A colleague of mine was visiting on his winter rounds in a delightful
village some forty miles south of St. Anthony Hospital. The "swiles"
(seals) had struck in, and all hands were out on the ice, eager to
capture their share of these valuable animals. But snow-blindness had
incontinently attacked the men, and had rendered them utterly unable
to profit by their good fortune. The doctor's clinic was long and busy
that night. The following morning he was, however, amazed to see many
of his erstwhile patients wending their way seawards, each with one
eye treated on his prescription, but the other (for safety's sake)
doctored after the long-accepted methods of the talent of the
village--tansy poultices and sugar being the acknowledged favourites.
The consensus of opinion obviously was that the stakes were too high
for a man to offer up both eyes on the altar of modern medicine.
In the course of many years' practice the methods for the treatment
and extraction of offending molars which have come to my attention are
numerous, but none can claim a more prompt result than the following:
First you attach a stout, fine fish-line firmly to the tooth. Next
you lash the other end to the latch of the door--we do not use knobs
in this country. You then make the patient stand back till there is a
nice tension on the line, when suddenly you make a feint as if to
strike him in the eye. Forgetful of the line, he leaps back to avoid
the blow. Result, painless extraction of the tooth, which should be
found hanging to the latch.
Although there have been clergyman of the Church of England and
Methodist denominations on the coast for many years past--devoted and
self-sacrificing men who have done most unselfish work--still, their
visits must be infrequent. One of them told me in North Newfoundland
that once, when he happened to pass through a little village with his
dog team on his way South, the man of one house ran out and asked him
to come in. "Sorry I have no time," he replied. "Well, just come in at
the front door and out at the back, so we can say that a minister has
been in the house," the fisherman answered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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