Jean Persons, M.D.
From Dog Sleds to Float Planes True Stories of a Woman Physician in 1950s Remote Alaska by Jean Persons, M.D. ISBN: 978-0-9789766-2-0 Library of Congress Control Number 2007926225 Copyright 2007, Jean Persons, M.D. 188 pages, soft cover, b/w photos, 6" x 9" $16.95 |
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Foreword
These tales by Dr. Jean Persons, one of Alaska's best known pioneer doctors, will make you laugh and wince at her adventures. They are wonderful stories of how things were in Alaska before the bureaucrats and business took over.
The book shows Jean's compassion and toughness from finding a dead man sitting in her office when she first arrived in Tanana (so he'd fit into a small plane to be flown home) to suturing multiple dog bites on a little girl not expected to survive the attack.
Jean was a petite single woman tackling a job most men would run from. It meant being responsible for villages and their inhabitants scattered over a roadless area larger than Colorado.
By the end of the book you'll wish you'd been there with her, sharing the emergency flights, the sick babies, and the picnics on the tundra.
Shirley Fraser, M.D., Anchorage, Alaska
Table of Contents
To Be a Doctor Back Cover Text
Jean Persons, M.D. is a reflection of those pioneering doctors we read about in history books of the Old West, but in this case only decades ago when Alaska was still in transition from indigenous cultural ways to modern technology. As Jean Persons writes in her preface... It was indeed a privilege to have had the chance to work in the remote areas. I learned much from the people who lived there. The Natives I cared for were the most stoic people I have ever known. I have the greatest respect for their strength in the face of adversities, such as severe illnesses and the challenges of surviving the harsh winters in the cold and darkness. In those days, there was little communication between villages, no electricity other than a few generators in some villages, no running water, and heat only from stoves in the middle of cabins. Back then, as solitary doctor(s) in the small regional BIA hospitals such as our Tanana hospital on the Yukon, we tried to give the best possible care to the Natives. We had rare visits from consulting specialists, maybe one a year if we were lucky. We had few support systems and were pretty much on our own. Nevertheless, we were free to make our own decisions and make changes in the hospital without having to file millions of papers and requisitions or check with our bosses in Juneau or Anchorage. We had no insurance companies dictating what medicines and procedures we should follow. We had no fear of lawsuits hanging over our heads like axes. Jean practiced her medicine in a time of frontier independence, of emergency response travel by dog teams and float planes, of treating diseases that "Outside" doctors had not seen in their lifetimes, and within a time frame of establishing trust between Native people and the approaching Western civilization which Jean helped bring about by her dedicated service. When looking back on her pioneering work in 1950s Alaska, she says, "I didn't do anything more than anyone else would have done under the circumstances."
Crown Point
Coming to Alaska
Tanana Days
Huslia
Little Boy in Bettles
Rescue
Toughy (painting of this rescue shown on front cover of book)
Baby on the Wing
Hughes
Father Baud and Nulato
Anaktuvuk Pass
Wiseman
Kaltag
Anchorage
The Pribilof Island of St. Paul
Early Bethel
Bethel and Michele
Bethel and Renee
The Very Beginning
Recent Days
Who Will Rock the Cradle When I'm Gone
Appendix A: Tuburculosis—The Scourge of Alaska
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