of whom were sick with fever. He landed them at Balize. six on this trip, all but three "to superintend and regulate the charity of public and private funds for the relief of the unfortunate people." The hospital was too small to accommodate the sick, so the women and children were removed to a large chapel and the remainder quartered on the inhabitants. We do not learn what was the number of deaths, but we know that on 1st August forty-nine widows and orphans were shipped back to England. On their departure Douglas "felt a peculiar depression of spirits," and while conversing with Colonel Hall, became suddenly seized with acute pain in the head and giddiness, reached his hut with difficulty, and bled himself, but was unable to bandage up his arm after the operation. He did not recover consciousness for some days, when an obstinate intermittent fever set in, which reduced him to a skeleton. All he could do during the intermissions was to sit at the window and shoot parrots, lizards, or anything eatable or uneatable which came within shot, to sustain life in himself and an Irish woman whom he had taken in and nursed some time before. This poor and faithful woman, herself suffering from fever, devoted herself to his care. While Douglas was in this state Bennett returned with a schooner, The Mexican Eagle, chartered by H.M. Superintendent at Balize, to remove the remaining settlers and the stores, making several trips for this purpose. The stores were housed in Bennett's warehouse; some were used to feed the settlers while in Balize, some to supply provisions to the few who were shipped back to England, and as the balance was rapidly deteriorating, it was sold at public auction. The last of the settlers were brought away from Poyais in H.M. sloop of war, Redwing, in the month of June. A Committee was formed at Balize Such is the tale of this murderous swindle. Was any one brought to justice for it? So far from that, we learn that a petition was presented to the Secretary of State by W. J. Richardson and five other "merchant sufferers," who claimed that Marshall Bennett and other magistrates at Balize, with the connivance of H.M. Superintendent, had removed £30,000 of goods from Poyais, and had by force and persuasion carried off settlers whom the petitioners had at great expense conveyed thither. Were these petitioners the portly gentlemen directors of Dowgate Hill themselves the dupes of that arch-rogue Gregor M'Gregor? Dr Douglas thinks they were, and that they acted as they did from ignorance. But what are we to say of M'Gregor, when we find him again in 1836 promulgating a Constitution for Poyaisia as an independent republic? In 1839 he petitioned the Venezuelan Government for pecuniary assistance, citizenship, and restored rank in the army, all of which requests, we are told, were granted. whom he had occasionally met That is the last we hear of him. To return to Surgeon Douglas. On arrival in the Redwing at Balize he was placed in lodgings with a kind negress. The ague persisted; he was thin as a whippingpost, yellow as a guinea. In September he was unable to rise, and retained only a dim recollection of a gentleman visiting and praying with him, of arriving on board a schooner in a hammock, lying for days in his berth at Havannah, waiting for a convoy of men - of- war, as the West India seas were infested by pirates, arriving at Boston, and being placed in quarantine, whence he was removed to a boarding-house and attended by Dr Warren, to whom he says that under Providence he owed his life. Weak and emaciated, he embarked in a schooner for New York. Some Irish people he met on board persuaded him to travel with them to see something of the United States. They went by water to Albany, and thence as far as Utica, where, owing to the banks of the canal having given way, he found himself stranded, as he was too weak to accompany his companions by land. His health began to improve; but winter was at hand, and the canal would be closed by ice. He was meditating return to New York, accident occurred which altered entirely entirely his future life and career. when an He was asked by a farmer, at the hotel table, to visit a man who had been run through the body by the handle of a pitchfork. He operated successfully, removing a plug of clothes that had been carried into the abdomen. The patient recovered without any untoward symptom. The surgeon found himself famous. Surgical practice poured in on him. He abandoned the idea of India, built a house, married happily, sent to England for his brother George, and settled down to practice, with the intention of spending his life in Utica. His health steadily improved. In the autumn of 1824, at the invitation of the faculty of the Medical College at Auburn, he gave a course of lectures on Anatomy and Surgery there, receiving liberal payment. The New York State's prison was at Auburn; the law gave for dissection the bodies of all prisoners dying in prison, so there was no lack of subjects for dissection. The honorary degree of Doctor of Medicine was conferred upon him. On his return to Utica, his brother George having arrived, he fitted up a dissecting-room over his office, and resumed his dissections, having obtained the body of a negro boy, a slave of Judge Kipp. This fact became known, and as bodysnatching was a State prison offence, the Judge was taking steps to send him to Auburn as a State prisoner, when he boldly called on the Judge, pleaded his cause and the cause of science, and was let off for this occasion only. "The following summer passed very pleasantly. I was very successful in my practice, very happy in my domestic relations, and very sanguine in my future prospects. In the ensuing autumn I again fulfilled my engagements to the Auburn Medical College, and returned to Utica to my practice and to my studies. A Scotch lad, without friends, had died at a factory at Hartford, about four miles from town; instead of his body, mistaking the grave, I got that of a wellknown and highly respected citizen. A few days afterward, being suddenly called out, I left my office door unlocked for my brother, who was at the moment absent. On my return I found a stage-driver, who, finding no one in the office below, had gone upstairs, and was looking at his old employer. He exclaimed, 'I guess I never expected to see my old friend P. again.' He assured me that he would not mention the circumstances, etc., etc. I professed to believe him, but as soon as he was gone my brother and I reburied the remains, and having no faith in the stage - driver's promises, but full faith in Judge Kipp's assurances, Mrs Douglas and I packed up a few things, I harnessed my horse to a small sleigh, called a pung, and lost no time in getting into Canada, by crossing the St Lawrence on the ice at Ogdenberg. My brother remained in Utica for some months to sell my house and settle my affairs. I never heard that the stage-driver mentioned his discovery, and my flight may have been needless. At any rate, this abruptly terminated my citizenship of the U.S." He now made his way by Montreal to Quebec, which he determined to make his future home. Here he was joined by his brother, and paid his expenses by chance practice and by practice among the shipping. He determined to give a course of lectures and demonstration on anatomy, and commenced in a cellar in his house, later accepting the offer of Dr Painchaud, the leading French physician, to use a small building adjoining his residence. Invited by Dr Morrin to witness an important surgical operation at the Hôtel Dieu Hospital, he attended there, but Dr Morrin was absent. A patient was introduced with an arm which had been crushed from fingers to shoulder in a threshing-machine. There was much discussion as to what should be done, when Douglas, a stranger to all present, gave tion that should be performed. an opinion as to the opera"Who are you, and what do you know about it?" was the reply. He said it was an operation he had already performed, and if the operator would accept his assistance, he would secure the patient from any risk of hæmorrhage. The operation was then performed, and the patient recovered without the occurrence of any bad symptom. This brought him into notice, and he obtained an extensive and remunerative medical and surgical practice. A severe attack of typhus fever in the winter of 1828-9 nearly cost him his life, and the strain of nursing him through his protracted illness undermined his wife's constitution and caused her subsequent death. Early in the year 1832, warned by the British Government that Asiatic cholera had made its appearance in England, the Government of Canada called a meeting of medical men and others. Dr Skey, who presided, said that no danger was to be apprehended, as cholera would not cross the Atlantic, but advised taking the opportunity for introducing sanitary reforms. Douglas said he was convinced the cholera would cross the Atlantic, gave his reasons for his belief, and announced that he had engaged the cabin of a schooner to convey his wife and family to a remote point of Gaspé as soon as navigation should open. "It was," he says, "like the bursting of a bomb-shell on the meeting." The cholera came: out of a population in Quebec of about 30,000 the mortality was about 3200. George Douglas was appointed quarantine officer at the station of Grosse Isle, and another brother, Richard, came out to help the hardworked James, whose only relaxation, when worn out with mental exertion and want of sleep, was an occasional two hours' trout-fishing. In the autumn of 1846, when carrying out an amputation for frost-bite, Douglas pricked his finger, and though he escaped with his life, recovered only with the loss of his sense of smell and a shrunken fore finger. This determined him to take a partner, with whom he established a private hospital for the treatment of the numerous cases of typhus arriving among the immigrants from Ireland. But we cannot follow in detail this remarkable autobiography, full of interesting and amusing anecdotes drawn from personal experience. We must pass to the great work of its author's mature years, the treatment of the insane. During the French dominion in Canada, and since its conquest by the British, the insane had been exclusively in the hands of the nuns, except some who were confined in jails. In the spring of 1845 the Grand Jury of Quebec made a very strong presentment on the subject. Approached by the Government, Dr Douglas expressed the opinion that the patients would be benefited by the disuse of confinement and other methods of severe treatment; and, other attempts to deal with the matter having failed, he agreed to take charge of the lunatics for three years on an understanding that the Government would then provide a suitable asylum for them. He leased a country house at Beauport, and Doctors Fremont and Morrin became his partners in the undertaking, and remained so till their deaths. Up to this date-we quote from Dr Douglas's report in 1849 "insane ly as unmanageable, or as dangerous to the community or to themselves. No measures were adopted for their restoration to reason. They debarred intercourse with the world were shut up in separate cells, were and with each other, were left to brood over their disordered fancies, persons were confined mere until they became maniacal, tore their clothes, became filthy in their habits, and from a well-known law of nature that the faculties become dormant for want of exercise, became imbecile or idiotic. Occasion ally a patient was removed by his friends; rarely was one discharged restored to reason." It was to remedy this state of affairs that Dr Douglas and his partners now embarked on their undertaking. The insane confined in the Quebec and Three Rivers Districts, and later those from the jail at Montreal, were removed to this temporary asylum. This is the story of the removal of those from the General Hospital of the Grey Nuns in Quebec "They were removed in open carriages and in cabs. They offered no resistance; on the contrary, they were delighted with the ride; and the view of the city, the river, trees, and the passers-by, excited in them the most pleasurable emotions. On their arrival at the Asylum of Beauport, they were placed together at table to breakfast; and it was most interesting to witness the propriety of their conduct, to watch their actions, to listen to their conversation with each other, and to remark the amazement with which they regarded everything around them. All traces of ferocity, turbulence, and noise had suddenly vanished; they found themselves again in the world, and treated like rational beings; and they endeavoured to behave as such. "As soon as their muscular powers were sufficiently restored, the patients were induced to employ themselves in occupations the most congenial to their former habits and tastes. Some worked in the garden, others preferred sawing and splitting wood. The female patients were taken out daily, and many of them engaged in reading in the garden. "The effects of this system were soon apparent in their improved health and spirits; they became stronger, and ate and slept better. Some of them were restored to reason." To this noble task of relieving the wretchedness of the insane Dr Douglas devoted the remainder of his life till his sixty-sixth year, when he involuntarily retired. For twenty years he had carried on the work under the strain of pecuniary difficulties. The system was one of contract, the Government paying so much a head for each patient. When we state that the sum allowed was only one shilling and eightpence a day, and that the doctor contractors had from this to provide housing, food, lighting and heating, medical attendance, nursing, and medioines, it will be easily understood that there was small margin for profit. In his private hospital for typhus patients Dr Douglas's charge had been four dollars a-day; the Government allowance for his insane patients was only four-tenths of a dollar. The contract was renewed for various terms of years. Patients were forced on the contractors in excess of the accommodation. The doctors found themselves driven into great expenditure on new buildings. The editor of the Journals, who himself in his early years unofficially assisted his father in the management of the asylum and studied medicine to qualify himself to be his father's partner and successor, tells the story of the cireumstances under which his father was driven to part, at a great sacrifice, with his interest in the asylum, and says with great truth, "This whole story of the buying and selling of a sacred public trust, and the calculation of profits from the treatment of the most helpless of all afflicted creatures, is in itself an unanswerable argument against farming out the insane.' |