Amazing Medical Stories

by George Burden

  The Springhill “Bump” of October 23, 1958, rivetted world attention. Number Two Mine was one of the oldest and deepest in North America. When coal is removed from a seam, tension builds up in the hard rock

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  A helicopter evacuates a victim of the 1958 Springhill Bump, one of the worst mine disasters of the twentieth century. PUBLIC ARCHIVES OF NOVA SCOTIA

  strata which overlie the mine, and the deeper the mine the greater the tension. Every once in a while this energy is released as an earthquakelike tremor called a “bump.” Bumps were quite common at Springhill, especially in the Number Two Mine, and were usually quite mild. Not so this autumn evening. At 8:06 p.m. a massive bump occurred; it was felt over a fifteen-mile radius and registered on seismographs across eastern Canada. One hundred and seventy-four men were working in the mine. In many places the bump literally compressed the floor of the tunnel into the ceiling, and men were crushed like insects between two bricks. Arnold Burden told me that the locations of buried bodies were often identified by the trickle of blood oozing from between the collapsed areas of tunnels. Once again Dr. Burden entered the disaster area. Luckily this time, in the absence of an explosion, there was no highly poisonous “afterdamp.” A trapped miner by the name of Leon Melanson was found partially buried. The leg of another miner was thought to be jammed under his chin, impeding rescue operations, and Dr. Burden was asked to amputate it. Arnold declined, and his suspicions were confirmed when subsequent digging revealed it was the man’s own leg twisted into an “impossible” position by the force of the bump.

  Other medical help came in the form of two young surgeons from Halifax. Dr. Charles Graham and Dr. Garth Vaughan flew in by military helicopter, bringing a load of drugs and supplies to assist the injured. Their landing field was the local ball field, lit by the headlights of cars belonging to the RCMP and the townsfolk. When they heard there were miners still trapped, they also entered the melee in the pit to render assistance.

  Press coverage of “The Bump” was massive, and aid poured in amounting to millions of dollars. Hope of finding more survivors had just about been abandoned when world attention was again galvanized by the discovery of some men trapped at the thirteen-thousand-foot level. By chance a team of rescuers had walked past a broken six-inch pipe and heard a distant voice crying, “There are twelve of us in here!”

  They were imprisoned behind eighty-three feet of solid coal and were suffering from hunger and dehydration. A smaller pipe was threaded through, and water and soup were pumped in. Rescuers took only fourteen hours to tunnel through to the trapped men, a task which normally would have taken several days. The last victims rescued were another group of seven, also at the thirteen-thousand-foot level. They had been reduced to drinking their own urine by the time they were freed, eight and a half days after “The Bump.” One of these men, Maurice Ruddick, became known as the “The Singing Miner” when he told rescuers that if they gave him a drink, he’d sing them a song. A talented vocalist, he had been crooning to keep up the spirits of his fellows. The rescuers joked that Workmen’s Compensation had sent them specially to find Maurice since the agency would be bankrupt if it had to look after his twelve children. One of his daughters, Sylvia, was once a patient of mine, and she, too, sings beautifully. Another miner told reporters he craved nothing so much as a 7-Up during his ordeal. The company sent him and the other miners a truckload of the beverage.

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  Maurice Ruddick, “The Singing Miner,” enjoys a smoke in his hospital bed after his rescue from the pits. PUBLIC ARCHIVES OF NOVA SCOTIA

  Many of the injured miners were admitted to Springhill’s All Saints Hospital, and they were delighted when Prince Philip made a detour from an official visit to Ottawa to see them. Subsequently, Ed Sullivan invited Dr. Arnold Burden and two of the trapped miners, Gorley Kempt and Caleb Rushton, to be on his national television show. Less then twenty-four hours after leaving the mine, the exhausted trio found themselves in New York. They were gratified to see a Broadway theatre with the banner “More Men Alive” during the taxi ride to CBS studios. A bit worse for wear, they were loudly cheered by the audience when Sullivan introduced them. Springhill’s rescuers were honoured with the Carnegie Medal for their courage, and the award now resides in the Springhill town hall. Dr. Burden later assisted the National Research Council of the Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., in a disaster study entitled, “Individual and Group Behaviour in a Coal Mine Disaster,” which was published in 1960.

  With the end of coal mining, the town of Springhill found itself in dire economic straits. A minimum-security prison now provides some employment. More recently, superstar singer Anne Murray, a Springhill native, helped inaugurate an annual music festival. I had a chance to speak briefly with Ms. Murray, whose father, Dr. Carson Murray, had attended miners in hospital during and after the disaster. Anne, a physical education graduate before her singing career took off, also has two brothers who practise internal medicine in Maritime Canada.

  Visitors to Springhill should be sure to take a tour of the Syndicate Mine to get a first-hand taste of the town’s history. Despite a past marred by tragedy, the Springhillers remain a warm and welcoming people.

  George Burden

  STEPHEN WEAVER

  “PHONY DOC JAILED — BUT PATIENTS WANT HIM BACK”

  Stephen Weaver’s story is fascinating, not only because it involves an amazing con job, but also because of the public outcry that his masquerade provoked.

  The tale began to unfold early in 1979, when Weaver, a thirty-four-year-old American, contacted Dr. M.R. MacDonald, the registrar of the Provincial Medical Board (PMB) in Nova Scotia. Identifying himself as “Dr. Stephen Weaver,” he informed the registrar that he wished to discuss the possibility of establishing a medical practice in Lockeport. Weaver told Dr. MacDonald that he had recently been in touch with the Alberta Medical Association (AMA) and had learned that the small fishing community of seven hundred was in desperate need of a family doctor. He stated that he was anxious to be the physician who came to its rescue.

  When questioned about his medical credentials, Weaver assured Dr. MacDonald that he had graduated from the University of North Dakota Medical School and had done a rotating internship at the University of Rochester Hospital in Minnesota. He also said that he held a Minnesota medical licence and certification from the National Board of Medical Examiners. Dr. MacDonald told “Dr.” Weaver that his credentials appeared to be sound and added that there should be no reason why the young physician couldn’t set up a family practice in town if he was able to meet the provincial medical board’s criteria and satisfied the requirements of immigration authorities and Lockeport officials.

  Dr. MacDonald apparently thought little more about that brief conversation until he began to hear about a young American doctor with a very busy medical practice in Lockeport, and disturbing calls began to arrive at the PMB office, requesting licensing information on the new physician.

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  “Doc” Weaver in his office. SHELBURNE COUNTY MUSEUM

  Dr. MacDonald, among a number of other observers, recognized that something strange was going on in the small South Shore community about two hundred kilometers from Halifax. In fact, the word bizarre probably best describes what was happening.

  Just how Stephen Weaver managed to convince Lockeport town officials that he was a fully qualified physician with a licence to practice in Nova Scotia is not known. It appears that his debonair personality, smart grooming and good looks played a significant role in the deception. Dr. Stephen Woolf, a British physician who had come to Lockeport in February 1979, a short time before Weaver’s arrival, found himself working closely with the town’s other newcomer. Both men were daily seeing many patients, and it didn’t take long before Dr. Woolf began to question Weaver’s medical competence. “He saw all sorts of patients, mostly just routine work, but some quite serious,” Woolf told a reporter later. “He was making a lot of mistakes, but nothi
ng that made me think he was a fake.”

  Despite any medical shortcomings Weaver may have displayed, he convinced the administration staff at the Roseway Hospital in Shelburne, a town close to Lockeport, to grant him full privileges. This included the right to admit and treat patients, to assist in the operating room and to apply casts and suture wounds.

  Weaver made a name for himself in the community within days of his arrival. His patients adored him and did everything to help his wife and two daughters adjust to a rural lifestyle. The pastor at one of the town’s churches became one of many who viewed Weaver as a highly competent and dedicated physician. “Money wasn’t his objective,” the pastor said. “Dr. Weaver loved medicine, loved helping people.”

  Because he did not have a licence to practise medicine in Nova Scotia and therefore had no billing number, Weaver attempted to fund his illegal activities by charging his patients for only the percentage of medical payments not covered, at that time, by the province’s health insurance plan, fifteen per cent of the total fee. This meagre compensation meant that he was earning only a couple of hundred dollars a week, although he was seeing a large number of patients every day. It was not enough money to cover his expenses, and, faced with the implications of his inadequate income, Weaver made a big mistake – he applied for provincial health insurance payments. At the same time, a pharmacist in Lockeport had become concerned about the appropriateness of his prescribing habits and was raising questions about Weaver’s credibility. The investigations revealed that Weaver had never graduated from any medical school in the United States. There was further alarming evidence that he had also posed as a qualified physician while working at a clinic in a ghetto area of Washington, D.C.

  Weaver’s fraud came to an abrupt end on April 10, 1979. On that day, the RCMP arrived at his door and, under the Medical Act of Nova Scotia, formally charged him with practising medicine without a licence. They also charged him with criminal negligence, assault causing bodily harm and possession of the drug Demerol for purposes of trafficking.

  News of Weaver’s arrest created chaos in Lockeport. Less than twenty-four hours later, the mayor appeared on television to warn residents against taking any medications that had been prescribed by Dr. Weaver. Some panic-stricken townsfolk immediately threw their prescriptions down the drain and began to besiege the town pharmacist and Dr. Woolf, the sole remaining physician. They wanted someone to assure them that their lives were not endangered. Provincial newspapers headlined stories of the humiliating fiasco, and some of the patients who had been seeing Weaver began to experience an array of symptoms, including dizzy spells, headaches and nausea. One woman declared, “He’s caused us a lot of trouble!”

  But others who had been Weaver’s patients didn’t share this hysteria. They were furious that the mayor had created widespread fear by issuing a warning. They contended that his action was totally unwarranted, and many of them simply refused to believe that Weaver was not a qualified physician.

  What these people did not know was that their hero’s lack of medical expertise had been creating anxiety among the medical establishment in the area for some time. Dr. Woolf had grown very concerned about Weaver’s performance, and not long before his arrest, he had reported an incident to Dr. Frank Markus, the county’s only surgeon. Woolf had consulted Dr. Markus after learning that Weaver had informed one of his patients that he was suffering from bladder cancer when it was clear the man’s symptoms were caused by a simple inguinal hernia. Drs. Woolf and Markus were planning to raise their concerns at a medical meeting to be held after the Easter holidays. The law mercifully intervened a few days before that could happen.

  After his arrest, Weaver was incarcerated in the Shelburne County Jail. His wife, Sandi, who apparently had never doubted that her husband was a qualified physician, suddenly found herself destitute. Within twenty-four hours of her husband’s arrest, the landlord advised her that he wanted the family out of their rented home. To make matters worse, a local bank froze her husband’s account and seized his car. Left with only two dollars to her name, Sandi Weaver was devastated and felt totally abandoned. Fortunately, people in the close-knit community responded. They bought groceries, collected a thousand dollars and found a small cottage where she and her daughters could live.

  Meanwhile, the jailed but unrepentant Weaver was telling his story to reporters and others. This dramatic episode in his life clearly revealed that he was a man with an enormous ego. Interviewed at the jail, only a short distance from the community of Lockeport where he had hung out his shingle, Weaver told a reporter, “From the point of book knowledge, I know more than most doctors. What I lacked was practical knowledge, and this I gained in Lockeport. I feel I am qualified.”

  According to Weaver, he was the son of a full-blood Comanche Indian father and an Irish-American mother. At the age of two, he said, he had been adopted by a Jacksonville, Florida, couple, and he received his early education in that state. Although an RCMP investigation failed to show that he had ever attended university, Weaver insisted that he had been enrolled at Jacksonville University, where, he claimed, he had often been on the dean’s list. He also alleged that he had once earned $30,000 a year as a computer salesman, but that he had always dreamed of becoming a physician.

  In an article that appeared in the June 21, 1979 issue of The Barometer, a now-defunct Halifax weekly, he told a reporter, “I chose to practise as a doctor because I feel I have an innate ability. This was not a spur of the moment decision. I prepared myself very carefully. I began by writing to the University of North Dakota’s Medical School. I bought the required books and studied their curriculum. Having mastered all the theory, I had to find a way into practice.” To put the theory that he claimed to have mastered into practice, he had contacted the Alberta Medical Association asking for rural medical vacancies, “specifically, places where no other doctors would want to go.”

  The secretary at the AMA who sent Weaver a list of rural vacancies had circled Lockeport and added a note in the margin advising him that the town had been looking for a doctor for more than two years. Weaver was only too happy to take advantage of the community’s dilemma. Asked if he felt any remorse for his deception, Weaver replied, “Why should I? I lied to no one. I volunteered no information about myself, and I was never asked at any time if I was a doctor.” When asked to explain how he could possibly defend the charade he had orchestrated, he replied, “In the two months that I practised in Lockeport, I learned more than most interns learn in a year in a hospital because I saw a wide range of ages and a variety of ailments. I saw eleven hundred people in that space of time. I’m glad I did it. It was a great experience, very enlightening.”

  When questioned about the wisdom of suturing patients when he had no medical training, Weaver told an interrogating RCMP officer that he had practised on grapefruit. Asked just how long he had expected to get away with the deception, Weaver, who reportedly had become more and more arrogant, said, “If I’d been the only doctor in Lockeport, as I’d expected to be, I could have gotten away with it indefinitely!”

  On May 29, 1979, Stephen Weaver, who had pleaded guilty to practising medicine without a licence and to the charge of possessing the drug Demerol for the purpose of trafficking, had his final day in court. He received a five-hundred-dollar fine and a six-month jail sentence.

  Everything about Weaver’s short stay in Lockeport and his impact on the people in the small town was extraordinary. His charismatic personality was dramatically illustrated during the time he spent in the Shelburne County Jail. Other inmates were so impressed with his “performance” and the wonderful fiction he spun that they somehow managed to establish a bail fund for him.

  Weaver’s scam proved to be such titillating news that even the National Enquirer gave his escapades coverage in one of its June 1979 issues. He was still in jail when the tabloid ran a column featuring his picture with the caption, “‘Doctor’ Weaver treats a young patient while he was in the Canadian fi
shing village of Lockeport.” The story was headlined “Phony doc is jailed – but his ‘patients’ want him back.”

  In mid-July of 1979, Weaver was released from prison and deported back to the United States. No one seems to know what happened to “Doc” Weaver, although he did tell friends that he had applied for admission to the University of Colorado Medical School.

  Long after Weaver’s ignominious departure, many of his supporters continued to believe that he was a real doctor. In a story featured in the New York Star, the pastor who had been one of his staunchest supporters told a reporter that if Stephen Weaver were to return to Nova Scotia, many Lockeport residents would see him again because “here was a man who really loved small-town folk, and the love he gave was returned in equal measure.”

  No doubt. “Doc” Weaver would not have been surprised in the least to learn of this display of lasting admiration for the brief but unforgettable time he had spent in the community. This vote of confidence would simply have justified his firmly held conviction that he had been “one of the best doctors” the town ever had.

  Dorothy Grant

  DOCTOR ON THE RUN

  In late 1992, when the Yarmouth Regional Hospital successfully recruited Norris Jagnandan, a physician from the southern United States, staff members were jubilant. For years, the facility had been plagued with understaffing at its twenty-four-hour emergency and outpatient department. Desperate to find a general practitioner to help cover outpatient rotations, the hospital had first advertised across Canada and then in the United States. Only three physicians had responded.