Equestrian medicine

When Victoria was young specialists had not been invented — the Family Doctor did you all over. You did not have a special doctor for each part. Dr. Helmcken attended to all our ailments — Father's gout, our stomach-aches; he even told us what to do once when the cat had fits. If he was wanted in a hurry he got there in no time and did not wait for you to become sicker so that he could make a bigger cure. You began to get better the moment you heard Dr. Helmcken coming up the stairs. He did have the most horrible medicines — castor oil, Gregory's powder, blue pills, black draughts, sulphur and treacle.

Jokey people called him Dr. Heal-my-skin. He had been Doctor in the old Fort and knew everybody in Victoria. He was very thin, very active, very cheery. He had an old brown mare called Julia. When the Doctor came to see Mother we fed Julia at the gate with clover. The Doctor loved old Julia. One stormy night he was sent for because Mother was very ill. He came very quickly and Mother said, “I am sorry to bring you and Julia out on such a night, Doctor.”

“Julia is in her stable. What was the good of two of us getting wet?” he replied.

From Emily Carr, “Doctor and Dentist,” in The Book of Small, Clarke, Irwin & Company, 1942.