Book Description:
JOURNALS AND REMINISCENCES OF JAMES DOUGLAS, M.D. EDITED BY HIS SON 1910 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION . 9 CHAPTER I BOYHOOD TO DR. Low . AND APPRENTICESHIP . 15 VOYAGE TO SPITZ CHAPTER I1 A WHLINQ BERGEN IN l818 . . 25 CHAPTER I11 A YEAR IN INDIA . . 71 CHAPTER IV IN MEDICAL CHARGE OF THE POP MS SETTLEMENT . . 85 CHAPTER V HIS ACTIVE PROFESSIONAL CA REER . . 121 CHAPTER V1 REMINISCENCES OF ONE OF HIS . . 163 OLD STUDENTS CHAPTER V11 ILL HEALTH, RTIFLEMENT FROM PRACTICE, AND TRAVEL . . 179 CHAPTER V111 ONE OF THE FOUNDERS A MN D AGER OF THE QUEBEC LUNATIC ASYLUM . 193 CHAPTER IX HIS FRIENDS SANE AND INSANE 227 CH X AS A TEMPERANCE ADVOCATE AND LECTURER . . 239 CHAPTER XI CONCLUSION . . 247 ILLUSTRATIONS PORTRAIT . . fontispiece QUEBEC LUNATIC ASYLUM IN 1850 . . 205 CARTOON FROM DIOOENES . . 216 PORTRAIT AT THE AGE OF EIGHTY FIVE . 245 INTRODUCTION The following sketch of the life of my father is in part autobiographical and part drawn from my own recollections. He was born with the Nineteenth Century and lived till its eighty sixth year. His earliest recollections were of the boisterous rejoicings over Nelsons great victory at Trafalgar. He was a surgeons 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 empiremaking 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 Marsh man and therefore witnessed the early efforts of mod ern missionary enterprise and its success toward secur ing 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 crown ing triumph has been the application of antiseptics, rendering it possible for the modern surgeon to per form operations which, despite the greater dexter ity 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 pharma copoeia a host of magical drugs, and from the prac tice of physic those copious and noxious doses, unless drenched with which our forefathers considered them selves neglected by their family physician and unless supplied with which they considered themselves de frauded 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 expedi tions to Central America, for which British enthusi asm over the emancipation of Spanish America from the rule of Englands 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, f2.h 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 and of science, pass away and give place to the new...
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