Amazing Medical Stories

by George Burden

  large chunk of metal from the Mont Blanc fell though four levels of their large house, embedding itself in the cellar. The family lived in the walk-in meat locker of the grocery store for some time after. Dot’s father, a tram driver, usually drove the waterfront route in Halifax, but due to the sickness of another driver he was doing the far-off Armdale route that day. The substitute driver on the waterfront route and the trolley car itself disappeared without a trace. The explosion blew the clothing right off many people, frequently without seriously injuring the nude victim. Dot recounts how her father happened on a woman naked in the street save for a purse and high heels. He garbed her in his coat, an act of generosity compounded by the fact that he also inadvertently gave her the trolley fares for the day, sixty-five dollars, in the garment’s pocket, a small fortune in 1917.

  Dot’s family was luckier than most, with no serious losses. Many were less fortunate. An enumeration of common injuries suffered during the explosion included amputations, burns, lacerations and fractures as well as eye trauma. Thirty-seven people were left blinded and two hundred and six individuals lost an eye. The faces of many would remain disfigured throughout their lives. Incredibly, some victims, such as Barbara Orr, reported being pushed by the blast for a quarter of a mile without lethal injury. In the hard-hit Richmond area of the city, entire households were obliterated. There were many orphans, and the pitiful remnants of once-large families rejoined to mourn and bury their dead.

  Initial relief efforts were hampered by fears that a second explosion would ensue from the munitions depot at the Wellington Barracks. Aid workers were forced to evacuate, leaving many to their fates in burning buildings. Records of the Halifax Children’s Hospital, however, show that upon being ordered to clear the building, the feisty superintendent, blood dribbling down her face, declared, “No one shall leave this building. It would mean the death of many of the children if they had to be moved…, and if it should be that we are to die… it will be at our post.” The Wellington munitions depot did not explode, thanks to the heroic efforts of Lieutenant C.A. McLennan, who doused hot coals blown into the bunker with a fire extinguisher. Another hero of the day was Vince Coleman, a worker at the Richmond railway yards, who stayed at his telegrapher’s station to warn away trains advancing to their doom. He died instantly in the blast.

  Needless to say, hospitals and morgues were overwhelmed by the gigantic load placed upon them. There were only four public hospitals in the Halifax area. The two largest were the Victoria General Hospital and the Nova Scotia Hospital for Infectious Disease, with less than four hundred beds between them, many already full. There was also the Children’s Hospital and another tiny infectious disease clinic. Four military hospitals and seven smaller privately run facilities were also able to accept patients. An American hospital ship, the U.S.S. Old Colony, took on two hundred wounded. Though the Camp Hill military hospital had two hundred and eighty beds, it had fourteen hundred patients crammed into its wards and

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  The morning after the Halifax Explosion. NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF CANADA, C-019953

  corridors on December 6. Supplies of anaesthetics were limited, forcing many surgical procedures to be done without chloroform. Perhaps because many were still in shock, this did not present as much of an obstacle to surgery as might be expected. Supplies of anti-tetanus serum were also limited and were used only on very high risk injuries, but tetanus was rare and far less problematic than tuberculosis. Worsened by the cold, poor nutrition and crowded living conditions, the “White Plague” was soon stalking the corridors of the hospitals and the shelters for the displaced.

  To compound matters, nature played a cruel joke by dumping sixteen inches of snow on the devastated city the day after the explosion. It was the worst blizzard in years and very unusual for Halifax at this season. There was a critical shortage of food, bedding and clothing. Clothes distribution was hampered by the reluctance of many with dead family members to wear colours other than black. The disruption of communications hampered the dissemination of news of the disaster, but once word had spread, aid poured in from all over Canada, including almost every town in Nova Scotia. The state of Massachusetts proved amazingly generous and contributed more than $750,000 in money and goods, a tremendous amount at that time. A train was dispatched from Boston carrying a team of thirteen physicians, as well as nurses, aid workers and some supplies. In appreciation of the state’s efforts, the government of Nova Scotia each year donates a huge Christmas tree which graces Prudential Plaza in Boston.

  Things gradually returned to some semblance of normality, though the rebuilding of the city, and more importantly, the lives of its citizens, would take many years. Many victims of the explosion would have suffered from what we today call Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). An insightful American neurologist, Dr. William McDonald, warned other health care workers that survivors often needed treatment for emotional trauma as much as for physical injury. Without therapy, PTSD sufferers are often doomed to a life of anxiety, nightmares and obsessive fear.

  The Halifax Relief Commission was formed to provide support to survivors. As recently as 1989, thirty people were still receiving benefits from its fund, though the commission itself was dismantled in 1975. In 1984, a monument to the victims of the Halifax Explosion, the Memorial Bell Tower, was inaugurated on the hill at Fort Needham in the north end of Halifax. The structure, reminiscent of the silhouette of a damaged building, incorporates a carillon of bells and was dedicated as a memorial the following summer, almost sixty-eight years after the explosion. Barbara (Orr) Thompson turned the sod for the ceremony at a site not far from where she’d been blown by the blast. Also present was nonagenarian Dr. Percy McGrath, travelling once more from Kentville as he had done many years before.

  And who was to blame for the disaster? Rumours of sabotage by the Germans abounded but were dismissed. Initially the Mont Blanc was declared to be totally at fault, but ultimately the Supreme Court of Canada declared that each of the involved vessels was equally to blame. Regardless of who was at fault, every December 6 at nine a.m. a memorial service is held at Fort Needham in memory of the explosion’s many victims. And on the hour, the sounds of the carillon bells ring out over Halifax’s north end, floating across the Narrows to Dartmouth to remind all of this great tragedy.

  George Burden

  DR. JOHN BRINKLEY

  AN INFAMOUS QUACK

  Say Au Revoir — but Not Goodbye,” stated the front page of the Liverpool paper when Dr. John Brinkley’s hundred-and-ten-foot yacht left the harbour in August of 1936.

  Everyone in the small community was in awe of the American millionaire. That year, he had invited the mayor and town councillors and their wives on board his yacht, where he entertained them lavishly. And, although little was known about the man, his ostentatious lifestyle and his exceptional fishing skills had greatly impressed the townspeople. Everybody knew that Brinkley had set a new record by landing a three-hundred-and-sixty-kilogram tuna, and he had told them that he was a physician practising in Del Rio, Texas.

  Years later, local historian Armand Wigglesworth, who was a young boy when he met him during one of Brinkley’s visits to Liverpool, mentions this intriguing fellow in his book, Anecdotes of Queens County, Nova Scotia(Volume 2) . He writes that Dr. Brinkley always created a stir when he arrived on his magnificent yacht and reports that the doctor was reputed to have something to do with “monkey glands. A fertility scam, it was said.”

  Wigglesworth was mistaken about the monkey glands. It was goat testicles that, in the 1920s and 1930s, helped make John Brinkley one of the richest fraud artists in the United States. Brinkley’s story is truly bizarre; the scams he perpetrated so successfully were so outrageous that it defies logic to think he managed to get away with them for more than twenty years.

  John Romulus Brinkley was born in 1885. Where he was born is debatable; whenever he applied for a medical licence, he provided different birthplaces: Kentucky, Tennessee
and North Carolina. What we do know about this charismatic man is that he attended what were then known as

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  Dr. John Brinkley. THE BRINKLEY OPERATION

  “eclectic” medical schools but never earned a legitimate medical degree. History has now revealed that two of the medical diplomas he displayed prominently on his office walls were purchased for about two hundred dollars each.

  In 1917, after a brief time in the military — his army record indicates that he served as a medical officer for a little more than a month — Brinkley opened a medical office in an empty drugstore in Milford, Kansas. Unbelievably, though he had little formal medical training, he was soon actively involved in a general practice and treated people afflicted with a variety of common maladies.

  A farmer known as “Mr. X” is said to have been the first patient to undergo Brinkley’s innovative new therapy. The poor fellow visited the doctor secretly to express concern about his dramatically diminished libido. During their conversation, Brinkley jokingly commented that the man would not have any problem if had a pair of “those buck goat’s glands in him.” The farmer must have visualized the sexual stamina of his own goats and was captivated by such an exciting possibility. He implored the doctor to “put them in.”

  At first Brinkley had misgivings about performing this surgery, but then he relented, saying he felt compelled to help a patient who was desperate to find a medical solution for his “sagging” sex drive. Using a local anaesthetic, Brinkley carried out the strange procedure. He inserted a pair of testicles from a Tottenburg goat into the anatomically correct area of the man’s body. Brinkley was delighted when later he learned that the goat testicles the farmer now possessed had, according to him, greatly enhanced his sex life. Even more remarkably, a year later, the man’s wife is said to have given birth to a baby boy who was most appropriately named Billy.

  After performing a number of his goat-gland transplant operations, Brinkley realized that he had discovered a way to make a great deal of money. He began to promote the surgery, mainly by gathering testimonials from grateful men who were willing to pay as much as a thousand dollars to regain their lost virility.

  In 1918, buoyed by his success, Brinkley built a hospital where a number of patients could be treated. One of his marketing ploys was to offer prospective patients the unique privilege of choosing the goat that was to be sacrificed for their testicular implantation. To give his hospital more credibility, Brinkley also had a photograph of the Mayo Clinic hanging on his office wall. He began to describe himself as the hospital’s Chief Surgeon, and he added M.D.C.M., Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and other credentials after his name.

  News of Brinkley’s phenomenal treatment was soon finding its way into the major newspapers. But when high-profile physicians were asked to comment on the goat-gland surgery, they invariably branded it as being entirely unsupported by scientific evidence. They also warned that it was potentially dangerous, and a number of deaths may have been linked to the procedure. One of Brinkley’s most vocal critics was Dr. Morris Fish-bein, the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association. For many years, Fishbein wrote scathing articles about the man, whom he considered to be a quack. Brinkley hated him, and often he accused the American Medical Association of being intent on destroying an “outstanding pioneer in medical research.” Some of Brinkley’s loyal fans insisted that his achievements were in the same league as those of Louis Pasteur, the famous French chemist.

  Amazingly, although there was growing opposition to his grotesque therapy, Brinkley’s practice flourished. He began to give regular “health talks” on KFKB, Milford’s radio station, which he just happened to own. Listeners as far away as Ontario could tune in to his “gland lectures,” and apparently a few Canadians made the long trip to his hospital.

  Always a brilliant entrepreneur, Brinkley recognized that it would be foolhardy for him to rely on making his goat-gland surgery the sole source of his income. He began to focus on other “male problems,” including offering a “guaranteed” prostate treatment. But when he came up with the idea of radio consultations, he really hit the jackpot. Both his popularity and his income began to skyrocket. With the cooperation of several hundred greedy druggists, he was soon prescribing huge numbers of his mailorder prescriptions and earning as much as ten thousand dollars a week.

  In the mid-1930s, when he was making regular summer cruises to the Atlantic region, Brinkley was a very rich man. American family doctors around the same period were earning an average of thirty-five hundred dollars a year, and specialists had yearly incomes of about seven thousand

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  The operating room, Brinkley Hospital, Milford, Kansas. THE BRINKLEY OPERATION

  dollars. Brinkley’s estimated income in 1937 was a million dollars. But his crooked ways were bound to catch up with him, and when he became aware of the possibility of serious legal problems, he decided to leave Kansas and move to Del Rio, Texas, where he built himself a magnificent mansion. In his palatial new home he hung a huge photograph of himself wearing the uniform — unbelievably — of an admiral in the Kansas navy.

  It is understandable that the residents of Liverpool were swept away by this charming man and his lavish lifestyle. The diamond watch and tie pins he liked to wear certainly helped create the fabulous image he loved to convey, as did the twenty-one-man crew who served on his yacht and had “Dr. Brinkley” emblazoned on their uniforms. As well, he liked to boast about the Lockheed Electra airplane he owned (which was eventually sold and used by the Royal Canadian Air Force for training purposes). Yes, the American millionaire yachtsman captivated the townsfolk of the seaside community.

  One might have expected Brinkley to be smart enough to save some of his accumulated wealth and to give up his medical chicanery. He might then have been able to retreat quietly to his Texas estate to enjoy a tranquil retirement. But that did not happen.

  In his excellent book, The Roguish World of Doctor Brinkley, author Gerald Carson provides an engrossing chronicle of this man’s extraordinary life and untimely death. Carson reports that Brinkley died of a heart attack on March 26, 1942. Only fifty-six years old, he had been forced to declare bankruptcy and was facing a serious complaint filed by the United States Post Office. The complaint alleged that he was using the mails to “defraud in connection with his goat-gland treatment.” It also stated that he and his group “did falsely pretend that John Brinkley was a great surgeon, scientist and physician, and that he, while visiting medical centres in Europe, had found a substance which would restore to normal sex vigour sexually weak men and women, and that the Brinkley treatment would cause men and women to live to be one hundred years old.”

  No doubt Brinkley was an outright con man, but he was also an astute businessman. Long before the advent of Viagra, he cleverly exploited a human frailty and made millions by misleading thousands of people. His claim, that he had found the secret to rekindling a man’s sex life, was universally appealing. Carson laments that it is most unfortunate that Brinkley didn’t direct his abilities towards more legitimate goals. He suggests that he might then have made a significant contribution to the field of medicine.

  Brinkley certainly did make an intriguing contribution to a small town’s history. He left behind memories of a dapper and charming American who was leading a life that the local residents could only envy. No wonder the Liverpool newspaper would bid him a fond farewell when his yacht departed the harbour. On these momentous occasions, the owners of fishing schooners and many small boats would show their respect by blowing their vessels’ horns to wish him bon voyage, thus saluting one of North America’s most notorious and successful charlatans.

  Dorothy Grant

  DR. ROBERT WRIGHT

  SNOWMOBILE PIONEER

  It was a cold January day in 1942, and the snow whirled and blew outside the windows of the old farmstead in Kennetcook. A four-year-old boy whimpered in his mother’s arms as she s
ponged off the thin trickle of pus that oozed from her son’s left ear. His temperature was high, and the loud crying of hours earlier had turned to ominous silence. His mother had called for Dr. Wright hours earlier, but nothing could move over the four-foot drifts that had buried all the roadways. Suddenly she saw a flicker of light in the field. Fatigue must be playing tricks on her eyes. Then she thought she heard a low droning noise like an airplane engine, but none of the aircraft at the nearby air base would be in the sky in weather like this. Then she saw it, a rooster plume of snow in the back field, thrown up by a strange propeller-driven vehicle, the weirdest contraption ever to grace her farm. It glided in past the old weathered barn and through the rickety front gate. An overcoat-clad figure, black bag in hand, rose and strode toward the front door of the farmhouse. The doctor had arrived. Dr. Wright quickly diagnosed the little boy as having mas-toiditis, a serious infection of the bone behind the ear, and he drained the infected mastoid cavity right there on the old pine kitchen table. The child would make it, thanks to Dr. Wright and his mechanical sleigh.

  Though no relation to Orville and Wilbur Wright, Dr. Robert Wright nevertheless deserves a place in the annals of transportation history. It all began in 1940, when he was a young family doctor fresh out of Dal-housie Medical School. Robert Wright and his wife Ritta settled in the little hamlet of Noel. Located on the shore of the Bay of Fundy, the town was originally an Acadian village dating from the 1700s. Founded in late December, it had been poetically dubbed Noel in honour of Christmas.

  The local people, glad to see a new medic in the neighbourhood, welcomed the young couple with open arms. Dr. Annie Hennigar, one of the era’s few female practitioners, was especially glad to see Robert so that she could cut back on her gruelling hours. She told him that he was welcome to do everything he wanted except pull teeth. That was to remain her domain.