Medical history of British Columbia: some aspects.

thrombosis will not occur. If the flow is poor, heparin will not help. Prevention of most of the complications from femoral artery puncture could probably be achieved by the following precautions. (1) Never catheterize an artery in a patient with poly-cythaemia. (2) Puncture the common femoral artery, not the external iliac. (3) Do not use excessive or prolonged pressure to arrest bleeding, particularly in patients with small, soft arteries and a low cardiac output. (4) If the femoral pulse becomes impalpable, give intravenous heparin and arrange for exploration of the artery as an emergency, even in the absence of symptoms. We are grateful to Mr. Peter Martin for allowing us to study his patients and to Professor R. B. Welbourn, for reading and criticizing dihs paper. A. hundred years ago-there was nothing in Vancouver of man excepran occasional Indian trail winding through the great trees, ten. feet across at their. base and towering up as high as the present buildings. And a hundred years before that, this magnificent province was not even on the map. In 1776 when Captain Cook landed on the west coast of Vancouver Island, he brought with himrthe first doctors, other than the native shamans, that this area had ever seen. They were British trained. Dr. William Anderson, the senior, was-already sick and soon to die of tuberculosis in Alaska. William Ellis, the surgeon's mate, a botanist and an artist, was the first doctor to practise in this area. With some pride and-at the risk of causing a little parochial disorder among my British Columbian colleagues I should point out that he was trained at Saint Bartholomew's Hospital. Beginnings In the early 1790's, when Captain Vancouver explored these waters thoroughly for the first time and when Alexander McKenzie struggled overland to Bella Coola, this great country began to open up. It is still amazing to me that as recently as 130 years ago, the colossal area stretching from Alaska in the north, right down to California in the south, was virtually ruled for the Hudson's Bay Company by one man-a doctor. For twenty years Dr. John McLoughlin, a Canadian whose grandfather had brought a Highland regiment to Canada with Wolff, was the emperor of all the west. If our ancestors had paid a proper attention to his reports and not regarded this whole area as a wilderness of rocks and Christmas trees, suitable only for the …