MEDICAL CARRIER-PIGEONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 6261, 10 December 1881, Page 7

MEDICAL CARRIER-PIGEONS.

According to an American journal, a physician of Erie, Pennsylvania, is training pigeons for use in his practice. Some of hie young birds, put upon the road to make records for distance, have made very good time, viz., fifty miles in ninety minutes, sixty-six miles in eighty-two minutes. Homing pigeons are largely used by country physicians both here and abroad. One doctor in Hamilton county, New York, uses them constantly in his practice, extending over almost two townships, and he considers them an almost invaluable aid. After visiting a patient he sends the necessary prescription to his dispensary by a pigeon ; also any other advice or instruction the case may demand. He frequently also leaves pigeons at places from which he wishes reports of progress to be despatched at specified times, or at certain crises. He says he is enabled to attend to a third more business at least through the time saved to him by the use of pigeons. In critical cases he is able to keep posted by hourly bulletins from the bedeide between daylight and nightfall, and he can recall case after case where lives have been saved that must have been lost if he had been obliged to depend upon ordinary means of conveying information.