CHAPTER NINE

YEARS IN GENERAL PRACTICE

As I start writing this phase of my life, in the year 1982, I realize that general practice was only the first of three careers in my professional life, but when I began it in Brownsville, Ontario in 1929, I did not know it was only one phase. Also, when I look back on the circumstances which placed me there, I realize again how little I had to do with choosing the Brownsville location.

Now, in looking forward to what is yet to be written about my professional experience, it seems reasonable that I should exclude from this narration the personal details of my life and concentrate on the professional saga. Even so I do plan to include something about the general living conditions and community activities which were current during my general practice days.

Brownsville was essentially a small village serving as a center for a rich and prosperous farming community. My home and office was located next to a small hotel which occupied one corner of the main intersection. The community's general store occupied the opposite corner. The store was much like others of that time, and carried a good line of groceries, miscellaneous items and dry goods. The local post office was also located in the store. Next to the store was a small butcher shop and next to it, opposite my office, was a fine brick house where the butcher lived. There was a barber shop under the corner of the store.

The village had two churches, a Methodist and a Baptist. There was a small bank and a small library building. There was one quite large school for elementary students on the ground floor and continuation classes on the upper floor. There was a Town Hall used for public meetings.

In the village, not far from the center, was a large milk receiving station to which farmers brought their milk daily and from which it was taken away in large tank-trucks. There was a tile and brick industry located close to the railroad station. This industry had two sizable water ponds to serve its needs. The shallower of the two was much used in the winters as a skating rink.

Brownsville was served, in all four directions, by well-kept gravel roads. The village was six miles west of Tillsonburg and many more miles south of Ingersoll.

There were good hospitals in both Tillsonburg and Ingersoll and both towns were well supplied with doctors. About six miles west of Brownsville, in Springfield, one other doctor was located, and about eight miles northeast of Brownsville, in Mount Elgin, was another general practitioner, Dr. Bartlett.

Brownsville did not have a drugstore, so my office was equipped with my dispensary. It was in this setting that I started and carried on my practice of medicine for nearly thirteen years. I had no office help, so I had to do my own dispensing, keep patient records, send out bills, collect fees due, write my own letters, order drugs, answer the telephone, etc.

I had a brass nameplate made and attached to the office door. Also I had

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the swinging sign hanging high in front of the office painted over to obliterate Dr. McLeod's name and my name put in its place.

I had labels printed to stick on my bottles of medicine on which I could write the dosage directions, the prescription number, date, my phone number, and the patient's name. On the top of the label was my name, Dr. W. E. Park, L.M.C.C. and under it in smaller lettering, "Physician and Surgeon". The L.M.C.C. stands for Licentiate Medical Council of Canada.

The entrance to the office waiting room was a door from the veranda. This door was adjacent to another door which led into the hall of the living quarters. The office waiting room was of adequate size and contained spartan furnishings. Some years later, when one of my patient's home was sold, I bought its horsehair settee and two matching chairs for my waiting room.

Behind the waiting room was an examining room with my desk, and behind a partition was the dispensary. The furnishings for the examining room were inadequate so I had a proper examining table made for me, with five drawers in it for my instruments. It also had a glass top, with a three-inch high barrier on all sides except the front. On this I kept my various antiseptics and frequently-needed solutions.

There was a red barn on the property with a hayloft above, and carriage space and a horse stall below. The house was of frame wooden structure and two stories high. A one-story kitchen area was attached to the house at the back. There was a full basement under these buildings. There was also a red-brick cellar which could be entered only from the basement level. There was a concrete tank of considerable size in the basement where rain water was collected. There was no plumbing in the house, but there was a pump at the kitchen sink where water was pumped up from the pump at the well on the property a little way from the house.

Water for diluting of medicines was kept in the dispensary in a container with a top on it. The dispensary had a sink for disposal of excess liquids. There were no toilet facilities in the house and the usual outdoor toilet was situated on the back of the property, with its entrance covered by a large grapevine arbor.

The soil on the Brownsville property was of excellent quality and there was lots of space for gardening. There were several fruit trees on the lot and many varieties of roses. The lawn on the property was of fair size but cut up into smaller pieces by concrete sidewalks.

My sleeping quarters were directly over the office waiting room, and I had a wall telephone within reach from my bed. I soon found that farmers who wanted to see the doctor expected to do so at their convenience, which was likely to be early in the morning when they brought their milk into the milk factory. Because they would keep ringing until I got dressed and downstairs, without knowing whether I had heard or not, I had to establish a ready communication system. So I had a speaking tube an inch and a half in diameter installed from outside of the office door to my bedside. Then, when they rang the doorbell, I would answer from above and get their names, and tell them I would be down in a few minutes.

My first car was a one-seater Dodge which I bought second hand from the storekeeper in Fair Ground. I had several cars later, including a Model A Ford. Sometimes there was so much snow in the winter that I couldn't get around in an automobile until the roads were opened up by the snowplow. My first winter the snowfall was heavy and banked up on the sides of the road. I was still working

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for Drs. Alexander and McLeod at that time, on salary, and Dr. McLeod still had a horse kept in the red barn by a man who took care of it and had been driving the horse for him.

One day I had to see a patient in Culloden, two miles north of Brownsville. On that day the driver of Dr. McLeod's horse took me there in the cutter. A cutter has the shafts in which the horse stands off center so that the horse travels in the track on the left instead of in the center of the snowy road. When we arrived in Culloden the driver tied the horse to a post, and I went to my patient, and he went to visit a friend across the road from where the horse was tied. I was ready to return before the driver was, so I sat down in the cutter to wait for him. The horse apparently thought she should be immediately on her way home, so she tore herself loose by pulling off her bridle which she did by hooking it on the end of one shaft, and then, with the bridle resting on her chest, she broke loose from the post and took off for home at a fast trot.

The leather lines were in place, resting on the dashboard, so I picked them up hoping to slow the horse by pulling on them. However it did no good, because the bit was not in her mouth, but rested on her chest, and there was nothing on her head. By pulling on the lines with my feet braced on the front of the cutter, I only succeeded in pushing the cutter forward so that her hind legs struck the cutter at every step. This only frightened the horse more and made her go faster.

This is the way we travelled all the way back to Brownsville. I did not jump out because we were traveling safely and the deep snowbanks on each side provided a soft landing place in case of an accident. When we were nearing Brownsville we met a car coming our way. The mare knew enough to move to the right and we passed safely.

When we got to the corner in Brownsville the horse knew that she had to turn left to get to the lane entrance to her stable. She was making her turn to the left and saw the big telephone pole on the corner in front of her. I knew if she went on the right side of the pole that we could pass safely, but if she went to the left of the telephone pole she would wreck the cutter. She slowed up in her uncertainty but eventually chose to pass on the left. When I saw what she was going to do, I stepped out on the right side of the cutter unharmed, as she slammed the cutter into the pole and went on to her stable without it. After that Dr. McLeod sold the horse and terminated his relationship with his driver.

One other winter I was driving my car slowly and carefully over wet icy roads, where the ice was rough with uneven ruts in it. Suddenly my car coasted sideways into a wire fence. Fortunately, at that point there was no ditch and no damage was done to either me or my car and I had no difficulty in getting back on the road.

Another winter we had such a heavy snowfall that all the roads were completely blocked. Even the farmers could scarcely move. However, one managed to get to my office with his sick son, who was 12 years old. I found that he was suffering from acute appendicitis, and needed an immediate operation. This could not be done in Brownsville, and the hospital was in Tillsonburg, six miles away with roads almost impassible. However, the father alerted his neighbors and several of them got together and put the boy on a bobsled drawn by a sturdy team of horses and set out for the hospital. With the men going along with their shovels, they cleared the way when it was too deep for the horses and got him to the hospital where he was operated on by Drs. Alexander and McLeod. Years later that lad, Billy Cook, was graduated from medical school and became a doctor.

At one time, in Brownsville, I had a car with a rumble seat. This car had the usual one-seat with a hard top, where the driver and one passenger could sit comfortably. In the back, instead of the usual trunk space, with the trunk cover opening from the back of the car, there was a rumble seat. To open this, I had to stand at the back of the car and reach far forward and grasp a handle and turn it to unlock it. Then by pulling backward and upward an extra seat appeared, facing forward, with its own padded backrest. This provided an extra seat for two adults when needed. It was fine in warm weather but too cold to use during cold weather.

At that time, it was my practice to leave my car parked on the road in front of my office, with my medicine bag and all of my obstetrical equipment in it, even during the night. This was handy when I wanted to get away in a hurry, and some times I even left my keys in the car because Brownsville was such a quiet village.

One morning early, one of the farmers who had brought his milk to the dairy woke me up to ask me if the two bags he brought were mine. They of course were my medical bags. He told me that he found my bags in a ditch along the roadside while traveling from his farm on a back road. This was the first I knew that my car with the rumble seat was missing. I promptly reported the theft to the Tillsonburg police.

A few days later I was summoned to a hearing in Tillsonburg where I was called upon to identify my car, and the car keys found with the car. The young man who had stolen the car was present as a prisoner. The car and the thief had been picked up somewhere in the vicinity of Windsor, Ontario. The rumble seat was ruined by leaking storage batteries which the thief had placed on that seat. I received an adjustment from my insurance company and later sold that car. Needless to say, from that time on I always removed my keys when parking a car.

Sometime later I had a garage built on the north side of the house which opened directly into the road. I could enter this garage through a side door directly from my inner office. This attached building served me well during the rest of my stay in Brownsville.

While on the subject, I might mention the other changes which I had done to the Brownsville house. Since natural gas was available, I had the furnace changed to a gas furnace. This worked out well. However, the exhaust from the furnace was directed into the existing chimney and the combustion of gas added so much moisture that black streaks appeared running down the brick chimney. This was later corrected by installing a metal pipe inside of the chimney.

I had a small ceramic fireplace installed in the living room with a small gas burner, which was exhausted to the outside. I also had a flush-toilet and a small shower stall installed upstairs. Since there was no public water supply in Brownsville at that time, I had to have a pressure tank and an electric water pump to it in the basement. I obtained the water from the existing cistern in the basement. But I soon found that there was not sufficient water, so I had a much larger concrete cistern built in another part of the basement. Of course, I also had to have a septic tank built to take care of the effluent, with its overflow directed into the storm sewer passing on the road.

I also had an additional porch built on the west side of the kitchen. In doing so, I had the carpenter build, over it, an additional room entered from the upstairs level. This had many windows to the west and south, thus providing a nice solarium.

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Also more storage cupboards were built into this room.

My practice in Brownsville was not as extensive as it might have been because Dr. McLeod, the former physician, was only six miles away and many of his former patients stuck with him. However, Drs. Alexander and McLeod used me a good deal as their anaesthetist, when they worked together in doing surgery. I also had some work to do in testing people's vision and fitting them with eyeglasses. This was partly because Dr. Alexander's office no longer gave this service, and partly because there was no optometrist nor optician in Brownsville.

While I had no special expertise in caring for eyes, a few interesting cases came my way. On one occasion a man from Tillsonburg was referred to me suffering from ulcerations in the cornea of his left eye. Other doctors had been treating him without benefit and I could not offer anything better. However, in an effort to do something for him, I explained the situation, over the phone, to an eye specialist in a neighboring city. He too had handled such cases unsuccessfully, and as a last resort, he suggested that I might try leeches applied to the temple. I obtained two or three leeches and used them to suck blood from the temple, a little way from the diseased eye. When they were distended with blood I removed them and dropped them into a salt solution, which made them vomit up the blood. Then I transferred them to their ordinary jar of water and used them again. After several sessions of this kind, I could see no benefit to my patient and advised him that I could do nothing more for him.

On another occasion a totally blind man came to me who previously had had one eye removed because of pain he was suffering from glaucoma. His remaining eye, also hard and totally useless, was hurting him so much that he wanted it also removed. So I took him to the hospital and under general anaesthesia administered by Dr. Alexander I did remove his remaining eye. In doing so I removed a small piece of subcutaneous fat from his abdomen and placed it in his eye socket and drew the eye muscles together over it so that if he ever obtained a glass eye he would be able to move it somewhat like a normal eye. However, he was an indigent patient and never did get a glass eye. At any rate the operation was a success.

One of the residents of Brownsville came to me complaining of difficult vision in his left eye. With the opthalmoscope I discovered a tumor growing in the depths of his left eye. I referred him immediately to an eye specialist in London, Ontario. The specialist confirmed my diagnosis and removed the eye. During my stay in Brownsville there had been no extension of his tumor to other parts of his body.

Most of my professional practice in Brownsville was much like that of other general practitioners of that era. There were no wonder drugs then, and little could be done for severe cases of lobar pneumonia, and epidemics of influenza were devastating. One time I was attending a patient with pneumonia for a family which still clung to some early treatment practices. I was able to achieve some benefits from hot linseed packs on the chest, but in the face of much insistence I consented to the use of one of their pet practices. They proceeded to kill a fat hen. Then immediately they slit open the hen's abdomen and applied the exposed entrails onto the patient's bare chest. It was kept there until it became cold, but no perceptible benefit took place.

One time an elderly patient of mine came to me complaining of sleeplessness and I gave him a four ounce bottle of liquid medicine which contained a common hypnotic. He was supposed to take two teaspoonfuls at bedtime. Later that evening I was called to see him, where he was standing in the general store behaving strangely, with an open penknife in his hand. He was a ghastly pasty-white color and

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obviously in a very bad way. I learned that he had drunk the whole bottle of medicine which I had given him. At that time, there was nothing more I could do for him because too much time had elapsed to empty his stomach, so I got him home and into bed. I was afraid he might hurt himself or somebody else with his open penknife, so when he was in bed I proceeded to take it away from him forcibly and give it to his wife. He eventually survived the ordeal with no after effects.

One morning I was called to a farm where a young workman, about 22 years of age, was found dead in bed that morning. There was no history of illness before he went to bed the night before, and I could find nothing to indicate the cause of death. I had never examined him while he was alive, and did not know him previously, so I had nothing to guide me in determining the cause of death. I reported the death to the coroner for the township, hoping that he would order an autopsy to determine the cause of death. However, this coroner was an elderly doctor who didn't have much practice, and didn't seem concerned to find the cause. He simply certified that the young man had died of natural causes and allowed him to be buried.

Another time I was called to an emergency in the home of the man and his wife who lived closest to the deep pond mentioned earlier in this chapter. I found that a group of boys had built a raft and were playing on it while it was several yards from shore. One of their number had fallen off, who couldn't swim. The other three had managed to haul him out of the water and get him into the kitchen of this nearby house. When I arrived I found him on the kitchen floor apparently lifeless. The boys were trying to give him artificial respiration. Under my supervision, we drained water from his lungs and continued efforts to revive him. However, all of our efforts were unsuccessful and I certified that he had died by drowning. He was probably 10 or 12 years old.

On another occasion I was called to a farm where the owner had committed suicide. He had aimed his shotgun toward the roof of his mouth and managed to fire the gun. The full charge went directly into his head and killed him instantly. His whole skull was fractured and his head much enlarged, and soft all over. He was in much financial difficulty and couldn't cope with it.

I was involved in another tragic gunshot case. There were two men who were out hunting and each had a gun. The accident, as explained by the survivor, was as follows. The two men while walking came to a wire fence, which they climbed over. Before climbing over, the man who died had leaned his gun against the fence, with the butt on the ground and the barrel sticking through the fence. Then, when he was over the fence, he grabbed the gun by the barrel and was pulling it through the fence toward him when the gun fired and killed him instantly. The gun was equipped with a mechanism which had to be cocked before firing. In pulling it through the fence the firing hammer had caught sufficiently to partly cock it, so that when it freed itself, it came down on the firing pin with sufficient force to cause the gun to fire.

On another occasion I was called to see a man on a farm who had been crushed

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by a bull. When I got to the farmhouse the hired man was lying in bed, obviously dying. His whole chest was a mass of pulp. He was seen by the farmer lying on the ground with his large bull standing over him and boring his head into the man's chest. In a case of this kind, when a bull behaves this way he is considered crazy and he is no longer allowed to live. It is considered humane to kill an animal when it becomes a threat to mankind. But it makes you wonder about the meaning of the word when society, in practice, considers it just the opposite (in humans) to execute a crazy man who kills another human being.

While the following paragraph has nothing to do with this narrative of my experiences in the general practice of medicine, I would like to interject a few comments about psychiatry, which, at this time, in the year 1982, may give the reader some insight into my present feelings. I do not deny that there is a real place for specialists in the field of psychiatry, but I do deplore the extent of collaboration that is sometimes taking place between psychiatrists and defense lawyers, in their efforts to protect criminals. It seems to me that far too many law-breakers are hiding behind alleged temporary insanity pleas to frustrate the process of justice.

While I had little opportunity in my practice to engage in surgery, I might mention a few specific cases. One of my regular patients was having some wood cut up at his home, by a buzz saw. When the work was done, and the driving belt removed from the saw and the tractor, my patient foolishly began to push the sawdust away from the saw with his foot, not realizing that the saw was still spinning. The saw by its own momentum cut his foot off almost completely. I rushed him to the hospital in Tillsonburg, controlling the bleeding with a tourniquet. With the help of Drs. Alexander and McLeod, I performed the necessary amputation, and shaped his stump below the knee so that it could accommodate an artificial leg.

Dr. Bartlett, of Mt. Elgin, and I worked together a good deal in the removal of tonsils, in the homes of our patients. Together we owned all of the necessary equipment, that is, instruments, an electric suction apparatus, anaesthesia equipment, etc. He gave the anaesthetics for my patients and I gave the anaesthetics when he operated. We had quite an extensive practice in this field, which was much cheaper than having the patients admitted to hospital.

Among my nose and throat equipment, I had a snare for use in the nose. I happened to have a man who had a recurring obstruction in his nose which was caused by polyps. Several times I relieved his trouble by removing them, in my office, under local contact anaesthesia.

I also had a young man come into my office with both hands burned by flaming gasoline which he was working with when it became ignited from a lighted cigarette.

One time a man visited me at my office complaining of sharp pain in his anus. I extracted from him the complete shoulder blade of a small animal. It was that of a rabbit which he had eaten several days before, but didn't know he had swallowed any bone.

On another occasion a young teenager presented himself for treatment on a wound on his bottom that would not heal. Under local anaesthesia I extracted a piece of wood two and a half inches long with sharp ends tapering to one half inch wide and one quarter inch thick. He remembered receiving the injury when he was sitting on a sleigh, riding down a snow slide, when the sleigh struck an immovable object.

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One time a young farmer came in and showed me some sections of white tissue he had passed from his bowel. I identified it as some section of (Taenia Saginata) beef tapeworm. He admitted that several months ago he had eaten some raw beef, which he was cutting up for his own use. I found some medicine in my dispensary designed for this purpose and instructed him how to use it. A few days later he brought in a pail half full of liquid which contained the tapeworm, which when spread out was nine feet long. I cleaned it up and preserved it in a jar in my office. I did not find the head of the tapeworm but the patient never had a recurrence.

Several years later the above patient developed leukemia, for which at that time there was no treatment. I telephoned the Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto, but he was unable to suggest anything. The man, of course, died. Since those days very much progress has been made in this field.

One time I attended a young man who was in bed at home with a severe sore throat and a high temperature. This was not an uncommon condition but what was unusual was that he had crepitations under the skin of the upper part of his chest. This would have been very serious if it had been gas gangrene. However, he recovered and I don't know how the gas or air bubbles got in there.

I had an elderly man, whom I was attending, who had thrombosis in the main vein of one of his legs. I kept him in bed, but in spite of that a piece of the blood clot broke off and lodged in his lung. He was critically ill and continued to have extensions of the blocked arteries to his lung for some weeks, but he eventually recovered.

I went through a period when people were suffering from an epidemic of some kind which caused jaundice. Most people recovered, even without treatment. However, I had one patient who was severely jaundiced with her liver enlarged. I put her in the hospital in Tillsonburg where consultations with other doctors did not turn up any promising treatment. The outlook for recovery was very bad indeed. However, I put her on one of the sulfonamides that were just coming on the market, and she recovered quite dramatically.

I also went through an epidemic of poliomyelitis, then called infantile paralysis. This was before the days of polio vaccine and little could be done, except to keep the affected limbs warm with hot packs. The problem was more complicated for me because I was, at that time, Medical Health Officer for the township of Dereham. There was little I could do to stem the epidemic, but I took what preventive measures were suggested by the Health Officer for the Province of Ontario.

I think I had my share of confinements, which was over one hundred and fifty during my years in Brownsville. Most of them were conducted in the homes of my patients, but a few went into hospital for their first babies. Some of them were repeat pregnancies, in one instance as many as four more in the same family.

In one instance twins were born, a girl and a boy. In another case of twin pregnancy, one child was born alive, at full term, and the other, born at the same time, was macerated, which meant that it had been dead in the uterus for two months or more.

In one labor there was an unfavorable outcome. Without previous contact I was called to attend an Indian woman, far out in the woods where there was no telephone and no other woman in the house. The baby was born without too much difficulty but the woman continued to bleed afterward, which I was unable to control. I sent the husband to a telephone somewhere to call another doctor to help me. He finally arrived and together we got the bleeding under control.

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The woman had lost so much blood that she should have had a transfusion. But this was quite impossible in this out-of-the-way place, in the middle of the night, with an ambulance many, many miles away. The best we could do was to prop the foot of the bed up on blocks, so that the woman's head and shoulders were low, and left her in that position for the rest of the night. In this position, her heart, lungs and brain were getting sufficient circulation and her condition was not too bad.

When I arrived back to see her the next day she was dead. Her husband told me that she had begged him to turn her around in the bed, which he did. This was the worst thing that he could have done. He didn't even lower the propped-up end of the bed. So with her head, shoulders and chest high, all of the limited supply collected in the lower part of her body, and of course she died.

I attended one young woman, who was one of my indigent patients, at her first delivery. A little girl was born with a birth defect called spina bifida. She also was equipped with a blind end to her oesophagus which meant that nothing could ever reach her stomach. Of course she died after several days which was a blessing for all concerned.

About five or six boys under my care were given the name Wilford after me.

My last confinement in the Brownsville area took place only five days prior to my moving out of Brownsville. I knew that Mrs. Claude Whitecraft was pregnant, but I had no inkling that they intended to call me to be the attending physician, so I had no opportunity to give any prenatal care or advice. Although the mother was then past forty years of age, and so far as I know had no previous deliveries, the little girl was born without difficulty. The father was of somewhat peculiar stature, which might be described as bordering on gargoylism. The mother was tall and thin. I mention these parental characteristics because they might have some pertinence in respect to the child's extremely rare condition at birth. The child was of normal weight and physically normal in every respect except for her eyes. She was born blind, with the type of birth blindness which is perfectly normal for little kittens. Kittens, of course, for about nine days after birth, continue to have maturing changes taking place in their eyes which give them normal vision at the age of ten or twelve days. This condition in a child is so rare that most doctors and even eye specialists have never heard of it. In examining the new born baby, I saw at once that the corneas were absolutely clear and there was no evidence of inflammation in the eyes. However, behind the corneas, where there should be a normal iris, with its circular opening in the center called the pupil, there was nothing of the kind. In the place where these organs should be, there was only an intact cream-colored membrane, with no evidence whatsoever of either irises or pupils.

I saw the baby five days later, on the day I left Brownsville and moved away. At this time there was only a slight lessening of the creamy color, but otherwise no change in the eyes. This was a charity case, and the mother and child were both doing well, so I did not ask another doctor to make follow-up visits.

Years later I learned from a friend that the child was attending school with no unusual eye troubles, so it would seem that instead of permanent blindness, the child simply had a delayed development of iris and pupil, as is normal for kittens. None of the people working with the child were even aware of the abnormality nor conscious that any change took place in the baby's eyes.

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One of my regular patients, whom I had served before during a previous delivery, was again pregnant and under my care. After about 6-1/2 months of her pregnancy she developed high blood pressure and showed definite premonitory signs of impending eclampsia. This condition is life-threatening to the mother and can only be solved by terminating the pregnancy. So I took her into the hospital in Tillsonburg and inserted obstetrical bougies into the uterus outside of the fetal membranes. In a few hours she went into labor and delivered a small premature child, which I did not expect to live but it did. The mother came through the ordeal without any difficulty and the baby was sustained on breast milk, which I was able to procure for the three or four days which it took for the mother's breasts to begin lactation.

Not all of my time in Brownsville was spent in the practice of medicine. I had a good deal of time to do gardening on my property, where the soil was good, and there was always sufficient rain to promote growth. One time I gave professional services to a butler who was vacationing in the area, who worked for a prominent Toronto family which had a sumptuous estate. He gave me some hollyhock seeds from his employer's garden. I planted them, and that year I had a plot of hollyhock flowers more beautiful than I have ever seen before or since.

While I am on the subject of gardening, perhaps here I should record a few things more about the Brownsville property. There were always lots of grapes, pears, and apples on the property. There were also many kinds of roses. I remember the names of Mrs. John Laing, Dr. Van Fleet, New Dawn and American Beauty roses. The American Beauty was a vigorous climber which covered the whole south end of the kitchen building with even thousands of blooms at once, of a light red color. Dr. Van Fleet was also a climber and I had to build a large iron trellis for it. It had flowers which were small, with a delicate pink color, but exquisitely beautiful when they were just opening up.

I also had a lovely patch of Madonna lilies and I grew many kinds of vegetables. I sometimes competed with others at the Tillsonburg horticultural society, and I even won four first prizes for flowers or potatoes.

The one apple tree produced plenty of fall apples but I wanted a variety, so I grafted some limbs from other desirable varieties and harvested several different apples from the same tree.

One time when I was on the top of a ladder in the pear tree picking pears, my mongrel dog, of undetermined breeds, climbed up the ladder after me without me having taught him how. He reached a height of about nine feet off the ground, but he didn't know how to get down, so I helped him to get back to the ground.

One time I found that a pair of puff adder snakes had secured themselves under the veranda on the east side of the kitchen building. Although they are not poisonous they can make themselves look like cobras ready to strike. I had to kill them as they were undesirable tenants.

Other undesirables, a nest of yellow jackets, established themselves in the wall of the barn just beside the door where I had to enter the barn. Their only portal was a small knothole nearby. I had to wear elaborate new gear and gloves to protect myself while I nailed a piece of shingle over the hole. They just died in their own nest.

One time I found a tree frog in a small wild tree at the back of my lot.

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It was greenish in color and looked very much like an ordinary small frog, but its toes were equipped with suction cups which enabled it to climb about and live in trees.

My years in general practice in Brownsville included those years of the great depression in the early years of the nineteen-thirties following the crash in the stock market and the closing of many banks. The farmers in my area were hard hit with low prices for their products and consequently had difficulty in paying their bills to me. They did the best they could, some of them offering me farm products in exchange for credit on their standing accounts. In this way I received such things as dressed chickens, dressed duck, pieces of salt-cured pork, and some vegetables, so we always had plenty to eat. One of the things I received in this way was a beautiful hand-made quilt featuring a large intricate star built of many colors worked into the pattern. This was made by Irene Gay and I still have that quilt, which is now much more valuable than it was in those days. Some of these accounts were still unpaid when I left Brownsville at the end of January, 1942. At that time I arranged for a patient friend of mine to continue to collect what she could. After some years I had quite a number of doctor bills which I wrote off as charity.

In early September, 1939, I listened to the rantings of Adolf Hitler on the radio as he was setting out to conquer Europe. On September 3, 1939, Canada followed the lead of England and declared war on Germany. I knew then that we were in for a long and difficult period, where we could expect food rationing, gasoline rationing, and many other problems, because I remembered what happened in the First World War. I knew that one of the first things that would be hit would be sugar, so I went out and bought a 100-pound bag of white sugar which cost $5.56. Sure enough, it was soon rationed along with butter. So far as butter was concerned we always had plenty of it, because the farmers made their own and often sold it to me for credit on their bills. Gasoline rationing too was soon in effect, but because I was a doctor and must have gas to attend my patients, I was not bound by the rationing quota.

Because I knew that the war would cause great changes in the prices of things through the inevitable inflation spiral, I recorded for posterity the prices at which the following items could be bought at the Brownsville general store on September 4, 1939.

Prices and Items Recorded

First class letter postage stamp            100 pound bag of white sugar 10 pounds of brown sugar 1 pound of butter 1/4 bushel of potatoes 1 loaf of bread, one pound size 1 dozen eggs--grade B

2¢ $5.56   58¢ 27¢ 30¢ 7¢ 17¢

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Farm laborers were paid 25¢ per hour or $30 per month.

Early in my career in Brownsville I became a member of the United Church of Canada, and throughout my stay there I was an active member. I taught a young men's class in the Sunday school most of those years and perhaps was influential in getting some of them to make a public commitment and join the church. When the war was under way two of the members of the class were drawn into the armed forces. One of them came back alive and uninjured. The other one, Jack Ker, became a tail gunner in one of the fighter planes. The plane was apparently shot down over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of France, and none of the crew survived. Jack was a quiet, well-behaved young man and his loss was quite a blow to his family and the community. Most of the other boys in my Sunday school class were farm workers, and contributed to the war effort by working in food production.

I was a member of the Official Board of the church and sometimes talked to church groups. On March 5, 1936, 1 talked on the subject, "Why Do Men Suffer?", and on February 16, 1935, my subject was, "Is Faith Reasonable Today?" On at least one occasion, I was master of ceremonies at the church annual Christmas entertainment.

At various times I was the guest speaker at gatherings in various communities in my practice area and even in Tillsonburg. One of these was at a meeting of the School and Home Club in Mt. Elgin. Using the subject, "Cooperative Child Education", I brought out and emphasized the responsibilities of parents to teach home skills and moral standards to supplement the efforts of the school teachers.

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Brownsville had a library with a volunteer librarian and an active library board. I was a member of the library board for quite some time.

Brownsville had an active program going on at the Town Hall. This took the form of evening meetings for interesting programs such as lectures, recitations, production of skits, debates, social gatherings, etc. These meetings were arranged by a local committee, usually elected for the season. I remember I was chairman for one season and in the process of conducting the meeting I liked to introduce an item of humor. The following are some of the jokes and quips I used.

1. "It's a queer world. Remain silent and people think you are ignorant. Talk and they're sure of it."

2. "Many a young man thinks he's hard boiled, when he's only half-baked."

3. "A politician is a man who stands for what he thinks the people will fall for."

4. "What our government needs is more pruning and less grafting."

5. "Madam, I just learned today that your son is an undertaker. I thought you told me he is a doctor." "No, sir, I just said he followed the medical profession."

6. "We can't understand how the ant got the reputation of being a hard worker. Nearly all I have seen were on a picnic."

7. "There once was a boy, a cute little liar
Who ran through the town with his pants on fire.
He went to the doctor and fainted with fright
When the doctor told him, his end was in sight."

8. The old lady was not too familiar with English, and less with legal language. When she walked into the judge's office, she said, "Are you the judge of reprobates?" He replied, "I am the judge of probate." She said, "Well, that's it, I expect. You see, my husband died detested, and left several little infidels, and I want to be their executioner."

At one of these evening gatherings in the Brownsville Town Hall, the group I was working with planned to put on a shadow play wherein the hall would be darkened and pantomime shadows would be projected on the closed screen by having a powerful light behind it. It being near Easter, we had planned to have a large egg drawn, in a wagon, onto the stage, in which a little girl would be hidden and then suddenly erupt. I made a large egg of plaster of paris bandages and cut it in two for the purpose. I was large enough to accommodate the little girl chosen, but on the stage the girl was so frightened she wouldn't get into it. So we had to be satisfied with her sitting behind it and only partly hidden.

At one of these evenings, the main feature was a formally-structured debate. As I remember, the subject had something to do with the importance of stature

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in the effectiveness of a politician. I was one of the debaters minimizing the importance of an imposing stature. We won the debate, partly because I pointed out that the small stature of Calvin Coolidge didn't prevent him from becoming President of the United States of America. On this particular occasion the judge for the debate was Ernie Livermore, an attorney from Aylmer, who later became a judge in the courts of the land.

One Winter, the ambitious young people of Brownsville wanted to put on a play for the evening program at the Town Hall, and they asked me to be their director. I consented to do so and after much rehearsing, the play was put on and went over well. It was so successful that we were invited to put it on at the church in Delmer. Later we also put on our play as a program for a church in Tillsonburg. It seems that again it went over so well that we were asked to compete with other play performances in the County of Oxford. So we went to the city of Woodstock, the capital city of the county, and performed again. We came out second in the county competition, failing to get first place largely because we hadn't sufficient stage properties to enhance the setting.

The Town Hall was also used for regular meetings of a boy scout troop, organized and conducted by the principal of the public school, Lloyd Moore. I joined the troop and functioned as assistant to the scout leader. We all had and used scout uniforms.

One important thing happened to us. We went as a whole troop in uniform to be among those to welcome King George VI and Queen Elizabeth when they paraded through the city of London, Ontario, as part of their visit to Canada. We stood on the curb on the street and saluted as the king and queen of England rode by, in an open-topped automobile, not more than twenty feet away.

As the years went by, in my general practice of medicine, I began to realize that I was not practicing medicine at my greatest potential, because I did not have close access to laboratory services. So I set up a small laboratory in the basement where I was able to make blood smears and examine them under my microscope, when such a procedure was necessary. I was able to identify a pernicious anemia case I had under my care. I did white blood cell counts and hemoglobin levels, etc. But even with these procedures I became unsatisfied with the quality of medical care I was able to give.

In other words, I felt impelled, by a force I did not entirely understand, to change my course in the practice of medicine. Since during my prolonged siege of rheumatic fever in 1928, I had committed the control of my life to God; perhaps this was the force pushing me toward a change in course. Only recently, on January 17, 1982, when I was listening to Rev. Clifford Swanson of St. Olaf College deliver his sermon at the American Lutheran Church in Sun City, Arizona, was this feeling put into words for me. He said, "When you discover who and what you are, it is God speaking to you."

So I began considering opportunities open to a doctor with my experience. The only thing which came to my attention was employment in a large shell-filling plant, at a place called Ajax, built close to Pickering, Ontario, not far from Whitby. I wrote a tentative letter to the company and received a reply offering me a salaried position on their medical staff, and offering to pay my moving expenses. So I proceeded to make plans to move to Whitby, Ontario, where my brother, Clifford, at that time, was the pastor at Whitby United Church.

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I sold my barn to Les Jacobs who was developing a thriving garbage business nearby. A little earlier I had bought Wesley Bigham's fine brick residence because he was moving away and it seemed a good investment. I had repaired the wooden trim of the house and improved its appearance. Shortly after I left Brownsville, I was able to sell this house for $1,000 more than I had paid for it. In this house, after I had bought it, I found an abandoned bible dictionary in good condition. I still have it and many times I have found it extremely useful.

I was able to sell my home and property before I left. Someone bought my antique office furniture, at what I know was a low price, but I had to wind up my practice and dispose of things in a hurry. Of course I took all my medical equipment and household effects with me.

Many of my friends and patients were sorry to see me go, but they sent me off with their good wishes.

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