Free Amazing Medical Stories by George Burden Page B

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

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    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 DREADFUL TASK
THE UNDERTAKERS AND THE
TITANIC
DISASTER
    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 nuzzledthe 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