wandering foot. In Tucson
I obeyed a mad impulse and joined the crazy medical unit of a
construction gang, working down the West Coast of Mexico. I had time to
grow romantic when I came to the fine old hacienda of Mr. Eugene Tays,
an American mining engineer. The dark eyes of his pretty daughter,
Eloisa, melted my every ambition to go home and plug again at a stiff
medical course. She was half Spanish, one of the influential Vegas
around San Blas; but she had enough Scotch common sense to tell me to
go home and graduate. When I had a practice of my own, she said, I
could come back and marry her. She had to wait five years, but she kept
her promise.
So I went back to Syracuse, weeks behind in my work and facing the
final examination in ophthalmology. There were only three days and
nights to make up lost time. I had nothing but a photographic memory to
help me out. With a shrewdness born of despair I cracked the book at
Marlow’s pet subjects. When I finally blinked my way into the classroom
I had committed to memory a half-dozen picked pages. I was in luck;
iritis, conjunctivitis, glaucoma and myopia were all there to be dealt
with. I wrote the answers almost word for word from the pages my mind
had photographed. Doctor Marlow was so impressed that he showed my
paper around the faculty; it was fairly well decided that I had been
cribbing. I might just as well have been, for after a long, tired sleep
I found that I had forgotten half the stuff I had crammed. And my eyes
were never the same after that ordeal.
No use going so early into the technicalities of my half-ruined
sight. Microscopy became all-important to me over twenty-five years
of service. I have been very fortunate in the assistants I found or
trained to operate the lens for me. With glasses, my middle vision and
far vision remained fairly good. And this was fortunate, too, for in my
wanderings I have been required to look on many beautiful and horrible
things.
Photographic memory-plates are apt to fade rapidly. Several years
later, I was admitted to the Costa Rica Medical Faculty, after another
feat of intensive cramming. Costa Rican professional standards are
high, and not too friendly to Yankee doctors. Though I passed the
very severe examination, I am not sure it was my learning that won
my degree; my initiation included many cocktails with a great many
influential medical officers. Those things help in Central America.
* * * * *
That was in the calmer period, following four years in Mexico, where I
practised medicine between raids by Carranzistas, Villistas, Yaquis.
Twice I established myself with my wife and baby on the West Coast,
near Eloisa’s home. Twice, because the United States Navy ordered us to
escape with our lives, we left the country as refugees.
Those years were heavy with adventure. There was the time when smallpox
broke over the helpless people like a cloud of poison gas; I worked
alone among hundreds of peons who were anti-vaccinationists to a man
and died in their own stench, hidden under dirty clothes. Time and
time again I performed emergency amputations on kitchen tables, my
Chinese cook giving the anesthetic. I diagnosed malaria on myself, and
found my mistake when I came down with a bug of an atypical typhoid
group. I lost forty pounds from dysentery and Donna Angela nourished
my convalescence with iguana stew. I brought an hysteria-stricken girl
back from a state like death by scaring her with a sharp knife. One
day I gasped with horror, seeing a native midwife promoting childbirth
by tying a woman to high rafters and jerking her legs. One afternoon
I barricaded my wife and baby behind sacked beans, and performed a
tonsilectomy while the Yaquis broke into a liquor warehouse. Still,
there were sweet, mild months under a benevolent Aztec sun; then there
came a night when I smelled burning houses and heard the wild-horse
squeal of women being raped by Indians.
* * * * *
One adventure I might record, if briefly. The dreaded Yaquis had joined
forces with General Obregón. Colonel Antunez, like a good fellow, was
bossing the Indians. They had been letting us alone at Mochis, but
danger was always brooding in a place that never knew which side it was
on. One day, to my discomfiture, this Colonel Antunez came limping in.
He complained of pain in his groin, and a large swelling indicated an
operation. He urged me to be quick; he had to be at the front, he was
the only man whom Obregón trusted with the wild Yaquis.
When I got in with the knife I found a tumor that extended into the big
blood vessels. Removing it was a serious major operation. As soon as he
was out from under the anesthetic the war horse snorted again. He must
be up and back at the front. I told him that his condition necessitated
three weeks of complete rest; he got so excited that his temperature
shot up and I had to stop arguing. As he recovered, his officers and
their Yaquis were always around.
One morning I found his bed empty. They had smuggled him away in a
jolting truck, through a cold rain. He died at Navajoa, of peritonitis
or phlebitis, one of the inevitable results.
Next day I was called to the office of His Honor, the _Sindico_ of
Mochis, and was surprised by a captain’s tap on my shoulder. I was
under arrest. It was a long trip toward the death-house. They jailed me
first at Mochis, where I managed to have three words with Meade Lewis,
a little red-headed friend of mine who was American consul. I told him
what I guessed: I was booked to be shot because one of Obregón’s most
valued officers had died after my operation.
My tumbrel to Topolobampo was a track car, bristling with rifles; half
the population and their dogs tagged along for a look at the gringo who
was going to be tried--which was a synonym for being executed. I had
been allowed one glance at Eloisa and our baby. The cell in which I
spent ten days was a Yaqui butcher shop when it wasn’t occupied by the
condemned. Into a fragrance of spoiled meat my jailor came at last to
inform me that the trial and shooting were set for Saturday morning.
And here it was Friday.
On Saturday morning I had prepared my sinful Methodist-born soul for
a stern hereafter, when the officer in command swung wide the door,
saluted deferentially and proclaimed, “Doctor, you are free!”
Not until I had rejoined my family did I learn what this, or anything
else, was about. I had become an international affair, they said.
Consul Meade Lewis had fairly pulled the cables loose between
Topolobampo and Washington. William Jennings Bryan had sent a cruiser
down from San Diego. The captain of that cruiser burned the wires to
Mexico City with a Richard Harding Davis sort of message: “Release
Lambert at once or I’m coming to get him.”
It made a ripping newspaper story. Away up in Newark my brother Fred
had been visiting some Mexican friends who told him how wonderfully I
was doing in Mochis. After the party Fred passed a subway newsstand and
saw the black headline, “JAIL DOOR SWINGS WIDE FOR LAMBERT.” He was
proud of the family when he read how William Jennings Bryan had taken
steps.
* * * * *
I have jotted down these few facts about myself so that my readers
may try to decide how well experience had equipped me to be an
international health physician. I hope they’re not as unsure as I was
that day in September, 1918, when I put my family aboard the train for
our first long pull toward Papua.