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1403. ] MARINE REVIEW AND MARINE RECORD. a 27 CARING FOR NEWFOUNDLAND FISHERMEN, While the Newfoundland and French fishermen on the Grand Banks are provided with hospital shins and the most modern medical accessories, the United States fishing fleet in the same waters is without any such humane auxiliary, and has to depend for the treatment of its sick and injured upon the ministrations of its rivals or else has to suffer the loss of time and business in-' volved in coming to land to place helpless men under proper care. lhe Newfoundland medical mission has been at work now some: twelve years and is splendidly organized and equipped. The mis- sion is a branch of that which works among the British seamen and fisher folk and its extension to Newfoundland has been of immense benefit. Today it maintains three hospitals--one on: the French shore and two on Labrador--each with a resident doc-' tor, a trained. English-speaking nurse, a staff of local assistants' and a stout steam launch for the conveyance of 'patients. In ad- dition there is a fine modern yacht, the Strathcona, a 'steamer of 600 tons, built by Lord Strathcona, and presented by him to the' mission. In this ship the superintendent, Dr. Grenfell, cruises ev- ery season from the Grand Banks to Hudson bay, treating all who come to him for aid, regardless of race or condition, the same rule prevailing in all other branches of the mission. The total cost of this work each year is now about $20,000, and the number of house patients (serious cases) in 1902 was 110, and of out patients 2,664. Some thirty-five operations under anesthetics were undertaken, and eight deaths occurred in the hospitals or on the ship. The majority of these cases had no chance whatever of any other skilled assistance. It was not a question of better or worse treatment, but of suffering or dying without medical aid at all other than what the mission afforded. Some of the cases are unique in medical annals. The two-year- old child of a Labrador settler wandered away from the door- step in the winter, and when found both her feet were frostbit- ten. -Mortification set in, and to save her life the father chopped off both extremities with his wood axe. In due course the mis- sion doctor reached the place with his dog sled, and found the little sufferer almost at death's door. But he treated the stumps scientifically and preserved the child in health, even if she is stricken. with this infirmity. The child has now been fitted with artificial legs, and adopted by an English family. Another case is that of a little boy, the four-year-old son of the Hudson Bay Co.'s factor at Rigolet station, who was worried by savage Esqui- mau dogs until there were eighty-seven separate bits on his puny body. He was hurriedly brought to the nearest hospital, where he eventually recovered, though at first little hope was enter- tained of this. Equally remarkable are the cures effected among the fisher- men on the Banks. Most of these are surgical cases. Men are crushed by falling or breaking spars, have ribs or limbs fractured in storms, or are the victims of gunsnot accidents. The Strath- cona: in her cruises meets most of these, and the patients are' either transferred to her or, if not bad enough for this, treated on board their own vessels. If the cases are desperate or the yacht's accommodations crowded the ship is ordered to one of the hospi- tals and the man is housed there. Skippers, too, make for these centres of their own accord when a mishap occurs to their crews and the yacht is not near.. French, Portuguese, Canadians, Americans--all avail themselves of the missions, and their gen- erosity gets abundant play here. The story is told of one Yankee skipper who asked the hospital doctor if he would like a fresh fish for the patients, and, being answered in the affirmative, sent ashore a halinut weighing over a hundredweight and taking four men to carry. 'Staff and patients ate of it while they could, but had ultimately to bury its remainder some distance away, being without sufficient ice to preserve it. But, apart from this, these fishermen all pay in cash for their medicine and food, the sea- farer, as a class, being about the most independent man alive, and knowing only too well from sad experience afloat what a boon it is to secure such ministrations in time of sickness or misfor- tune. The ship and the hospitals have the latest devices in medical science, including the X-ray apparatus. They are lighted by elec- tricity, and are as well kept as much more pretentious institutions. The Newfoundland fishermen, working from their own coast and Labrador, and only a day's run seaward, do not need a hospital ship so much as they do a kindred institution on shore, and that is why these three buildings have been erected. Fully 20,000 New- foundland men are engaged in the fishery on the Banks and Lab- rador every season, and until the mission was established they had no medical aid whatever. Even as it is now, there is work for a larger staff than that employed, but this is naturally limited by the funds at the mission's disposal. Another work which it does that is of great good is in feeding the hungry and clothing the naked "livyeres" (live-heres, or permanent inhabitants) of Lab- rador, when the approach of. winter threatens these wretched be- ings with death in its worst form--i. e., from starvation and cold. Some idea of the misery these Labradorians endure can be realized from the fact that while the povulation of Newfound- land increased by 10 per cent. during the last decade that of Lab- rador declined from 4,211 to 3,586. The decline would have been much greater but that the mission was there to arrest it by med- ical services and providing food and raiment when_bad fisheries left death inevitable otherwise. No more self-sacrificing life can be imagined than that of these medical missionaries ploughing the ocean in their hospital ship or making long journeys up and down the coast by boat in summer or by dog sled in winter. The dread- ful monotony is broken only b~ the fortnightly visits of the mail steamer from St. John's, which calls at the different harbors to set off and take on mails, and from May until November the mission boats are occupied in their labors of love, affording their medical skill and creature comforts to the thousands of fisher folk who are obliged to depend for these attentions upon the philanthropic ef- forts alone of this splendid institution, which is doing such ad- mirable werk for stricken and suffering humanity in this land of desolation. : tS _ 'The hospital service for the French fishermen was established in 1899 by the Societe des CEuvres de Mer. 'This association fit- ted out a fine schooner, the St. Pierre of St. Malo, and dispatched her to the Grand Banks. She had the misfortune to be driven on the Newfoundland coast and completely wrecked on her first voy- age, with the loss of four men, but she was speedily replaced by another of the same name. In 1900 this ship was again in com- mission, but in. 190r.she was replaced with a steamer, the St. Francois d'Assise, a fine ship of 720 tons, 300 H. P. and 10 knots speed, besides a full sail plan, so that coal could be economized whenever possible. . In the construction and arrangement of this ship everything that experience and. ingenuity could suggest was provided for the sick and injured fishermen who were to be treat- ed on her, she being an ideal naval hospital. She has a spacious ante-chamber, with hot water bath for the ailing and for cast- aways; a consulting room, a pharmacy, a library, an operating room, a surgery for dressing wounds, a disinfecting chamber and the hospital proper. This has beds for thirty-six persons, while the ship's company is twenty-seven more, including two phy- sicians, four male nurses and a priest to minister to the spiritual needs of this floating parish. There are about 8,000 Frenchmen engaged on the Grand Banks every summer, and last season this ship made six cruises, among them five to the outer banks and one to the inner, which face the Newfoundland "French shore." During the six months of her work she communicated with 509 French fishing: vessels, had seventy-four sick persons as in patients, and treated 347 lighter cases. Besides this, she rescued twenty-one persons who were adrift in their dories and came within sight of her; twenty- six were transferred to her by other vessels which had picked them up, and she took off the sinking hull of the French schooner Navarraise eighteen others in imminent danger of death. All of these she conveyed to St. Pierre-Miquelon, where the marine au- thorities looked after their needs, the ship carrying stores of clothing to properly clothe such unfortunates as she might find adrift. On one occasion: last year she brought in fifteen men stricken with typhoid fever--the crew of a French vessel in which the disease had raged unrestrainedly. '1he craft was waterlogged and helpless when the yacht sighted her, the crew having been too ill to attend to her navigation. She was set on fire after the stricken sufferers had been removed from her, and soon vanished below the, waves. The crew, several of wnom were dangerously ill, recovered in time, except one, who died from weakness. All would have perished but for the hospital ship. Another time she rescued the crew of eight men from a crippled lumber bark, land- ing them at St. Mar~'s, on the south coast of Newfoundland. Besides this, she distributed 11,000 letters among the French fish- ing+fleet, and her kindly offices were freely availed of by the fishermen of other nationalities trawling on the banks. ; In the course of her peregrinations during weather that was sometimes calm, but more often "dirty," she carried on her work every day, her lifeboat visiting crafts which showed a distress signal, when it was too rough for their dories to reach her: At other times she had to send back in her boats men who had come to her in dories, as these were crushed by the seas against her sides. The extraordinary incidents identified with these dories exhibit in a sombre light the difficulties and dangers of the life led by these codfishers of all nationalities. Every year there are scores of victims swallowed up by the impenetrable fogs and in- satiable seas, as the little skiffs are abroad upon the waters and the pall of fog shuts down and blots out their vessels, leaving the dorymen helpless castaways, without food or water. Usually death is their fate, but if they escape that it is oftentimes only at the expense of frostbitten feet and arms, which have to be am- putated after entailing agonies beside which death itself is almost preferable. French fishermen are among the worst sufferers from these causes, as they often wear sabots with wisps of straw with- in, and no stockings, instead of being well shod with stout woollen socks and strong rubber knee boots, as are the American and Newfoundland fishermen who frequent the Grand Banks. That the United States fishermen have been without a hospi- tal ship or similar institution for so long is all the more remark- able when it is remembered what philanthropy has been accom- plished in other directions. It is thought that congress might make an appropriation for such a purpose, on the same principle that it maintains the life saving service. This would certainly be regarded as a most praiseworthy benefaction, offering, as it does, medical aid and the best of comforts and attention during sick- ness or accident to a most worthy class of workers while they pursue their hazardous occupation. It is believed that it would be a rare chance for some wealthy citizen to display his philan- thropy with good effect in providing a ship which a government . appropriation might maintain in the most efficient manner. John D. Rockefeller and George Gould have secured control of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Co. As the Rockefelier interest in the steel corporation is very large, it is intimated that the Colo- rado company will shortly be taken into the fold.