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This is from the Canadian
Weather Trivia Calendar of 2002.
"Feb. 13, 1870: After heavy snowfall and rain at Low Point, N.S., a wall
of snow struck a house and carried it and its six occupants downhill. At
the shore, the occupants were spilled out and the building was carried out
on the ice. The husband and children escaped unharmed, a baby remained in
the cradle sound asleep, but the wife suffered bruising and burning when
she fell against the stove."
Where do you get babies like that? The house
was the little home of Donald MacEachern of Creignish, Inverness County.
It was just south of where Floyd MacDonald lives today. The wife was
Elizabeth Murphy of Port Hood (her injuries were not serious). The dog and
cat were killed by shock. Some of that family were still living in 1922,
but not in Creignish!. See: MacDougall's "History of Inverness County".
Johne's Disease
Crohn actually didn't
discover Crohn's disease. The first person to give it a clear description
was a Scottish surgeon named Kennedy Dalziel in 1913. He wrote, "I can
only regret that the etiology [cause] of the condition remains in
obscurity, but I trust that before long, further consideration will clear
up the difficulty." Eighty-eight years later and the scientific community
is still not sure what causes Crohn's, but Dalziel had a hunch which a
growing number of prominent scientists now think may be correct.
About two decades earlier
in 1895, German doctor H.A. Johne was the first to describe the cause of a
disease in cattle characterized by chronic or intermittent profuse
intractable diarrhea. Clinically, the disease in cattle was virtually
identical to that which we now know as human Crohn's disease. The gross
pathology of the infected cow's intestines likewise had the same
cobblestone appearance; microscopically, the Crohn's diseased intestines
and the diseased cattle intestines were dead ringers. Dalziel wrote that
the tissue characteristics were "so similar as to justify a proposition
that the diseases may be the same." He theorized that the disease in
cattle and the disease in people were the same entity.
Thanks to Greg Rankin for
sending this in.
The following is quoted
from Drummer on Foot:
Isabel Nigh'n Dhughaill (Isabel # 89, daughter of Dougald MacFarlane)
and Maireread, wife of Ewen Cameron (Margaret Gillis, # 49),
were first neighbors, while both lived, and experienced the hardships of
pioneer life in raising large families. I may here quote again from an
article quoted before, just to give us an idea of life then:
"No, the work of women in
those days was no maiden's play. Let me cite only one instance to prove
this. There were no automobiles, no carriages of any kind, no horses, no
roads or paths, nothing better than blazes on trees to guide the traveller
(sic) through the dense forest. On a certain occasion Margaret and a
neighbor of hers, Mrs. Angus McPherson, better known as Ishabel Nigh'n
Dhugaill, another estimable woman, finding their homes needed something
more than milk to help down the good potatoes, proceeded to the harbor, a
distance at least ten miles, guided by the indespensable (sic) "blaze"
through the woods and by the winding course of the river. Early in the
evening they returned home, each with a half-barrel of good fat herring,
in a sack on her shoulders. Think of this ease loving sports of to-day.
Think of it, all you who have been brought up upon the level plains,
transformed from the forest by them, and are yet dissatisfied
notwithstanding all your travelling facilities and other modern
conveniences; all of you who through a spirit of unrest, born of a desire
for greater things, for wealth or gaiety or some similar craving, that the
mind never sees satisfied, seek other lands and forsake the land of your
birth and the cradle of your faith."
Margaret immigrated to at
Achadh an Tobhair in 1801. |
