One of the earliest doctors to practise on the North Shore was Dr. MacGregor: — In the early days of the nineteenth century Dr. Alexander MacGregor of Brackley Point was a well-known physician. His practice was most of the northern half onueen’s county. He was a doctor of the old school and did his rounds of visits on horseback. (Island Magazine, Vol. I, p. 346) Dr. MacGregor settled in Brackley Point in 1817, and after years of this busy and extensive practice, moved to Calfornia in 1851 and was murdered on September 20, 1852 in Sacramento.

Another of the early medical practitioners hereabouts was Dr. Alexander Henry Boswell, from northern England, who lived on St. Peter’s Road. Then there was Dr. Frank Lawson, who was born in Cove Head in 1838, entered Apothecaries’ Hall in 1855, graduated from Harvard in 1863, then joined General Grant’s army as an assistant surgeon during the Civil War; he returned to P.E.I. to practise in Mount Stewart in 1865. We have never had a doctor actually living in Stanhope or Covehead, but in later years Dr. Shepherd and Dr. Walsh, Dr. Toombs of Mount Stewart, and Dr. Henderson of Union Road, looked after patients in this area. In the days before hospital deliveries, midwives such as Mrs. James McCabe, Mrs. Isaac Lawson and Mrs. Louis Marshall helped the Stanhope babies into the world. Rural folk had to deal with first aid emergencies themselves. One local lady noted for her skill in home nursing and first aid was Susan Marshall; an old-timer remembers getting a chip of sandstone in his eye, as a boy. His mother said, Run down to Susan Marshall, she will help you. And she did, by licking the piece of stone out of his eye with her tongue; he says it felt rough. The eye suffered no ill-effects, and the patient reads without glasses at age 83. I can find no record of the “eye stone” being used here; this was the tiny smooth round operculum of a sea snail, which was put in at one corner of the eye, under the eye-lid; when it travelled to the other end of the eye and was taken out, it had collected all the grit and chaff dust which had got into the farmer’s eye during threshing. The eye stone was popularly supposed to be alive, and was kept in a small jar of brown sugar. (for food??).

More doctors remembered by older residents are Dr. Soper, Dr. Angus Martin, Dr. J .C. MacDonald of York, Dr. Farmer of Mount Stewart, Dr. MacKenna of Oyster Bed Bridge, and Dr. Donald MacLauchlan of Charlottetown. Nowadays there are no doctors nearer than Charlottetown, but what’s 14 miles on a paved road?

Old-fashioned Remedies

Home remedies dating from the early days were many and various, often handed down from mother to daughter. Poultices were popular,

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