Amazing Medical Stories (3 page)

Moving back to Nova Scotia, Gesner became Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Appalled at the state of the Mi'kmaq nation, he organized a protest at the Nova Scotia legislature in 1849. Accompanied by ten Mi'kmaq chiefs in full regalia, he was greeted cordially by Lt. Governor Sir John Harvey. Little was accomplished by this rally except to damage Gesner's reputation further in the eyes of the reactionary powers in Halifax.

Unfortunately, Gesner was never able to obtain much financial benefit from his discoveries, due to opposition from well-financed monopolies such as Nova Scotia's General Mining Association (GMA). Several disastrous and expensive lawsuits were all decided against him, and he found himself in worse financial straits than ever. This was in spite of the fact that the city of Washington D.C. had adopted his Albertite gas to light the American capital. Gesner's old nemesis, Dr. Robb, actually did an about face and supported his former rival's claims, but to no avail. Ten years after Gesner's proposal to gaslight the city of Saint John was turned down, the city hired an American company to accomplish that task.

In the face of these disappointments, Gesner decided to move to New York. The Americans had a greater appreciation for his talents than had his fellow Maritimers, and he was promptly snapped up by the newly formed Asphalt Mining and Kerosene Gas Company. Here he continued to expand on his work with kerosene, pioneering the modern petrochemical industry.

Living in Brooklyn, Gesner's son later related how at church picnics his kindhearted father would pass barrels of food across the fence to starving
urchins. In 1859, Dr. Gesner, at age sixty-two, lost his job with the Kerosene Gas Company due to a changeover in production techniques. He practiced medicine for a while in New York, then returned to Nova Scotia, working for a while on a fertilizer called “Artificial Guano,” and later tried his hand at gold prospecting. Still destitute, he applied to Dalhousie University in Halifax for a professorship of Chemistry and Natural History. Unfortunately, on the board of the college was one of the principals of the Halifax Gas Company, another company with which Gesner had feuded in the course of asserting his claims. His application was rejected and a Dr. Lawson from Toronto was offered the post.

Gesner died in April 1864. No mention was made in his obituary of the doctor's many accomplishments, and he was buried in an unmarked grave in the Camp Hill Cemetery in Halifax. In 1933, Imperial Oil finally erected a monument commemorating this great Canadian, the neglected founder of the petroleum refining industry, a pioneering environmentalist and the saviour of the great whales.

George Burden

Handsome, intelligent and refined, sociopath Henry Moon conned and cheated his way across North America.
NEW BRUNSWICK MUSEUM

Mr. Henry Moon spoke and carried himself like an English gentleman. He was handsome, dressed elegantly and could be exceedingly charming. He spoke French fluently, played the violin and had the manual dexterity to craft almost anything with very little in the way of raw materials. Henry could preach better than most ministers and had many verses of the Old and New Testaments committed to memory. He was also a cunning and masterful liar and a talented thief who could pick locks and enter and leave homes at night with great facility. Though endowed with a genius that would have allowed him to earn a good living honestly, Mr. Moon delighted in duping and conning his fellow man, at times in wickedly humorous ways.

Little is known of Moon prior to his appearance in the community of Rawdon, Nova Scotia, in 1812. He introduced himself as an Englishman, a tailor by trade, and assumed the alias of Henry More Smith. He sought employment with wealthy sawmill-owner John Bond and for about a year passed for an honest, hard-working employee. His fellow employees distrusted him, however, and there was a rumour that he was “in league with the devil.” In a folk tale still extant in Rawdon, Moon was asked to cut up a pile of wood at the lumber camp one evening. He told his fellows that “the Black Man” (i.e. Satan) would do it for him and retired to bed. The next morning the wood was cut, and the smell of brimstone was in the air. No doubt Moon had sneaked out and cut the wood in the dark of the night, leaving a pinch of sulphur on the dying campfire, thus fooling his gullible brethren. With stories like these, it is no wonder Bond refused Henry's request for his daughter Elizabeth's hand. This, however, did not deter the couple, who eloped in March 1813.

Henry set up business as a tailor and peddler, travelling to Halifax to ply his trade each afternoon and returning the next morning. People noticed that these were not normal business hours, and when the true owner recognized a coat Henry had “tailored” for a customer, it became evident he had been spending his nights cleverly burgling the citizenry of Halifax. He set off, abandoning his wife, and fled to New Brunswick.

Moon robbed and conned his way through the countryside, eventually making the error of stealing the favourite bay mare of Farmer Knox. He was captured and later claimed that Farmer Knox had given him a few “knocks” on his way to the Kingston Jail where he came into the custody of Sheriff Walter Bates, who has written a book about his experiences with Henry Moon. The handsome and charming prisoner elicited a lot of sympathy from the locals. Protesting his innocence, he began to complain of increasing pain in his chest, pointing to an ugly bruise where he alleged that Knox had pistol-whipped him. The prisoner's condition deteriorated to the point where it was felt he had little time to live and physician Adino Paddock, Jr. was summoned. With his patient febrile and vomiting blood the doctor felt little could be done to help him. Townsfolk brought the prisoner gifts of cordials and a down comforter to lie on in his last hours. Henry gasped that he would not survive the night and asked one of the assistant jailers to bring him a hot brick to warm his dying body. The jailer hastened to do so, leaving the door open, and upon his return he found Moon gone. Later a passerby described what he thought was the ghost of Henry hurrying across a field.

Inexplicably, rather than making his escape to nearby American territory, Moon remained in the vicinity continuing to rob and con the locals out of substantial amounts of goods and money. He even had the audacity to rob the home of the Attorney General by venturing into his porch while he was having a party and making off with the guests' hats and coats. However, when he impulsively invited himself to breakfast at a local farm and in a conversational manner admitted he was the one the authorities were looking for, he was arrested again.

Back in Kingston, Moon's jailers were determined that he would not escape a second time and placed him in chains. The prisoner repeatedly tore off or sawed through his chains with small homemade implements. Sheriff Bates describes how Moon twisted a one-and-a-half-inch-wide

The title page of Walter Bates's much reprinted biography of the notorious Henry Moon, alias Henry More Smith.
GEORGE BURDEN

steel collar as if it were made of leather. Heavier and heavier chains were employed until the prisoner had almost fifty pounds of metal hanging from his body, yet he still managed to greet his jailer in the morning with scarcely a link intact.

Still unable to effect an escape, Moon began to act in a quite insane manner. He screamed and yelled all night, showing no recognition of anyone. This went on for months, and, despite an admirable performance at his trial, Henry Moon was informed that he was going to be sentenced to hang for horse thievery.

Henry then attempted to elicit sympathy from the prison guards. Incredibly, he was able to fashion lifelike mannequins of his wife praying over him, so realistic that viewers were moved to pity. Subsequently he fashioned a “family” of tiny puppets: men, women, children and infants, and tiny musicians who would beat a drum or tambourine. All were remarkably lifelike. He did this in the dark, chained, and using only straw, clothing ripped from his body, soot and his own blood for colouring. People came from all over and paid money to see Moon's exhibitions at which he would play the fiddle accompanied by his puppet percussionists and dancers. Dr. Couglen, an Irish military surgeon, commented that he had not seen anything so remarkable in his travels around the world.

Henry's ploy worked. He predicted to his jailer that he would receive a pardon, and that is exactly what happened. He was released and took passage on a boat to Nova Scotia, where he again stole enough to finance passage to the United States. Ironically, he abandoned his little family of puppets, which could have earned him a good deal of honest money. Continuing his trade of larceny, Moon travelled through the eastern United States under various aliases and served several prison terms. For a while he was a successful evangelist in the southern states. Years later, Moon travelled to Upper Canada and visited Augustus Bates, the brother of his former jailer. Again exhibiting his perverse sense of humour, Moon passed himself off as a good friend of the High Sheriff. He set up in town and took deposits on a shipment of non-existent goods he claimed to have smuggled in duty-free from the United States. The last we hear of Moon is about 1835 when a man fitting his description was incarcerated in the Toronto Gaol. Sheriff Bates was not well enough to travel to Upper
Canada to verify the prisoner's identity, and thus end the chronicles of Mr. Henry Moon.

In short, Moon was a sociopath, a man with no conscience. His behaviour, as chronicled by Walter Bates, may be the first definitive case history of this disorder in Canada. The good sheriff meticulously followed Moon's antics from 1812 to 1835 in his book,
The Mysterious Stranger
. The information Sheriff Bates provides clearly shows that Mr. Moon meets the criteria of an Antisocial Personality Disorder as laid out in the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
, the bible of the psychiatric profession today. Requiring only three or more of seven criteria to make a diagnosis, Henry appears to satisfy five of them: “(1) failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors… (2) deceitfulness… repeated lying… conning others (3) impulsivity and failing to plan ahead (4) consistent irresponsibility… failure to sustain consistent work behavior and (5) lack of remorse” (over his deeds).

Though known to be irritable and to utter threats, Henry departs from the behaviour of many sociopaths in that he never physically harmed anyone or attempted violence towards another human being. This, coupled with his charm and roguish sense of humour, has endeared Moon to many throughout the last two centuries.

George Burden

It began with a death. In this case, it was the death of a middle-aged woman who had been, according to her relatives, mentally ill for many years.

The Reverend Father James Kennedy officiated at her funeral on September 22, 1846. He knew very little about the deceased except that she was the aunt of Mary Thompson, wife of Colonel George Forbes Thompson, a retired English army officer. It was a depressing, rainy day, and the salt-laced wind off Halifax harbour mounded soggy remnants of leaves around the open grave. As the priest murmured the last words of prayer, he turned to the two mourners who stood with him in the small cemetery. In a gesture of sympathy, he placed a comforting hand on the shoulder of the dead woman's niece.

What Father Kennedy didn't know was the fact that the couple had good reason to be greatly relieved by the woman's death. Any sense of relief, however, must have been quickly dispelled when, soon after the funeral, a coroner's inquest opened in Dartmouth. Its role was to investigate allegations that Mary had murdered her aunt.

To set the stage for the inquest, it is important to introduce the main characters in the plot. First, the Colonel, George Forbes Thompson. He had come to Nova Scotia in 1845 intending to settle in Aylesford, King's County, but instead decided to purchase a large estate at Dartmouth's Lake Loon. The Colonel's charm and affluence impressed the local gentry. Then there is Mary, his beautiful, red-haired companion, who did not enjoy a similar review. Much younger than Thompson, she was not a lady of high breeding, as her habit of screaming and cursing made clear. Visitors
to the Thompson's elaborate home were often left with the feeling that it would be difficult to find two people less suited to each other.