My father was born at the beginning of the century, the ninth child in a family living in a poor area in rural Canada. Because he was the last child, he became the family’s cosseted darling, the apple of my grandmother’s eye. But he was a small, frail boy, and when only six he fell very seriously ill with an abdominal infection called peritonitis. The doctor told my grandmother that he would die. My grandmother drew herself to her full height, glared at the doctor and declared: “He will not die.”
She harnessed their one horse to the little buggy, drove the eighty miles to the nearest town, and searched all the libraries for information about peritonitis. She returned triumphant. In distant Switzerland, an alternative healing method had been found to work in many cases. The whole family was set to work, fetching water from the pump and heating it on the big wood stove. The small child was repeatedly plunged into very hot water, then carried kicking and screaming out into the bitter cold to be rolled in the snow.
When the doctor was called back the following week, expecting to sign a death certificate, he was astounded to find a happy child playing by the fireside. “It’s a miracle!” he declared. “But I’m sorry to have to warn you that his system has been terribly weakened. You cannot expect him to live for more than a few years at most.” My grandmother glared at him again.
My father lived into his eighties, became a doctor himself, and, like the majority of his colleagues, was always extremely suspicious of alternative healing methods.