Amazing Medical Stories (9 page)

“Iceberg, right ahead!” cried the lookout high up in the
Titanic
's crow'snest. It was approximately eleven-forty p.m. on Sunday, April 14, 1912. For many of the ship's crew and its passengers, these words would soon translate into a death knell.

At the time of the collision, Dr. William O'Loughlin was probably asleep in what stewardess Violet Jessop described in her memoirs as his “magnificently appointed cabin.” He must have recognized very quickly that the ship was in real danger. Mary Sloan, another stewardess, encountered him soon after the collision. She asked if he knew what was happening. His words were far from reassuring: “Child, things are very bad.”

It seems that he was on his way to see a passenger, Mrs. Henry Harper, on D deck, who had requested that he visit her cabin because she wanted him to convince her ill husband that he was too sick to get out of bed. Looking sombre, the physician passed on the bad news to the couple. “They tell me that trunks are floating around in the hold; you may as well go on deck.” His next movements are hard to trace, but a number of people remembered seeing him in the company of several crew members as well as with Dr. Simpson.

Around two a.m., shortly before the
Titanic'
s fate was sealed forever, one of the ship's bakers discovered Dr. O'Loughlin rummaging through a pantry on B deck, the deck directly above the ship's hospital. Apparently, not long after the last lifeboat had left the sinking ship, the physician had declared that he would meet his end indoors. He said he refused to die in freezing water surrounded by others enduring the same terrible fate. Instead, he had gone to the pantry looking for whiskey to dull his senses. He knew that when the ship reached a certain depth, his lungs would implode. “Not necessarily painless, but it has the advantage of being quick.”

Dr. O'Loughlin was eulogized as a true hero and a physician to whom “it made no difference whether the call came from a poor immigrant in steerage or a millionaire in the Royal Suite.” A memorial fund in his memory was established at Saint Vincent's Hospital in New York, an institution he had generously supported. He also received, posthumously, the American Medicine Gold Medal Award.

Dr. William O'Loughlin, senior surgeon on the
Titanic.
ENCYCLOPEDIA TITANICA

Dr. Simpson also lost his life in the sinking, and he, too, has gone down in the disaster's history as a hero. Not only is he remembered as a very brave man but also as an Irishman who met death true to his heritage. Mary Sloan and another stewardess met him during the confusion that followed the collision with the iceberg. They both liked him because he had a marvellous sense of humour. This time there was nothing amusing about the situation, but Dr. Simpson, realizing the women were very frightened, led them to a nearby dispensary, where he poured each of them a glass of whiskey. When Mary asked him if he thought she would need the alcoholic beverage, he replied, “You might need it later on.” Hearing these words, the other stewardess began to weep. Mary, however, insisted that she was not afraid. Simpson's response was to raise his glass and exclaim, “Spoken like a true Ulster woman!” His body, if it was recovered,
was never identified, although one writer claims that Simpson's medical bag was salvaged from the wreck.

Charles H. Lightoller, the Second Officer on the
Titanic
, miraculously survived the sinking. During his appearance at a board of inquiry, he vividly recalled a brief encounter he had had with doctors O'Loughlin and Simpson. He reported that they obviously knew the score and were “still assisting by showing a calm and cool exterior to the passengers.” Each of them had come up to him to shake his hand and say goodbye.

Survivors later reported that the conduct of the physicians on board had been exemplary, that they actively assisted passengers and had refused seats in the lifeboats. Only one of them will forever have shame associated with his name. He was Dr. Frauenthal, the noted orthopedic surgeon from New York. In a dramatic declaration of love for his wife, who had found a place in a lifeboat, he had screamed, “I cannot leave you.” Then, to the utter disgust of one of the crew members, he and his brother suddenly jumped into the vessel. Some say that Dr. Frauenthal was the bulky man who landed on a lady passenger, breaking two of her ribs. Ironically, fifteen years later, in 1927, Dr. Frauenthal committed suicide by jumping out of the seventh floor of his apartment building in New York. The medical examiner assigned to the case attributed his death to “a fall from a window due to mental derangement.”

Even more bizarre were the terms of Frauenthal's will. He ordered that he be cremated and his ashes stored in the Hospital for Joint Diseases that he had founded until the fiftieth anniversary of the hospital's incorporation. On that day, he requested his ashes be scattered from the roof “to the four winds.” This was done on October 5, 1955.

Dr. Alfred Pain, the youthful physician born in Hamilton, Ontario, had befriended a young Canadian woman he had met during the cruise. He made a point of finding her and encouraged her to hurry to find a place in a lifeboat. Later, learning of his death, she was heartbroken that she hadn't taken the time to say goodbye. Tearfully, she explained that she had failed to do this because she believed the
Titanic
was “unsinkable” and that she would soon see him again.

“Be brave. No matter what happens, be brave!” were Dr. William Mina-han's last words to his wife as he helped her into lifeboat number four. The Wisconsin doctor's body was identified by his personal effects, including
a clinical thermometer. When news of his death reached his colleagues, they had only positive things to say about him. “Dr. Minahan was an untiring student, a clever diagnostician, a kind physician and a wonderfully pleasing man socially.”

Dr. Ernest Moraweck from Kentucky also perished. The young lady who had dined with him the evening before the sinking had passed him on her way to the lifeboats. Dr. Moraweck told her he was trying to find out what was happening. He was never seen again.

Dr. Alice Leader from New York City was among the twenty-eight people who found safety in lifeboat number eight. Three crewmen had managed to join the twenty-five women on the boat, allegedly to serve as oarsmen. To Dr. Leader's great concern, it was quickly discovered that “none of the seamen knew their place.” In fact, one of the women had to tell a steward to put an oar in the oarlock. “Do you put it in that hole?” he asked. “Certainly,” she replied. Dr. Leader practised medicine in New York for another twenty years. She died in Florida on April 27, 1944.

Dr. Washington Dodge also survived, and on April 19, while still in New York, he published the following message in the
San Francisco Bulletin
: “Please extend through the columns of today's
Bulletin
to all inquiring friends, whose telegrams were handed me aboard the rescuing steamer
Carpathia
, my affectionate greetings and my undying gratitude for their loving messages. My family, thank God, were all saved, being one of the very few where this was the case. As soon as able to resume our Journey, which I trust will be in a few days, I shall start for my beloved city. Sincerely yours, Washington Dodge.”

Arthur Brewe, the doctor from Philadelphia, was among the six physicians who lost their lives when the
Titanic
went down.

Not enough is known about most of the physicians who experienced the
Titanic
catastrophe, but we do know the doctors who died in the sinking went to their deaths with dignity and with the clear understanding that they were sacrificing their lives to save others.

Dorothy Grant

The table on which
Titanic
victim John Jacob Astor was embalmed, now in the collection of the East Hants Historical Museum in Selma, Nova Scotia.
GEORGE BURDEN

A chilling announcement appeared in
The Acadian Recorder,
a Halifax newspaper, on April 27, 1912. It stated: “John Snow & Sons have made arrangements whereby all the bodies arriving on Monday aboard the
MacKay-Bennett
will be embalmed by them and their staff, assisted by nearly every embalmer in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. The Funeral Directors Association of the Maritime Provinces allow only experienced men and embalmers to become members, and about forty of these members are either in Halifax or on their way there.”

In fact, about forty-three undertakers answered the call, and only when they arrived in Halifax would they have begun to comprehend the horrendous task they faced. Even for the most experienced, it must have been heartbreaking to face the devastating task of embalming the many victims of the
Titanic
catastrophe.

In keeping with the male-dominated business world of the time, only two women were included in the group. They were Mrs. Elizabeth Walsh and her sister, Annie O'Neil, from Saint John, New Brunswick, who were considered to be the most appropriate individuals to assume the sensitive responsibility of embalming women's bodies. Mrs. Walsh apparently also embalmed the body of a baby that was among the first to be taken from the sea and the only child that remained unclaimed.

The White Star Line that owned the
Titanic
had arranged to obtain hundreds of caskets from manufacturers all over the Eastern provinces, and Snow & Sons had contacted a coffin company requesting that its staff work night and day to supply a large number of its product. As the coffins arrived in the city, many were taken to the wharves that have nuzzled
the edges of Halifax's magnificent harbour for hundreds of years. It was not the first time such grim reminders of death rested on the docks, but never had there been so many destined to become final shelters for bodies recovered from the frigid waters of the Atlantic.

The White Star Line had chartered several vessels to search for victims of the disaster. One of them, the cable ship
MacKay-Bennett
, recovered many bodies found floating in an area that extended over several kilometres surrounding the location where the majestic ship had gone down. In a strange twist of fate, the crew encountered bodies floating together in large numbers. They described the scene as being strangely reminiscent “of witnessing a flock of seagulls in the fog.” But unlike seagulls whose liberating wings enable the birds to free themselves from the grasp of a greedy ocean, these were the ship's dead, whose life jackets had kept their doomed bodies rising and falling for several days at the mercy of the waves.

Accompanying the crew on their disheartening recovery mission was “a leading local undertaker, John Snow of Snow & Co.” With stoic pragmatism, he had made sure the indispensable accoutrements of his trade had come with him. These items included more than one hundred coffins and huge quantities of embalming fluid. Anticipating that many burials would take place at sea, he had added scrap iron and rolls of canvas to the gloomy inventory. Snow had also insisted that the ship carry more than eighteen thousand kilograms of ice to reduce the chance of further deterioration of those bodies that could not immediately be embalmed.

Some of the bodies recovered were said to be badly disfigured, and it was rumoured that some passengers had sustained terrible injuries as the invading sea viciously assaulted the sinking ship. There has always been considerable debate about the allegations of massive injuries. Yet those who shared personal accounts of seeing many of the bodies generally insisted that most “looked as calm as if they were asleep,” and the formal inquiries that followed the tragedy confirmed that most victims had died of exposure.

During its thirteen days at sea, the
MacKay-Bennett
found three hundred and six bodies. One hundred and sixteen of them were buried at sea; this number has been controversial, as it has never been adequately explained how the victims were selected for an ocean burial. One theory is
that all of the bodies first retrieved from the Atlantic were handled this way, but this was halted when White Star Line objected to this seemingly callous treatment. Captain Fred Lardner, the master of the vessel, did state that many of these bodies could not be identified, and some of the identified, he claimed, were badly damaged or already in a state of advanced decomposition. Later, when cornered by reporters who demanded better explanations of why the bodies of many crew members and steerage passengers had not been brought back to Halifax, Lardner insisted that his decision had nothing to do with class consciousness. He declared that it had happened because “it was more than his embalmer could handle.” The
MacKay-Bennett
did, in fact, run out of embalming fluid and had to obtain an additional supply from another vessel, the
Minia
. However, the captain admitted that “no prominent man was committed to the deep.” His reason was that “it seemed wise to embalm the bodies of those identified victims who might have possessed large estates.”