THE WIRELESS DOCTOR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21136, 19 March 1932, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE WIRELESS DOCTOR.

WORLD'S WIDEST PRACTICE. I

DR. PARLEY'S PARLEYS.

FROM OTTAWA TO THE-WILDS.

In Ottawa sits tho panel doctor who f has the widest practice in the' world. 4 His name, Dr. I\ S-. Parley, is known all over the wild Canadian North. From I Aklavik on the west of the continent to I. Capo Chidley on the east people hear him-If but his patients never see him# and he never sees them. He hears, I speaks, 'advises, prescribes by wireless. | An interesting account of his work is given by tho Children's Newspaper. In the outposts of Canada are Govern-' I ment weather aftd radio stations, depots J of the Canadian Mounted Police, fur-trad. :f ing posts, mining'camps, and at each little § groups of people dwell in loneliness. The loneliness is not what it was before the -I wireless arrived to keep them in touch -I with tho lifo of cities. But sometimes, J sweeter far than any music, comes one I of the bedtime stories of Dr. Parley. ■-!) Tlie story comes on a well-arranged plan. At each of these far-away Govern, rnent posts is a. medical manual, like the one that Dr. Parley, chief medical officer of the Government Department of j Health, keeps on his desk at his headquarters in Ottawa. Hundreds of Miles Away. It. is like a naval signal book, except that, if? gives more diffuse information, and is written in words that can be ' • understood by any layman. _ It tells one, for example, h ow t? 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 facteverything 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 they can. The wireless doctor 'makes a swift diagnosis and in a few minutes the treatment is flashed back Tho advice given may bo 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 arid Resolution Island. Once the circuit was held open all day while her case was considered, her symptoms carefully noted, her temperature watched and thei emergency remedies radioed back. % The' Unseen Hand. More often the treatments are simpler.The doctor may wireless back the instruction to turn to page 52 in the manual and follow- the instructions, or to' use medicine 37 in the drug cabinet. _ _ But the man. whose task is to sit in that quiet office in Ottawa, reaching out an unseen skilful hand to patients hundreds of miles away by desolate lakes and woods and rivers, wants imagination and swiift resource, and sympathy above all. The men who are carrying out his instructions want these qualities too. Once a patient had dangerous disturbance in hi 3 chest. The doctor told his informant to draw an imaginary big cross on the chest and say where', the paiin was. It was in the northern half of the south-left quadrant. Dr. Parley was satisfied and prescribed accordingly-