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programme began in 1920 to remedy the lack of trained personnel. These services,
however, were cut back in the depression years. The 119 doclOrs on the island in 1911
came down to 93 in 1935. With the population increase, the Talio of doctors 10 the
population was one for 4,050 people, or one for 7,000, when excluding the capilal.
Following the Commission of Government real progress came after 1934. SI. John's
Public Health Clinic offered a six month course (0 train nurses for outport dUly. In 1938,
there were len cOllage hospitals each serving a district and run by one doctor, assisted by a
nurse. Each family paid a Oat fee and had access to all medical services. On the southwest
coast, which 10 date has no road access, Dr. Rusted, in 1935, staned a medical boat service
visiting the then eighty settlements along that coast, yet did not pursue the venture over the
year. Newfoundland had the highest rate ofT.B. on the North American continent during
the first half of Ihe twentieth century, besides a prevalence of typhoid epidcmics and
vitamin deficiency diseases: beri-beri, rickets, scurvy and night blindness. The constant
influx of foreign vessels caused St. 10hn's to be regularly infested.! While a kind of barter
economy went on in most villages sparing anyone from starvation, malnutrition was
common enough. Families were large, sanitation and insulation non-existent or poor. As
mOSt villages had no resident doctor, nurse, priest or clergyman, the village midwife and
healer remained the most frequently sought help, and played a significant social as well as
spiritual role.
67
Tuberculosis and malnutrition-related diseases persisted up to the first quarter of this
century, and devastated settlements on [he south coast where poverty and slavery undcr the
merchant system were some of the worst. When foreign interests opened fluorspan mines
in St. Lawrence in 1937, the local laoour welcomed this working opportunity, yct to an
already weakened population were added the ravages of industrial disease, silicosis and
lung cancer induced by silica and radiation. These conditions were finally denounced on
the evidence that one household in three in $1. Lawrence and Lawn had a dead or dying
miner. 2
To poverty, malnutrition and disease one must add a record of disasters.
Newfoundland and Labrador have been the site of hundreds of shipwrecks throughoul the
last two centuries. Strong currents, the lack of lighthouses and aids 10 navigation, the
"sunkers" oordering the indented coastline, thick fog and frequent stomlS, make these
I Rowe 229.
2ElIiotl LeylOn, Dying liard: The Ravages 0/ Indus/rial Carnage (Toronto: McClelland, 1975)
11-12.