THE RADIO DOCTOR

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 89, 30 March 1932, Page 3

THE RADIO DOCTOR

HIS UNSEEN PATIENTS. In Ottawa sits the panel doctor who has the widest practice in the world. His name, Dr. F. S. Parley, is known all over the wild Canadian North. From Aklavik on the west of the continent to Cape Chidley on the east people hear him; but his patients never see him and lie never sees them. He hears, speaks, advises, prescribes by wireless. An interesting account of his work is given by the “Children’s Newspaper.” In the outposts of Canada are Government weather and radio stations, depots of the Canadian Mounted Police, fur-trading posts, mining camps, and at each little group of people dwell in loneliness. The loneliness is not what it was before the wireless arrived to keep them in touch with the life of cities. But sometimes, sweeter far than any music, comes one of the bedtime stories of Dr. Parley. The story comes on a well-arranged plan. At each of these far-away Government posts is a medical manual, like the one that Dr. Parley, Chief Medical Officer or the Government Department of Health, keeps on his desk at his headquarters in Ottawa. It is like a naval signal book, except that it gives more diffuse information, and is written in words that can be understood by any layman. It tells one, for example, how to examine a patient, what symptoms are important in any particular case, and what treatments to follow.

With the medical manual is a cabinet containing 72 standard medicines and a first-aid kit with instructions how to use it. The solitary outpost has in fact everything but advice in difficult cases. The advice comes over hundreds of miles of the desolate North by wireless from Dr. Parley. People call Dr. Parley up by wireless, telling him all tliey can. Tho wireless doctor makes a swift diagnosis and in a few minutes the treatment is flashed back. Tho advice given may be how to deal with a frost-bite or what to do with a broken wisdom tooth. It may be something far more serious, like the dangerous illness of an Eskimo woman who is listed in the Government records as “Maggie, wife of Tommy,” Resolution Island.

Maggie was very ill indeed. Dozens of messages were exchanged between Dr. Parley and Resolution Island. Once the circuit was held open all day while her case was considered, her symptoms carefully noted, her temperature watched, and the emergency remedies radioed back. More often the treatments are simpler. The doctor may wireless back the instructions to turn to page 52 in the manual and follow the instructions, or to use medical 37 in tho drug cabinet.

out an unseen skilful hand to patients hundreds of miles away by desolate lakes and woods and rivers, needs imagination and swift resource, aud sympathy above all. The men who are carrying out his instructions need these qualities too. Once a patient had dangerous disturbance in his chest. The doctor told his informant to draw an imaginary big cross on the chest and say where the pain was. It was in the northern half of the south-left quadrant. Dr Parley was satisfied and prescribed accordingly.