Out Island Doctor

With a Foreword by Nathaniel Philbrick, author of the bestseller In the Heart of the Sea If you need an appendectomy, he can do it with a stone scalpel he carved himself. If you have a condition nobody can diagnose—“creeping eruption” perhaps—he can identify what it is, and treat it. A baby with toe-tourniquet syndrome, a human leg that’s washed ashore, a horse with Lyme disease, a narcoleptic falling face-first in the street, a hermit living underground—hardly anything is off-limits for Dr. Timothy J. Lepore. This is the spirited, true story of a colorful, contrarian doctor on the world-famous island of Nantucket. Thirty miles out to sea, in a strikingly offbeat place known for wealthy summer people but also home to independent-minded, idiosyncratic year-rounders, Lepore holds the life of the island, often quite literally, in his hands. He’s surgeon, medical examiner, football team doctor, tick expert, unofficial psychologist, accidental homicide detective, occasional veterinarian. When crisis strikes, he’s deeply involved. He’s treated Jimmy Buffett, Chris Matthews, and various Kennedy relatives, but he makes house calls for anyone and lets people pay him nothing—or anything: oatmeal raisin cookies, a weather-beaten .44 Magnum, a picture of a Nepalese shaman. Lepore can be controversial and contradictory, espousing conservative views while performing abortions and giving patients marijuana cookies. He has unusual hobbies: he’s a gun fanatic, roadkill collector, and concocter of pastimes like knitting dog-hair sweaters. Ultimately, Island Practice is about a doctor utterly essential to a community at a time when medicine is increasingly money-driven and impersonal. Can he remain a maverick even as a healthcare chain subsumes his hospital? Every community has—or, some would say, needs—a Doctor Lepore, and his island’s drive to retain individuality in a cookie-cutter world is echoed across the country.

Based on a study of two casebooks, which include Dr Mackieson records for 257 patients with a variety of illnesses seen from 1826 to 1858 and 115 patients with mental illness seen from 1868 to 1874, two manuscripts, and a diary, David Shephard illustrates the wide variety of representative cases in Dr Mackieson's career and situates his work in the context of medical practice at the time. The book will interest a variety of readers, including general historians, medical historians, social historians, historians with an interest in the Atlantic provinces, physicians, and academic libraries.

A lifelong sailor tried a different way to cruise The Bahamas - MailBoats! Spared from navigational duties and weather planning requirements of cruising sailors, mailboats brought their own set of travel challenges. It all turned into a grand adventure for this sailor and old septuagenarian friends! Travel along with us and visit the real Bahamas and meet real Bahamians! Learn something about a beautiful, interesting, and friendly country and about mailboats and how to travel on them. Partake in our adventures, and then maybe go yourself!!

Fresh out of training, Dr. Chuck Radis moves with his wife and daughter to Peaks Island, Maine, to fulfill a Public Health scholarship obligation. Absent-minded and initially oblivious to island mores, Dr. Radis slowly adapts to a medical practice where x-rays and advanced laboratory testing are available only on the mainland. When he travels to the outer islands of Casco Bay for house calls, he relies on his physical examination skills and a tackle box of emergency medications to successfully manage his patients. With stories ranging from hilarious to heart breaking, Go by Boat is a respite from contemporary living, immersing the reader in the distinct culture of Maine island communities. Come along with Dr. Radis as he finds acceptance and friendship on the hardscrabble islands of Casco Bay.

In 1965, the Yarmouth Castle, a cruise ship that was laden with American tourists, burned and sank en route to Nassau. The rescue effort and the fight to save the many badly burned survivors was centered at the Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH) in The Bahamas. The final toll of 90 lives lost made this one of the worst maritime disasters in North American history. The story of the Yarmouth Castle disaster is a part of the fabric of the story of PMH, a story that begins in the 1780s with the opening of the African Hospital in Nassau. We trace the evolution of the Poor House on Shirley Street into the Bahamas General Hospital, forerunner of the PMH. Along the way we describe a commission of inquiry into hospital corruption (1915), a disruptive doctors strike and even the murder of a hospital nurse on the private ward. We knew that our investigations were probing sensitive areas when officials had difficulty locating reports and photographs. Nevertheless, research trumped resistance. We interviewed pioneers and disaster survivors, studied documents in the National Archives of the Bahamas, the Supreme Court registry, the Ministry of Health and even the library of the United States Coast Guard. Princess Margaret Hospital is much more than a sleepy account of the construction of an old hospital. It is a story of disaster, recovery, survival, philanthropy and genius.