_DESPERATE NEED_
It was to these rough waters that Dr. Grenfell came when the need of
the folk reached his ears and touched his heart. Before that, in the
remoter parts of Newfoundland and on the coast of Labrador there were
no doctors. The folk depended for healing upon traditional cures, upon
old women who worked charms, upon remedies ingeniously devised to meet
the need of the moment, upon deluded persons who prescribed medicines
of the most curious description, upon a rough-and-ready surgery of
their own, in which the implements of the kitchen and of the
splitting-stage served a useful purpose. For example, there was a
misled old fellow who set himself up as a healer in a lonely cove of
the Newfoundland coast, where he lived a hermit, verily believing, it
may be, in the glory of his call and in the blessed efficacy of his
ministrations; his cure for consumption--it was a tragic failure, in
one case, at least--was a bull's heart, dried and powdered and
administered with faith and regularity. Elsewhere there was a man,
stricken with a mortal ailment, who, upon the recommendation of a
kindly neighbour, regularly dosed himself with an ill-flavoured liquid
obtained by boiling cast-off pulley-blocks in water. There was also a
father who most hopefully attempted to cure his little lad of
diphtheria by wrapping his throat with a split herring; but,
unhappily, as he has said, "the wee feller choked hisself t' death,"
notwithstanding. There was another father--a man of grim, heroic
disposition--whose little daughter chanced to freeze her feet to the
very bone in midwinter; when he perceived that a surgical operation
could no longer be delayed, he cut them off with an axe.
An original preventative of sea-boils--with which the fishermen are
cruelly afflicted upon the hands and wrists in raw weather--was
evolved by a frowsy-headed old Labradorman of serious parts.
"_I_ never has none," said he, in the fashion of superior fellows.
"No?"
"Nar a one. No, _zur_! Not _me_!"
A glance of interested inquiry elicited no response. It but prolonged
a large silence.
"Have you never _had_ a sea-boil?" with the note and sharp glance of
incredulity.
"Not me. Not since I got my cure."
"And what might that cure be?"
"Well, zur," was the amazing reply, "I cuts my nails on a Monday."
* * * * *
It must be said, however, that the Newfoundland government did provide
a physician--of a sort. Every summer he was sent north with the
mail-boat, which made not more than six trips, touching here and there
at long intervals, and, of a hard season, failing altogether to reach
the farthest ports. While the boat waited--an hour, or a half, as
might be--the doctor went ashore to cure the sick, if he chanced to be
in the humour; otherwise the folk brought the sick aboard, where they
were painstakingly treated or not, as the doctor's humour went. The
government seemed never to inquire too minutely into the
qualifications and character of its appointee. The incumbent for many
years--the folk thank God that he is dead--was an inefficient,
ill-tempered, cruel man; if not the very man himself, he was of a kind
with the Newfoundland physician who ran a flag of warning to his
masthead when he set out to get very drunk.
The mail-boat dropped anchor one night in a far-away harbour of the
Labrador, where there was desperate need of a doctor to ease a man's
pain. They had waited a long time, patiently, day after day. I am
told; and when at last the mail-boat came, the man's skipper put out
in glad haste to fetch the government physician.
"He've turned in," they told him aboard.
What did _that_ matter? The skipper roused the doctor.
"We've a sick man ashore, zur," said he, "an' he wants you t'
come----"
"What!" roared the doctor. "Think I'm going to turn out this time of
night?"
"Sure, zur," stammered the astounded skipper. "I--I--s'pose so. He's
very sick, zur. He's coughin'----"
"Let him cough himself to death!" said the doctor.
Turn out? Not he! Rather, he turned over in his warm berth. It is to
be assumed that the sick man died in pain; it is to be assumed, too,
that the physician continued a tranquil slumber, for the experience
was not exceptional.
"Let 'em die!" he had said more than once.
The government had provided for the transportation of sick fishermen
from the Labrador coast to their homes in Newfoundland; these men were
of the great Newfoundland fleet of cod-fishing schooners, which fish
the Labrador seas in the summer. It needed only the doctor's word to
get the boon. Once a fisherman brought his consumptive son aboard--a
young lad, with but a few weeks of life left. The boy wanted his
mother, who was at home in Newfoundland.
"Ay, he's fair _sick_ for his mother," said the father to the doctor.
"I'm askin' you, zur, t' take un home on the mail-boat."
The doctor was in a perverse mood that day. He would not take the boy.
"Sure, zur," said the fisherman, "the schooner's not goin' 'til fall,
an' I've no money, an' the lad's dyin'."
But still the doctor would not.
"I'm thinkin', zur," said the fisherman, steadily, "that you're not
quite knowin' that the lad wants t' see his mother afore he dies."
The doctor laughed.
"We'll have a laugh at _you_," cried the indignant fisherman, "when
_you_ comes t' die!"
Then he cursed the doctor most heartily and took his son ashore. He
was right--they did have a laugh at the doctor; the whole coast might
have laughed when he came to die. Being drunk on a stormy night, he
fell down the companion way and broke his neck.
* * * * *
Deep in the bays and up the rivers south of Hamilton Inlet, which is
itself rather heavily timbered, there is wood to be had for the
cutting; but "down t' Chidley"--which is the northernmost point of the
Labrador coast--the whole world is bare; there is neither tree nor
shrub, shore nor inland, to grace the naked rock; the land lies bleak
and desolate. But, once, a man lived there the year round. I don't
know why; it is inexplicable; but I am sure that the shiftless fellow
and his wife had never an inkling that the circumstance was otherwise
than commonplace and reasonable; and the child, had he lived, would
have continued to dwell there, boy and man, in faith that the earth
was good to live in. One hard winter the man burnt all his wood long
before the schooners came up from the lower coast. It was a desperate
strait to come to; but I am sure that he regarded his situation with
surprising phlegm; doubtless he slept as sound, if not as warm, as
before. There was no more wood to be had; so he burnt the furniture,
every stick of it, and when that was gone, began on the frame of his
house--a turf hut, builded under a kindly cliff, sheltered somewhat
from the winds from the frozen sea. As, rafter by rafter, the frame
was withdrawn, he cut off the roof and folded in the turf walls; thus,
day by day, the space within dwindled; his last fire was to consume
the last of his shelter--which, no doubt, troubled him not at all; for
the day was not yet come. It is an ugly story. When they were found in
the spring, the woman lay dying on a heap of straw in a muddy
corner--she was afflicted with hip-disease--and the house was tumbling
about her ears; the child, new born, had long ago frozen on its
mother's breast.
[Illustration: "A TURF HUT"]
* * * * *
A doctor of the Newfoundland outports was once called to a little
white cottage where three children lay sick of diphtheria. He was the
family physician; that is to say, the fisherman paid him so much by
the year for medical attendance. But the injection of antitoxin is a
"surgical operation" and therefore not provided for by the annual fee.
"This," said the doctor, "will cost you two dollars an injection,
John."
"Oh, ay, zur," was the ready reply. "I'll pay you, zur. Go on, zur!"
"But you know my rule, John--no pay, no work. I can't break it for
you, you know, or I'd have to break it for half the coast."
"Oh, ay! 'Tis all right. I wants un cured. I'll pay you when I sells
me fish."
"But you know my rule, John--cash down."
The fisherman had but four dollars--no more; nor could he obtain any
more, though the doctor gave him ample time. I am sure that he loved
his children dearly, but, unfortunately, he had no more than four
dollars; and there was no other doctor for fifty miles up and down the
coast.
"Four dollars," said the doctor, "two children. Which ones shall it
be, John?"
Which ones? Why, of course, after all, the doctor had himself to make
the choice. John couldn't. So the doctor chose the "handiest" ones.
The other one died.
"Well," said John, unresentfully, the day after the funeral, "I s'pose
a doctor haves a right t' be paid for what he does. But," much
puzzled, "'tis kind o' queer!"
* * * * *
This is not a work of fiction. These incidents are true. I set them
down here for the purpose of adequately showing the need of such a
practitioner as Wilfred T. Grenfell in the sphere in which he now
labours. My point is--that if in the more settled places, where
physicians might be summoned, such neglect and brutality could exist,
in what a lamentable condition were the folk of the remoter parts,
where even money could not purchase healing! Nor are these true
stories designed to reflect upon the regular practitioners of
Newfoundland; nor should they create a false impression concerning
them. I have known many noble physicians in practice there; indeed, I
am persuaded that heroism and devotion are, perhaps, their
distinguishing characteristics. God knows, there is little enough gain
to be had! God knows, too, that that little is hard earned! These men
do their work well and courageously, and as adequately as may be; it
is on the coasts beyond that the mission-doctor labours.
V
_A HELPING HAND_
While the poor "liveyeres" and Newfoundland fishermen thus depended
upon the mail-boat doctor and their own strange inventions for relief,
Wilfred Grenfell, this well-born, Oxford-bred young Englishman, was
walking the London hospitals. He was athletic, adventurous, dogged,
unsentimental, merry, kind; moreover--and most happily--he was used to
the sea, and he loved it. It chanced one night that he strayed into
the Tabernacle in East London, where D. L. Moody, the American
evangelist, was preaching. When he came out he had resolved to make
his religion "practical." There was nothing violent in this--no
fevered, ill-judged determination to martyr himself at all costs. It
was a quiet resolve to make the best of his life--which he would have
done at any rate, I think, for he was a young Englishman of good
breeding and the finest impulses. At once he cast about for "some way
in which he could satisfy the aspirations of a young medical man, and
combine with this a desire for adventure and definite Christian work."
I had never before met a missionary of that frank type. "Why," I
exclaimed to him, off the coast of Labrador, not long ago, "you seem
to _like_ this sort of life!"
We were aboard the mission steamer, bound north under full steam and
all sail. He had been in feverish haste to reach the northern
harbours, where, as he knew, the sick were watching for his coming.
The fair wind, the rush of the little steamer on her way, pleased him.
"Oh," said he, somewhat impatiently, "_I'm_ not a martyr."
So he found what he sought. After applying certain revolutionary ideas
to Sunday-school work in the London slums, in which a horizontal bar
and a set of boxing-gloves for a time held equal place with the Bible
and the hymn-book, he joined the staff of the Royal National Mission
to Deep Sea Fishermen, and established the medical mission to the
fishermen of the North Sea. When that work was organized--when the
fight was gone out of it--he sought a harder task; he is of that type,
then extraordinary but now familiar, which finds no delight where
there is no difficulty. In the spring of 1892 he set sail from Great
Yarmouth Harbour for Labrador in a ninety-ton schooner. Since then, in
the face of hardship, peril, and prejudice, he has, with a light heart
and strong purpose, healed the sick, preached the Word, clothed the
naked, fed the starving, given shelter to them that had no roof,
championed the wronged--in all, devotedly fought evil, poverty,
oppression, and disease; for he is bitterly intolerant of those
things. And----
"It's been jolly good fun!" says he.
[Illustration: "SET SAIL FROM GREAT YARMOUTH HARBOR FOR LABRADOR"]
The immediate inspiration of this work was the sermon preached in East
London by D. L. Moody. Later in life--indeed, soon before the great
evangelist's death--Dr. Grenfell thanked him for that sermon. "And
what have you been doing since?" was Mr. Moody's prompt and searching
question. "_What have you been doing since?_" Dr. Grenfell might with
propriety and effect have placed in Mr. Moody's hands such letters as
those which I reprint, saying: "What have I been doing since? I have
been kept busy, sir, responding to such calls as these." Such calls as
these:
Docter plase I whant to see you. Doeher sir have you got a
leg if you have Will you plase send him Down Praps he may
fet and you would oblig.
* * * * *
Reverance dr. Grandfell. Dear sir we are expecting you hup
and we would like for you to come so quick as you can for my
dater is very sick with a very large sore under her left
harm we emenangin that the old is two enchis deep and tow
enches wide plase com as quick as you can to save life I
remains yours truely.
* * * * *
Docker,--Please wel you send me somting for the pain in my
feet and what you proismed to send my little boy. Docker I
am almost cripple, it is up my hips, I can hardly walk. This
is my housban is gaining you this note from
* * * * *