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George Mellis Douglas
(1809-2 June 1864) was doctor.
He was born in Carlisle, England,
where he was baptized on 11 July 1809, son of George Douglas, a Methodist
minister, and Mary Mellis. (Elsewhere he is described as 'a native of
Aberdeen'.)
In 1822 George Mellis Douglas went to Utica, N.Y., at
the urging of his
elder brother, Dr. James Douglas,
who was practising medicine there. He attended to the latter’s affairs
while learning medicine. James had to flee from Utica, however, because he
feared prosecution for dissecting cadavers, an illegal act at the time,
and he settled at Quebec on 13 March 1826; George Mellis joined him there
a few days later. Since there were no medical boards in Quebec or
Montreal, young Douglas was examined by a committee appointed by the
governor and received authorization to practise medicine on 13 Nov. 1827.
He apparently carried on his profession with his brother until 1831.
At that period cholera was claiming many victims. It had come from
India, spread through England and especially Ireland, and was brought to
Quebec every year by the many immigrants. In 1832, as a precautionary
measure, Lord Aylmer [Whitworth-Aylmer*], then governor general, set up a
provincial board of health and two quarantine stations controlled by the
army, one 33 miles down river from Quebec at Grosse Île, and the other at
Gaspé, where ships from Europe had to stop for inspection. George Mellis
Douglas, who had been a justice of the peace for the Gaspé district since
1831, was appointed medical superintendent of the Gaspé quarantine station
on 20 June 1832. While holding this post, he assisted Dr Charles Poole,
the medical superintendent of Grosse Île. On 9 May 1836 he succeeded him,
at the salary of 25s. a day. This was a heavy year for Douglas since in
the Quebec region cholera accounted for 3,452 victims during the summer.
On 31 July 1839 Douglas married Charlotte Saxton Campbell, daughter of
Archibald Campbell, a royal notary at Quebec; seven children were born to
them.
In 1841 he bought a piece of marshy land at the east end of
Grosse Île and had it drained and brought under cultivation. As the people
of the island found it hard to obtain food, Douglas sold the produce of
his farm, particularly milk; nevertheless, he was reproached for this
trading. In 1847, to meet the typhus epidemic then raging, he improved
conditions at the island hospital by adding some 50 beds to the existing
200. However, the epidemic exceeded all forecasts; by 20 May, 30 vessels
from Ireland had carried 12,519 immigrants, of whom more than 1,200 had
perished at sea or died on their arrival. The hospital took in up to 2,500
patients at a time, but was no longer adequate. Some of the volunteers who
had come to Douglas’ aid, including four of the 26 doctors, died; the
others were stricken with the fever. Douglas himself did not escape. Yet
thanks to the treatment used by him and his colleagues the murderous
epidemic was stemmed towards the end of October, although more than 5,000
bodies lay in the cemetery of Grosse Île. In Canada there were 17,300
victims.
In July 1849 a new cholera epidemic struck the town of
Quebec, causing more than 1,200 deaths. On Grosse Île, however, Douglas
had only some 50 patients to treat. In 1853, a year after the last serious
epidemic in the province, Dr Anthony von Iffland was appointed assistant
medical superintendent on Grosse Île. Four years later the quarantine
station was placed under the Bureau of Agriculture and Statistics. Douglas
found staying on the island less attractive, apparently because of
conflicts of interest with Iffland and financial problems. Moreover, he
was spending more of his time in England, where in 1858 he married Suzan
Cleghorn of Nevis, Scotland, by whom he had a son; his first wife had died
six years earlier.
In March 1861 the station on Grosse Île was
closed, and on 19 April Douglas was appointed “deputy medical inspector”
of ships anchoring in the roadstead of the Rivière Saint-Charles and
alongside Cap Diamant. When Gross Île was re-established as a quarantine
station on 22 April 1863, Douglas resumed his post of medical
superintendent. Sick and depressed (his second wife had died on 21 Nov.
1860), he learned in March 1864 that steps were being taken to appoint
Iffland in his place. On 1 June he went to the Île aux Ruaux (northeast of
Île d’Orléans), which he had acquired in 1848 and where he had built a
sumptuous house that was still heavily mortgaged. That evening he stabbed
himself, and died the next day. The coroner returned a verdict of suicide
while temporarily deranged.
George Mellis Douglas was a highly
respected doctor, who published a number of articles in medical journals
about his professional activities on Grosse Île and the illnesses he had
cared for there. For example, in 1847 he expounded his theory of the
non-contagiousness of cholera, which contradicted that of Dr William
Marsden. The discovery of the cholera vibrio in 1885, however, was to
prove Marsden right. Douglas was a faithful member of the Literary and
Historical Society of Quebec and was its secretary in 1842–43. Throughout
his career, he distinguished himself by his devotion to duty as well as by
his honesty and uprightness.
He died 2 June 1864 on the Île aux
Ruaux, Lower Canada
He married Charlotte Saxton Campbell, 1820-1852, who was clever and
musical. She had an exquisite soprano, early developed and sang a solo
in the
cathedral at the age of 15. She married at 18 or 19.
They had 4 sons and 1 daughter.
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Campbell Mellis Douglas,
an Army Surgeon, Colonel, who was awarded the Victoria Cross for
rescuing 17 soldiers from rebellious prisoners on the Andaman Islands
and getting them safely to a ship under heavy fire. He married the
young widow of Surgeon Valentine Munbee McMaster, 78th Highlanders,
also a V.C., won at Lucknow in the Sepoy Mutiny who died leaving a
year old son Bryce McMaster. (1934 Bryce was living at 15 Park
Crescent, Oxford.) Campbell M Douglas' own sons were:-
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George Mellis Douglas, born circa 1870, an explorer by
canoe of the remote Canadian Northwest and a well-known author.
(His adventures are told in "Lands Forlorn" published by the Knickerbocker Press, Putnams N.Y. 1914.) In 1937 he was living at
Lakeside, Ontario and a snapshot taken 5 years earlier shows him,
lean and bronzed, with white hair, standing beside his canoe "Alcyone"
and strongly resembling my father and his brother Kenneth.
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Lionel Douglas, who in 1934 was the Captain of the
"Empress of Japan", the ship in which Chester and I and our 3 boys
came from Japan to British Columbia in 1925. I do not recall of he
was our Captain then.
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Admiral Sir Archibald Lucius
Douglas, K.C.B., K.C.Vo., who had four children:-
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Archibald Douglas, Commander R.N. Killed in action 1915.
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John Charles Edward Douglas, Major 10th Yorkshire Regiment.
Killed in action 1915.
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David William Shafto Douglas, b.1883, married 1914 the
daughter of Charles Stevenson of Edinburgh. He was Lieut Commander
of the "Black Prince" and was killed in action in 1915.
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A daughter.
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Justin Douglas, a well-known doctor of Bournemouth.
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Charles Stuart Douglas, killed in an accident on the Pennsylvania
Railroad in 1882.
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Agnes Douglas, went to school in England and married Reginald
Cadman of the Yorkshire Cadmans. Her only son:-
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