Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/767

NAME MC KECHNIE 745 MC KECHNIE doctor, then as doctor and trader, until in 1882 he was placed in charge of Fort Dun- vegan, where he stayed for seven years. In 1889 he went to Fort Chipweyan and, ten years later, to Edmonton, where he lived in retirement for nearly twenty years. He died February 25, 1917. Canadian Med. Assn. Jour., Toronto, May, 1917, vol. vii, 462. McKechnie, John (1730?-1782) Fortunately for his life-history, this pioneer and log-cabin physician left behind him a diary containing a good deal of information, medical and biographical, well worth rescuing for a while from the oblivion of more than a cen- tury. Dr. John McKechnie was born in Scot- land about 1730, studied medicine either at Aberdeen or Edinburgh, obtained a hcense or a degree in 1752, and practised in his native land for three years. Accomplishing but little in that time he decided to come to America, the land of promise. Embarking on the brig Crawford Bridge, Curry, captain, he, with sixteen others, left Greenock, Scotland, at 4 P. M. July 26, 1755, and landed all well on board at the end of Long Wharf in Boston, September 12, of the same year, at 7 P. M., as his diary exactly informs us. It is not known how long he practised medically in the neighborhood of Boston, but it is a fact that wearying of the attempt to make a living as physician or teacher, he became an official of the Plymouth Land Com- pany with the rank of Lieutenant and the posi- tion of a land surveyor. With this Associa- tion he remained four years. We find further traces of his engagement with the Kennebec (Maine) Company in 1760 and later, during which period he surveyed large tracts of land on the Kennebec and Penobscot Rivers. His work was so accurate that it has to this day remained the standard, and farms still pass from owner to owner under the so-called "McKechnie" surveys. While thus occupied he went occasionally on business to Boston, both for the Company as well as for his pri- vate affairs, and in one old receipt we find him signing as Lieut. McKechnie. The earliest document styling him "Doctor" McKechnie is dated at Pownalborough in 1764, and concerns the sum of twelve shillings received for serv- ices and medicine to a patient. Some time in the year 1760 he was teaching at Pemaquid, Maine, where he met Mary North, the daughter of Capt. North, the com- mander of the Fort, and married her. Her father officiated at the wedding, although he is said not to have favored the match, either because Dr. McKechnie was too old, or had no settled profession. For the next six years the happy couple moved from place to place as the husband's duties as surveyor, teacher or physician called him. We find him treating a patient for small-pox at Swan's Island in 1764. He followed the usual routine of "blooding" patients, as his old diary shows, and, like other physicians of that time, sup- plied them with large quantities of drugs. He settled permanently at Bowdoinham. not far from Brunswick, the seat of Bowdoin College, in 1764, and, according to all accounts, re- mained practising there until 1771 when he moved to Winslow, near Fort Halifax, on the east side of the Kennebec River, opposite what is now called Waterville, Maine. At Winslow then, he built his cabin and partitioned off a room for a dispensary of the drugs which were so extensively dealt out to sick people in that era. His practice increased with con- siderable rapidity, and in four years he built a still larger home, on the other side of the local stream, the Cobossecontee. Having also put a good deal of his earnings into growing timber, he enlarged the capacity of his saw mill. When Benedict Arnold set out on his ill- fated expedition to Quebec, in 1775, his march carried him through Winslow, and some of his soldiers requiring medical care were left in charge of Dr. McKechnie. Among others mentioned in an old diary we find the follow- ing cases attended by Dr. McKechnie : Mortifi- cation of the hand, contusion of the shin, toe cut with an axe while hewing a road through the primeval forests, jaundice, camp fever, strangury, deafness resulting from a cold in the head, and finally a bad injury to the hand from the bursting of a musket. After having been a prominent man in Winslow before the Revolution, he was held in suspicion as a loyalist during that stormy period. Although a man of means (one per- son owed him, for instance, a thousand dol- lars on a note) he was not one of the seven citizens asked to buy ammunition for soldiers j enlisting from the settlement in the Revolu- tionary War. He is said to have had no sym- pathy with the "Rebels," as he called them, and the Sons of Liberty kept him under constant surveillance. Once upon a time they called upon the good doctor to ask just what cer- tain words of his were meant to imply. But taking down his sword which he had worn during his Lieutenancy his only answer was, "Gentlemen, if at any time I have said anything that you did not understand, I am sorry for it."