PAINS OF PROGRESS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 160, 8 July 1932, Page 8

PAINS OF PROGRESS.

ESKIMO CATCHES COLD. PENALTY OF WEARING CLOTHES. LONG FLIGHTS BY DOCTORS. Thanks to the "advance" of civilisation, the Eskimo has fallen a victim to influenza. The Eskimo never knew what a cold was before he started wearing clothes and eating canned foods. The problem of - maintaining an efficient medical service in the Arctic wastes is being tackled by the Canadian Government, and doctors and hospitals have been placed at strategic places throughout the region of perpetual snow to serve a growing native population coming daily into closer contact with the fringe of civilisation. Changes in methods of living with the development of the territory have brought to the native frequent epidemics of influenza, which have wiped out whole villages a"iid camps. All this has been noted by traders and Government explorers, who have advocated the establishment of medical centres to teach the natives sanitation and how to adapt their life to the changing conditions. The doctors of the North-west Territories are not office-bound. Their territory encompasses hundreds of square miles, and they have to visit their patients. It is not a matter of the sick coming to the doctor, but the doctor seeking out the sick. He travels by aeroplane, canoe, river steamer or dog team to his patients. The " Mackenzie River country being the most populated, four of the seven doctors are located there. Fort Smith is the most southerly of the chain of medical posts, situated at the boundary of the North-West Territories and Alberta, on the Slave River. Farther down the river at Resolution, on Great Slave Lake, is another doctor. The third is at Fort Simpson, on the Mackenzie River. Indians live in this territory,

and so the Department of Indian Affairs looks after these three doctors. They have hospital accommodation available, the hospitals being operated jointly by the Government and the missionary organisations. Ideal Patients. At Aklavik, at the mouth of the Mackenzie River, on the Arctic Ocean, Dr. J. A. Urquhart is in charge. He has been stationed there for two years. Last year he travelled 3i>oo miles by dog team in the carrying out of his duties. During the summer he ran up a mileage of KiOO in his hospital ship Medico, which is equipped to carry a number of patients. Dr. Urquhart has found the Eskimos ideal patients and states that they never request help unnecessarily. At Coppermine, GOO miles along the Arctic coast from Aklavik, is another doctor. The next one has his quarters at Chesterfield Inlet, on Hudson Bay. The fourth of these appointed by the NorthWest Territories and Yukon branch of the Department of the Interior resides at Fangnirtung, on Baffin Island, and is separated from Greenland only by the iee-packed Davis Strait. Medical Supplies. The medical posts are equipped with all the necessary appliances and medicines to take care of the inhabitants of the large territory around each base. Enough suplies to last two years are on hand, taking care of the possibilities that no boat or 'plane can come through for a year. Once a year now supplies are shipped in, and every few years it is expected the doctors will ho given a holiday from their isolated medical practices. There are compensations for this isolation. Xo doctor in the city can go out and hunt caribou, moose, bear. musk-ox, haree, seals, and walrus every day in the week. But the doctor who goes to the Arctic can count on these things. , He will got the thrill that i* behuul a good team of Eskimo huskies. with a well-shoed native sled, speeding over ice and snow on the chase in company with natives and Mounted Police constables. He will see sights and probably travel over country which fi' v white men have seen. His calls wil not all be from the small population n the post where lie is stationed, an! adventure will be with him when he hits the trail in the deep of winter with an Eskimo, a team of dogs and a komitik. >