etter for a
healthy, active young man than the employment of assisting in settling
a new country?
The only drawback to my comfort was the temporary loss of the society
of my wife; a pretty, sensible young woman, whose mental and personal
charms had, since my union with her, formed the happiness of my life.
We cannot, however, have every blessing at once, and I worked on
cheerfully in the hope of getting things comfortably round me for my
dear girl against the moment when she would join me.
Besides the services rendered to the Company, I performed _con amore_
some gratuitous ones for the benefit of the township of Guelph, which
will, doubtless, both surprise and astonish my readers. We had no
medical man in Guelph for some months after my arrival, so, for want of
a better, I was obliged to turn physician and surgeon, and soon became
very skilful in bleeding and tooth-drawing, and, as I charged nothing,
you may be sure I had plenty of customers. And so well pleased was Dr.
Dunlop with my proficiency, that he invariably sent all his patients to
me.
I remember one time in particular, he came over to my office and
inquired for me, when, on the store-porter telling him I had just gone
out, he said,
"Tell him when he comes back, to take the calomel and jalap down to my
house, and treat those Paisley bodies with a dose apiece."
"What! all of them, sir?"
"Yes, to be sure; they are but just arrived, and have got as fat as
pigs on the voyage. Some of their bacon must be taken off, or with this
heat we shall have them all sick on our hands. And tell him not to
spare the jalap."
When I returned and heard the message, I literally obeyed his order by
administering forty-two doses of various strengths to the men, women
and children, designated by the Doctor as the "Paisley bodies."
This wholesale way of medical treatment was in this instance attended
with a good effect; for there did not occur a single case of sickness
amongst them during the summer.
Shortly after this, a medical man, a Mr. W-----, applied for a town-lot
and commenced practice. This gentleman was certainly a great oddity. He
never had but two patients that I ever heard of, and they both died.
The settlers used to call him the "mad doctor," and I believe not
without good reason. He built a log-house without any door, his mode of
entrance being through a square hole he had cut out of the end of the
house about six feet from the ground.
I walked ov
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