A Doctor’s Pilgrimage

THE WARM-HEARTED, HUMOROUS STORY OF A COURAGEOUS YOUNG DOCTOR IN NOVA SCOTIA

“I am no Grenfell,” said young intern Brasset to Canada’s famous Dr. John B. Thompson, but he agreed to go to Canso, Nova Scotia, as sole doctor for 2,000 people, remote from the world. So begins the story of a doctor’s pilgrimage that describes the early trials and travels of a warm, human and completely delightful general practitioner.

Young Dr. Brasset wanted to become a brain surgeon, but lacked the money. In desolate Canso, relay station for the Atlantic cable, his first patient was a sick baby fed only on dry cod. He went in debt $3,600 in six months, his largest fee being the twenty-two dollars he collected from three drunken men by beating them up. Temporary work in a mining town proved little better, but resulted in marriage to the lovely Sally MacNeil.

At rural Little Brook, where lived descendants of 900 Acadians returned from their historic flight, the first patient proved to be a 1400-pound gored ox; but fortunes improved and eventually there came the opportunity for brain surgery at the great hospital—but by now Dr. Brasset’s experience with people had changed his ambition.

The tragic, the pitiful, the touching, the funny incidents of this warm-hearted tale reveal how, through the author’s great courage and humor, what could have been a very grim battle became in reality a very happy story.