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nder Wilson, who was a director of the Royal Hospital at the time, I am told a deal about Dr. Davie's early medical career. He says the young doctor was ambitious to become medical officer to the Royal Hospital, then situated on the rock at the top of Pandora Street, and asked Mr. Wilson to try and get the position for him, even without salary, and Mr. Wilson, having great faith in the young man, promised to do his best, and at a meeting of the board, consisting of Alexander McLean, J. D. Robinson, Henry Short and Alexander Wilson, Dr. Davie was duly elected, and at a salary of 100 pounds per annum, and held the position for over twenty years. He entered on his duties with great zeal, his first surgical case being that of an Indian girl who was accidentally shot on Salt Spring Island. The poor girl's arm was badly shattered, and she was brought down from the island in a canoe. It was a bad case, but the doctor pulled her through and, saving her arm, sent her home again as good as ever. Dr. Davie was fond of music, and in early days was proficient on the flute, contributing to the programme of many a concert for charity in those days when amateurs did so much to entertain the public. That the subject of this sketch was a clever man goes without saying. Many there are, and have been, who have been snatched from grim death by this skilful surgeon. By some he was thought to be bearish and unsympathetic, but they who thought so did not know him as I did, or they would not have thought so. Where there was real suffering and danger there could not have been a more gentle, kinder-hearted or careful man. Because he did not always respond to a friend's salutation in passing it was taken as bearishness or indifference. It was really pre-occupation. He was thinking out a difficult case for the next morning at the hospital. As he once said to a lady friend, "They little know the hours I pass walking up and down at night thinking out a case I have to operate on--how I shall do it to make it a success." I went into his office one day and found him with a surgical instrument on his knee which he seemed very intent on, and I asked him what it was for. He hesitated for a moment, then said, "You would not understand." But still he explained it all to me. It was for an operation in the morning on the stomach of a patient at one of the hospitals, and I have no doubt it was successful. About seven years ago he attended me for typhoid feve
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