MEDICAL PRACTICE IN OTAGO AND SOUTHLAND IN THE EARLY DAYS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3495, 1 March 1921, Page 53

MEDICAL PRACTICE IN OTAGO AND SOUTHLAND IN THE EARLY DAYS.

By

ROBERT VALPY FULTON.

M.D.

No. LII.—TOKOMAIRIRO IN THE SIXTIES AND SEVENTIES. - FRANCIS M'BEAN STEWART. The eariy settlers were just as keen on all kinds of sport as the present generation. Horse racing, ploughing matches, trotting, and cricket matches were popular forms of recreation. The first races were held on May 3, 1864 in a paddock across the North Branch, near L. Dawson’s residence. Although there were only four races and the first started punctually to time, there was much grumbling at the delay in getting off subsequent events. This led to a row between the stewards and the clerk of the course, for the delay was such that the last race had to be run absolutely in the dark. In this race one of the jockeys was knocked off and seriously hurt and many of the horses ran off the course into the river, causing great amusement. The first race, Bruce District Purse, 25sovs, was won by W. Draper’s Lady Morgan; second race, Tokomairiro Handicap, 60sovs, second horse lOsovs, C. I. Hoyt’s Rob Roy first, D. Corson’s Shillelagh second; third Tace, Hurdle Handicap, 40sovs, D. Corson’s Shillelagh first, C. I Hoyt’s Rambler, second; and the last race, Farmers’ Scurry, 20scvs, Martin’s Jenny Lind first, and Hoyt’s Negro second. In this race Mr Hoyt’s Negro met with an accident and died during the night. The first ploughing match held at Tokomairiro was in 1857, said to have been the first held in Otago. On that occasion not one horse-team competed, all were bullockteams, and most of the bullocks were yoked in the primitive fashion of bows and yokes. The fifth match is reported in the Herald of August 4, 1864. Regret was expressed at the falling off of entries as compared with the match held in 1862, when 40 ploughs were entered as against 26 this year. The ground chosen was Mr Thomas Reed’s “Esk Bank” farm. There was only one plough with bullocks, and these were in harness. The prizes were won by the ploughmen of the following settlers : —first prize, £5, Peter McGill ; second prize, £4. John McFarlane; third prize, £3, John Dewe; fourth prze, £2, James Martin; fifth prize, £l, Robert McKenzie. John L. Gillies’s prize for the best kept harness was won by Peter McGill, and James Lockhart’s prize for the second best kept harness was won by James Smith. In the evening 70 gentlemen sat down to a dinner in the White Horse Hotel. Mr Dewe, R.M., was chairman and Mr H. Clark, M.P.C., vice. Judging from the toasts and the generous offers of prizes for the next match all must have had a good time. Of that merry party Mr James Lockhart only remains. I he Tokomairiro Property Investment Society, the precursor of the present Bruce Building Society. was established in December, 1863. under the presidency of W. H. Maneford. The first annual meeting was held in March, 1865, when the profits on 513 shares amounted to £lOBl. Mr Alfred Jones was elected president for the ensuing year. The volunteer movement in Otago really originated in Tokomairiro in 1860. At a public meeting held in January of that year, Mr Dewe proposed that it was desirable to oragnise a volunteer force in Tokomairiro, and the proposal was carried with acclamation. Application was forthwith made to the authorities for instructions, and about six months later a reply was received from the Colonial Secretary with the necessary information for raising a corps. Another meeting was held, when a strong committee was appointed to canvas the district. At a subsequent meeting a petition for enlistment, signed bv upwards of 150 men, was presented, and this petition was forwarded to the Superintendent for transmission to Auckland. Pending a reply, the volunteers proceeded with their arrangements, and elected their officers. After months of delav inquiries ■were made, and it was found that the petition had not been forwarded from Dunedin. (Tlie above par is abridged from the Herald of 30th June, 1864). Bruce Rifles.—At a meeting on 9th July, 1864, it was resolved to raise a volunteer force in Tokomairiro, and an influential committee was formed to report on the 16th. At this meeting a petition for enrolment was signed hv 70 men and forwarded to Auckland with a request for a supply of arms and ammunition. Application was then made to Commissioner St. John Branigan to allow Constable Perdue to act as instructor, and on the 26th the first drill took place, the men deciding to drill twice a week. On the 16th of August the Governor accepted the services of petitioners and promised a supply of arms. etc. On September 13. the company made its first appearance in public and marched through the town. On the 20t.h, Adiutant Graham, of Dunedin Militia, swore in the men as members of the Bruce Rifles. Tlie following officers were appointed on November 23 :—Alfred Jones, captain ; Edward Stewart. lieutenant ; Harry Marvatt, ensign ; these officers to elect the non-coms. Long Enfield rifles were issued on December 7. and the first march out in uniform took place on March 1. 1865. In those days two breweries were in full operation at Milton—Braithwaite. Hickling & Co in the “Tokomairo Brewery,” and A. D. Duncan, a local hotelkeeper, in “The Milton Brewery.” At. the annual licensing meeting held on April 20, before John Dewe and J. P. Maitland, R.M’s., the following publicans’ licensee were granted : —R. W. Capstick. White Horse Hotel; A. I). Duncan, New Bridge Hotel; Janies Ooodall. Tokomairiro Hotel; Thos. Lewis, Royal Oak Hotel; Henry Morwitch, Great Britain Hotel ; a fid Alexander Stewart. Milton Hotel. Applications by R. W. Capstick and

Henry Morwitch for 12 o’clock instead of 10 o’clock licenses were refused, the Bench not considering a 12 o’clock license to be necessary in the district. The Herald advertised that the partnership existing between Edward Stewart and William Scott f under the firm of S'tewarfc & Scott, clothiers, Tokomairiro, was on April 11, 1864, dissolved by mutual consent. The business was then carried on by Edward Stewart, who was a popular and public spirited citizen. He continued the business to the date of his death in 1892, when it was taken over and is still carried on by the members of his family. Samuel Rowley advertised for sale 30,C00 thorns, 3000 apple, pear, plum and cherry trees, and 500 gooseberry and currant bushes, and Henry White 40,000 thorns and 1000 fruit trees. Mr White, however, offered cabbage, Scotch kale, and savoy plants at Is 6d per 100, and announced that he would give, free of charge to purchasers of 1000 and over, “White’s” cure for the blight. There could not have been many sales of 1000 and over, because the blight is still as troublesome as ever. Through the sixties toiled and shivered in the winters, sweated and gasped in the summers, Drs Fleming, Weber, and Fergusson, each in his turn doing his best for tile-people around him. So through the sixties we pass, a- wonderful decade which changed the very face of the Tokomairiro Plain. Gold brought prosperity, prosperity population; journalists note with interest that telegraphic messages were sent light through to Invercargill early in 1865 ; sportsmen, that black swans were first liberated upon Waihola Lake in December of the same year. In 1866 the foundation was laid of the Anglican church at Tokomairiro. Chinese first arrived in the Province, first show of the Otago Agricultural, and Pastoral Society, nomination of mayor and councillors of the town of Milton, Mr Brown elected ; first cable message from Wellington to Dunedin, death of the oldest resident in the Bruce district, Thomas Russell, who had been at-Willsher Bay ip 1840, and whose cottage was still standing. In 1867, the Governor, Sir George Grey, toured the whole Province, and Milton was en fete with arches, etc. A paragraph appeared in the Southland News about the successful acclimatisation of rabbits. Trout ova were brought from Tasmania, Anderson’s, the first steam flour mill opened in Dunedin. In 1868 the first Clutha Agricultural Show, importation by the Acclimatisation Society of thrushes, blackbirds, house sparrows, skylarks, etc., Provincial Council offer a bonus of £ISOO for the first five thousand yards of woollen cloth locally manufactured, opening of traffic bridge at Balclutha. Reaping machines were first made by Reid and Gray in 1869. Rabbits were first voted a nuisance, visit of the Duke _ of Edinburgh, first bicycle and tricycle exhibited in Dunedin, farewell to Mr Branigan and gazetting of Commissioner Weldon, first meeting of the University Council, arrival of Maori prisoners, promotion of Forbury Park Company. In 1870, the very first intimation that D'r Moran, of Port Elizabeth, Cape of Good Hope, was appointed Roman Catholic Bishop of Dunedin appeared in the Bruce Herald on February 24. Rev. James Chisholm called to 'tokomairiro. Provincial Council sets apart endowments for hospitals and High Schools. Reunion of Ota go and Southland, first parade of cadet companies. In November 1870, J. C. Brown became Member for Bruce, a road steamer was imported by J. L. Gillies, and the Clutha and Tokomairiro Club Shows were a great success and attraction. In Alarch 1871 the first, sod of the Clutha railway was turned by" His Excellency, Sir George Bowen, and during the course of construction of this line, which was let in sections by contract, numbers of minor accidents took place, and not a few, more serious, owing to slips of earth or breaking of timbers; limbs were broken and men, at times, were actually killed outright, or smothered under an accumulation of debris before they could be extricated. 'His elections for the House of Representatives brought out some curious contests, there was a sort of general scramble for seats, men standing for several seats at one time and “taking a shot.” Thus, in 1870, Macindoe beat Cutten for Caversham; in 1871, Murray beat Cutten for Bruce, and Thomson beat Atacandrew for Clutha, Brown beat Cutten for Tuapeka, and Maeandrew beat Jago for Port Chalmers. In the Provincial Council elections, which were quite different, but generally held about the same time, Cutten obtained a seat for Dunedin City, Mollison heat Dyer for Waihola, and Thomson and Henderson were elected for Clutha. In July, Mr John Gillies died; and on August 23 the people of the Tokomairiro district gave a very fine valedictory testimonial, etc., to their magistrate, Mr Dewe. In October, Mr Arthur Burns began the manufacture of cloth at Mosgiel, and in a short time the mills were in full swing, but it was many years before the people of Milton succeeded in establishing the fine factory for similar work in the Tokomairiro district. At this time Harry Yeend’s coaches ran regularly from the Empire Hotel in High street, just about Watson's of to-day, spanking their way to the White Horse at Milton, and back every day. Six fine white horses mode a great display as they clattered into Princes street, wheeling to the right, scattering the pedestrians and settling into their collars for the first pull up Princes street past the new Post Office, now the Lands Office. We are enabled through the courtesy of the trustees of the late Mr Alex. Thomson to show an ex cell ent photograph of the Tokomairiro coach preparing for a start. The coach is standing just in front of a butcher’s shop above the Empire. Air Walter Beadle, of Islington street, an early resident of Dunedin, informs us that in this shop, or one - its immediate predecessors, there was a chopping and sausage-making machine which was driven hv a “horsepower,” but instead of the circular track horse-power, so often seen on farms m those clays, this was worked by a tread mill, and a sturdy horse plodding awav on its dreary round was a source of endless delight, to the boys of the time. In January 1872 the White Horse Hotel at Milton

was burned down, and in March of the same year the Empire Hotel in Dunedin, from which the coach started, was also badly burned. In April the Kaitangatd coal mine was first opened for the production of coal, and on May 17 the Tokoniairiro and Clutha Societies held their first grain show, practically the first “Winter Show” of the Province, if not of New Zealand. Goodall was elected Mayor of Tokomairiro, and McNeil of Balclutha. The first cablegram came through from London in eight days, and the first stone of the new post office for Milton was laid with considerable ceremony on May 14, 1873. J. L. Gillies defeated Ounmnghame for the Provincial Council seat for Milton, but Cunninghame was shortly after elected Mayor of the town, the following year being succeeded by Goodall; the Tokomairiro Farmers' Club held a great ploughing match, the Southern trunk railway was opened as far as Green Island on December 14, 1874. In March, 1874, there came to Tokomairiro another doctor. The district had grown greatly in importance, as the preceding summary shows. Fleming had moved to Oamaru, Weber was in indifferent health, and Fergusson was anxious to transfer to Dunedin, so that Francis Mcßean Stewart, a. Scottish surgeon of midle age, thought that he had at last lighted on a good field, and he made overtures to Fergusson for the purchase of his practice. He had been practising in the Homeland for some 10 years, and as he was of the age and experience to suit the district-, he soon came to an agreement with Fergusson. One of the first patients they had -bo attend together was Dr Adolph Weber, who died suddenly the same year. Mcßean Stewart was attracted to the Colony by the glowing stories of the prosperity of the country, and at the same time, no doubt, felt that the climate would be of benefit to his health. He had been severely affected by frost bite in the Arctic regions, to which he had made several voyages, and this had left him. slightly lame in both feet. A country district, not too difficult to get about in, one in which a good rider could comparatively easily cover the work, Milton under 1 the improved conditions of the fairly decent roads of the seventies seemed to him the very place. He was thick set and of sturdy frame, genial and goodnatured, an excellent surgeon and a skilful physician. He was born in Dundee in 1838, and at the age of seven went to live with his uncle. Rev. Francis Mcßean, of the Parish of Fort Augustus, on the shores of Loch Ness. In 1855, he went to Edinburgh to study medicine and enrolled at the Royal College of Surgeons, but during his course, as numbers of young fellows did in those days, vent as a surgeon to the Arctic regions on a whaling vessel, the Steamer Narwhal. He later continued his studies and in 1863 made another voyage to the inclement North, this time' experiencing great cold, which ever after more or less affected him. Among the men who were his teachers at file college and university were Alison, Alexander Wood, Christison, Miller, and Simpson, the latter the well-known obstetrician who had introduced chloroform and was at that time at the zenith of his fame, two years later receiving a baronetcy. It may here be of interest to the Tokomarairiro settlers not a few of whom remember the Highlands of Scotland, and nmny the Edinburgh of 1870, to remind them that James Simpson died on May 13 of that year, and it is computed that over 30,000 persons attended or witnessed his burial. One of his greatest p'easures was archaeological research, and an intimate friend, with similar 1 tastes, was Professor James Pillans, whose relatives were well-known settlers in the Clutha district of the seventies. Mcßean Stewart was to us another link with the great- teachers of medicine in Great Britain, and must often have listened to the words of wisdom which fell from their lips. Simpson’s lectures were occasionally enlivened with stories of folk-lore and ancient history, and possibly some of the Scottish settlers of the Tokomairiro of to-dav remember the burial of living cattle for the “staying of the murrain.” Sir James often told the story how his grandfather, Alexander Simpson, of Linlithgow, a man of great shrewdness, was highly skilled in the diagnosis and treatment of cattle disease, but to these qualities was added a dash of deep superstition. On one occasion when murrain or rinderpest, threatened to empty the well-filled cow byre at Slackend, the old man took counsel with his sons and pointed out that the plague could only he stayed by the giving up of a cow to he buried alive. Accordingly a, grave, was prepared in a. field behind the byre and the animal led to it with great solemnity. “How shall we get her in,” said one son. “Father will take the head, you take the tail, and we will push at the side,” was the ready answer. “I remember.” said the man who told the story, seeing the earth heaving as the soil was pushed in.” Dr Simpson when detailing the store used these words, “Certainly some strange superstitions still remain among us : I have myself often listened to the account given hv one near and dear to me who was in earlv life personally engaged in the offering up and burying alive of a poor cow as a sacrifice to the Spirit of the Murrain.” Another of his relatives enclosed the corner of one of liis fields with a triangular stone wall, this piece which was cut off was the “Gudeman’s Croft,” an offerin'" to the Spirit of Evil, in order that he might abstain from blighting or damaging the rest of the farm : another interrupted his sowing of seed for a day. because two magpies flew across his fields, under the belief that all seed sown between the time of their flight and sunset would he blighted : another uncle would return home at once if a hare crossed the road in front of him. “It is not to he thought, that, these were vulgar and valueless superstitious, in reality they were to the arehaeoligists of great interest and importance, when we remember that the popular superstitions of Scotland are for the most part, true vestiges of the pagan creeds and . , l .mis of our earlier ancestors, our promot folk-lore being only a degenerated form of the highest mytliologie and medical lore of very distant times.” We have ourselves in Otago been, told of one of the

best cures for the “kinks of whooping cough” is to “let the baims rin back and forrit beneath the belly of a cow or horse in the cow yard.” This possibly has some far off connection with the principle of getting the children out into the fresh air, and also the well-known idea of the value of the smell of cowsheds and dairies as a cure for consumption. Simpson was a firm believer in bleeding, as was Warburton Begbie, another of Mcßean Stewart’s teachers, and to this country was brought the best of the teaching which these men had instilled into the Scottish emigrant to our shore®. He became L.R.C.S. and P. Edin. In 1864, and shorfly after was appointee medical officer of the Dundee Hospital. Later he began practice in Inverness, and became Medical Officer of Health, Inspector of Shipping, and surgeon of the Inverness Dispensary; also assistant-sur-geon to the Invernessshire Highland Light Infantry Militia, and to the Second Battalion Cameron Highlanders. After four years he left Inverness and was appointed surgeon on the S.S. “Carpentaria,” a mail boat running between Glasgow and New York, and he remained on that route for two years. He then decided to visit the Colonies, and arrived in Dunedin on December, 1873, by the “City of Dunedin” (Captain Daniel Ross), acting as surgeon of the ship on the voyage out. Dr Mcßean Stewart commenced the practice of his profession in Tokomairiro, Otago, in March. 1874, where he remained for a period of two and a-half years, during which time he had many dangerous trips visiting patients in the outlying districts fording rivers in flood, journeying for long distances and finding his way over hill and plain at all hours on horseback. In 1876 he left Tokomairiro and settled in Ashburton, Canterbury, and during his etay there was chairman of the school committee, one of the managers of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, and took great interest in the advancement of that rising township In 1881 he removed to Christchurch, where he later became honorary surgeon to the Chistchurch Hospital, subsequently honorary senior surgeon for a period of 12 years, and on resigning from this position he was elected a member of the Christchurch Hospital Board. In addition to his strictly professional work, he was one of the founders of the Caledonian Societies in Tokomairiro, Ashburton and Christchurch, member of Christchurch City Council, and w'as a strong advocate for the inspection of slaughterhouses, the erection of abattoirs, and a more rigid inspection of dairies. Dr Mcßean Stewart was a. man of cheerful disposition,-kind-hearted to a fault, a great lover of his native heath, a good raconteur of humorous experiences, and a spl elidid conversationalist. He died in 1906, aged 68, and waa buried at Addington Presbyterian Cemetery, leaving a widow, three sons and one daughter. His eldest son, LieutenantColonel Douglas Mcßean Stewart, left N.Z. in charge of the Ist Canterbury Infantry Battalion on October loth, 1914, and was killed in action on Gallipoli on April 25. 1915. Note. —So many inquiries have reached us with regard to these articles, and so widespread appears to be the desire that they should appear in hook form, that we have decided to issue a slip, which those anxious to see the book appear are requested to cut out, sign, and return to the author without delay. If a sufficient number of copies are bespoken, we shall feel justified in asking the D'aily Times an.d Witness Printing Company to proceed with the work. It is proposed to print a small Edition well bound in cloth. There will be about 300 pages, and they will he profusely illustrated with photographs of the early doctors, and of scenes of town and country life in those interesting days. See advertisement on another page of the Witness.