A. Stewart MacDonald D.F.C., MD. C..M.

l that he had ended his life. I treated many patients in the

1 hospital and made the rounds each day, which required a

‘ lot of driving.

‘ In medicine one has to be a sort of detective. One young girl came to my office, for she could not sleep, holding her hands over her eyes, and crying a great deal.

I sent her to Charlottetown under the care of the Pediatric Doctor. After several days there was no improvement, and she was sent home, no better. I worried about her, as she seemed to become worse, unable to eat or sleep. Her father mentioned that they had given her worm medicine some time earlier. I called the drugstore to learn what was in the medicine, and they mentioned mercury. I had some experience in mercury poisoning, and I went to the books, and discovered that some children were very sensitive to mercury, which used to be in teething rings. I found that there was a disease acrodynia, better known as ”pink disease.” When I re-examined her again, there were the telling signs of a pink nose and pink colour in the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet. I was able to go back over 10 years of medical reviews and found that prescalene would stop the disease in 24 hours. The family was in touch with a Pediatrician in Boston - they were naturally even more worried than I was. I was just ready to try the injection of prescalene when I got a call from Boston. The Pediatrician had heard of the disease, but never heard of the treatment. He said to try it, and if no results were obtained, to send the child to Boston. Within 24 hours the child lost all her adverse symptoms, and was an average little girl. I felt good as I was able to stop all her suffering. There is very little in the medical books and no evidence of treatment.

My first mercury case was that of a young girl who arrived at the Victoria General in Halifax when I was an

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