Amazing Medical Stories (8 page)

When American President James Garfield was shot in 1881, his physicians
asked Bell to locate the bullet. Bell hoped to use a metal detector, which he had developed, to carry out this task. Though previously successful, the device malfunctioned due to the failure to remove all metal from the hospital room as Bell had requested. The mattress on which the President rested contained metal coils, so new an innovation at the time that few had heard of it. Bell rushed back to his lab and developed a “bullet probe” or “telephonic needle probe” which could be inserted into the entry wound. This invention was used very effectively in the Boer War and in World War I, but it was unfortunately too late to aid President Garfield. Ironically, the bullet was found in a fairly innocuous location at the autopsy, and it is thought that death probably resulted from infection due to repeated manual probing by the President's doctors. Bell was later awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Medicine at Heidelberg University for his bullet probe.

Another medical device invented by Bell was the audiometer. Developed in 1879, it is similar to the ones we use today to assess hearing loss. In honour of his work in this field, the unit by which we measure sound, the decibel, was named for the inventor. Genetics was another area Bell explored, and he studied in depth the patterns of deafness and longevity in humans.

Bell became fascinated by Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen's invention of the X-ray in 1895 and began working on his own device, taking the first medical X-ray in Canada at his home in Baddeck, in October 1897. True to the inventor's practical nature, the subject was not merely a healthy volunteer but a man with persistent foot and leg pain. Two local physicians, Dr. MacDonald and Dr. McKeen, asked Bell's help in locating a broken needle fragment in this patient's foot. The X-ray showed the needle clearly, and the doctors removed it, completely relieving the man's suffering. Bell also was the first person in North America to advocate treatment of deep-seated cancers using radium encased in glass tubes, thus becoming our first radiation oncologist.

Bell became interested in respiratory disease after it claimed the life of one of his sons. He invented an artificial lung, the “vacuum jacket,” remarkably like the iron lung used fifty years later to save polio victims. He hoped also to use this to resuscitate victims of drowning and successfully employed it to revive a sheep which had drowned. One of Bell's

Dr. Alexander Graham Bell searching with his metal detector for the bullet which felled American President James Garfield.
PARKS CANADA / ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL NATIONAL

employees witnessed this and, convinced it was the work of the devil, quit his job and even refused to accept a final paycheque.

Though his amiable nature made him well loved in the community, Bell had developed a bit of a reputation as an eccentric among some of the people in Baddeck. His early aviation experiments with huge kites did nothing to dispel this reputation, nor did his tendency to run around outside in his bathing suit during storms or float on Bras d'Or Lake on an inner tube smoking cigars for hours on end. Even after dark, his granddaughter reminisced, she'd often spot the glowing tip of his cigar in the gloom of the inlet.

Shortly after the Wright brothers' first flight, Bell formed the Aerial Experimentation Association. Under his auspices, John McCurdy designed and piloted the first heavier-than-air aircraft in the British Empire. The Silver Dart lifted off from the ice in Baddeck on January 9, 1909, flying nearly a mile at an altitude of thirty feet. This technology was subsequently
adapted to build high-speed hydrofoils (or hydrodromes, as Bell called them). It was hoped these vessels could be used to hunt down German U-Boats that were causing such devastation to shipping in World War I. In 1919, together with Casey Baldwin, Bell set the world waterspeed record of 70.86 miles per hour in the HD 4. This record was not broken for ten years. With the end of the war, the government lost interest in the hydrodrome project. The work of Bell and Baldwin was revived in the 1970s when Canada built a hydrofoil submarine chaser, appropriately named the
Bras d'Or
.

The HD 4 rotted on the shore for years until salvaged and incorporated into the displays of the Alexander Graham Bell Museum in Baddeck. This national historic site retains many of Bell's original inventions, which were donated by the family, as well as a full-scale replica of the HD 4. Here also can be seen Bell's artificial lung and his early X-ray equipment. There is even a telephone which used sunlight to transmit sound, impractical at the time, but anticipating fibre-optic and laser communication by a hundred years.

Aleck Bell loved to invent, and he loved people. One of his employees had eight children and did not own a house. The man was astounded when Bell handed him an envelope containing the deed to a home as a Christmas present. Perhaps most of all, the inventor adored children. Bell met Helen Keller when she was only six years old, and, recognizing the child's potential, he directed her to the Perkins Institute, where she came under the tutelage of Annie Sullivan. Later in life, Keller dedicated her autobiography to Bell to thank him for the help he had given her.

Bell was financially impractical, but his wife and friends ensured that he had the means to continue to invent and to indulge his generous dedication to science and humanity. However, he never allowed any of his medical devices to be patented as he felt it immoral to benefit financially from the misfortune of others. The inventor died at Beinn Breagh in 1922, and his wife followed five months later. Here they lie buried, their graves overlooking the misty inlets of Cape Breton which they loved so much.

George Burden

Dr. Alfred Pain, a second-class passenger on the
Titanic
.
COURTESY OF ALAN HUSTAK COLLECTION

Millions of words have been written about the sinking of the
Titanic
on April 15, 1912. Despite the monumental effort to try to make some sense of this horrendous tragedy, countless mysteries and thousands of untold stories of those who survived and those who did not continue to interest researchers.

For me, the nine doctors, eight men and one woman, now known to have been on that ill-fated ship represent a most fascinating conundrum. Although several of these physicians have received some attention, others remain notable only because they had the bad luck of being on the
Titanic
when it met its infamous demise.

Dr. William O'Loughlin was the White Star Line's chief surgeon. Born in Ireland, he was an orphan who was raised and educated by an uncle. He proved to be a distinguished student and in 1869 should have received a medical degree. But this didn't happen. Unfortunately for him, the Catholic university he had attended did not have a royal charter that would enable it to grant this kind of academic recognition. O'Loughlin, a devout Catholic, had refused to attend Trinity College, a Protestant university. This dogmatic stance cost him the chance to earn a medical degree. Instead, he received only a license to practise medicine, although subsequently he did become a licentiate of the King's and Queen's College of Physicians in Ireland.

Dr. O'Loughlin, who never married, had a passion for the sea. Ironically, he once declared that when he died he wanted his body thrown into the sea, which for him must have represented the “mistress” he loved very much.

Dr. O'Loughlin's first responsibility, prior to the
Titanic
's sailing, was to examine the crew and steerage passengers. His assistant, Dr. J. Edward Simpson, joined him in this important task. Heads were scrutinized for lice, and the doctors were also on the lookout for infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and trachoma, a highly infectious and potentially blinding disease of the eye. Any passenger with trachoma was unceremoniously ordered off the ship, since American immigration laws did not permit them to enter the country.

Dr. J. Edward Simpson, the assistant surgeon, was also Irish. Born in Belfast, he was the son of a doctor. He studied at the Royal University of Ireland, and unlike O'Loughlin, he did earn a medical degree from Queen's University in Belfast. He was a member of the British Medical Association. Only thirty-seven at the time of the disaster, he was a married man and the father of a young son. Apparently, it was his poor health that had influenced him to pursue a “healthy” career at sea, and this decision led to his serving as a medical officer on several steamships.

The
Titanic'
s reign at sea lasted only a few days, and during this brief period of glory, its passengers experienced few noteworthy medical problems. One lady, who was a first class passenger, fell down a flight of stairs, breaking a small bone in her arm. One account reports that her arm was placed in a plaster cast by Dr. Simpson. Another states that she was treated by Dr. Henry Frauenthal, a distinguished orthopedic surgeon who was also a passenger on the ship.

Dr. Frauenthal was the founder of the New York Hospital for Joint Diseases. Born in Pennsylvania, he had a background in analytical chemistry, and he studied medicine at Bellevue Hospital Medical Clinic. Early in his medical career he became convinced that a hospital devoted entirely to chronic joint diseases was desperately needed. In 1904, he opened a small clinic. On the first day only eight patients were treated, but by the end of that year it had provided almost ten thousand treatments. Dr. Frauenthal quickly earned a reputation as an outstanding specialist, and during the same time he acquired a sizeable fortune. He, along with his new bride and his brother, were first-class passengers on the
Titanic.

Dr. Alfred Pain was also a passenger on the ship. The young University of Toronto Medical School graduate was travelling in second-class accommodations. Born in Hamilton, Ontario, he had been an excellent student
and a fine athlete. After spending a short time as a house doctor at the Hamilton City Hospital, he had gone to England to further his studies. Originally, he hoped to finance his journey home by finding a position as a ship's doctor. When this couldn't be arranged, he booked passage on the doomed
Titanic.

Dr. William Minahan, a graduate of Rush Medical College, Chicago, was the third member of his family to enter the medical profession. In 1899, he established a practice in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, where he became a highly respected physician, well known not only for his surgical skills but also for the large amount of charity work he did. A first-class passenger, forty-four-year old Dr. Minahan was travelling with his wife, Lillian, and his sister.

Dr. Ernest Moraweck, an internationally known eye specialist, was a resident of Frankfort, Kentucky. A widower, he was returning home from medical business in Europe. He assisted a fellow passenger by removing a foreign body from her eye.

Dr. Alice Leader, a fifty-five-year-old physician, practised medicine in New York with her husband, John. A first-class passenger, she shared a cabin with another woman.

Dr. Washington Dodge, also a first-class passenger, graduated from the University of California medical school sometime in the mid-1880s. In 1896, he left the medical profession and entered politics. Apparently he did extremely well in his new role and had become a very popular and affluent member of the political community in San Francisco. He and his second wife and their five-year-old son, Washington Dodge, Jr., were on their way home from a visit to Paris. They had been in Europe primarily for him to consider a prestigious position with an international banking firm. The doctor's health seems to have been failing, and during his time in Paris he had consulted a specialist.

Almost nothing is known about Dr. Arthur Brewe, a physician from Philadelphia.

On April 14, 1912, all of the physicians on the
Titanic
must have spent the early evening hours feeling entirely safe aboard the majestic ocean liner. Early in the day, Dr. O'Loughlin had lunched with Tommy Andrews, the proud builder of the ship. That evening, his dinner companion was Bruce Ismay, the Managing Director of the White Star Line, the
company that had audaciously built what it contended was a “practically unsinkable” ship. The fanciful deception was about to be shattered.