and the reverend ladies of the General Hospital. Dr. Rottot was twice married; the first time to S. O’Leary, daughter of Dr. O’Leary, and the second time to the widow of N. Migneault, in his lifetime registrar of Chambly county. Mrs. Migneault is a sister of P. B. Benoit, ex-member of the House of Commons. By his first wife he had three children, the eldest of whom belongs to the order of the Reverend Jesuit Fathers, and is professor of philosophy in St. Mary’s College, Montreal.
Wanless, John, M.D., Montreal.—This famed homœopathic physician is a Scotchman by birth, having been born at Perth road, Dundee, near St. Peter’s parish church, where the celebrated Rev. R. M. McCheyne was pastor, on May 26th, 1813. He is the second son of the late James Wanless, a man who was in his day very much respected by his fellow townspeople, and who for many years carried on business as a manufacturer of green cloth in Dundee. His mother, Agnes Sim, is still alive (August, 1887) at the age of ninety-six years, in full possession of her mental faculties, and can see to read without spectacles. Dr. Wanless much resembles this wonderful woman in many respects. Dr. Wanless’s father intended that his two sons should succeed him in his own business, but after his death, which took place when the doctor was only ten years old, the executors of the estate, when he had reached his thirteenth year, apprenticed him to Dr. James Johnston, one of themselves, a leading physician in Dundee. This gentleman having died shortly afterwards, James Hay, merchant and ship-owner, another of the executors, and one of the governors of the Dundee Royal Infirmary, discovering the boy’s aptitude for medical study, was induced to secure for him the position of dresser and clinical clerk in the above hospital, which for three years he filled to the entire satisfaction of the governors and medical men of the institution. While he was here he was a great favourite with the celebrated lithotomist, Dr. John Creighton, of Dundee, and this gentleman often asked young Wanless to assist him in his private operations, as well as in the hospital, and on the eve of his leaving to prosecute his studies in Edinburgh, he bore high testimony to his ability and diligence as a student, and as to his practical knowledge of his profession. It may be as well to mention here that young Wanless, like all other boys on the Scotch sea-board, was very fond of paddling in the water, and on several occasions narrowly escaped drowning. When about ten years of age he and some other boys were amusing themselves on some logs that had got adrift from the ship Horton, of Dundee, just arrived from America, and had floated up the river into a small bay, which at its mouth had a sort of pier with arches on it. While astride a piece of this timber it capsized, and our young hero was soon at the bottom of the river. On coming to the surface, he found himself immediatetly below a raft, and considering that his time had not yet come to be drowned, he struck out boldly from under, and gasping for breath, he was hauled on the raft by his terrified comrades. On getting ashore he dried his clothes and made for home; but his father nevertheless discovered that he had had a ducking, and gave him a sound thrashing and confined him in doors for some time for his boyish escapade. The doctor now thinks that if his father—who was a very loving man—had not been imbued with the idea that “he that spareth the rod hateth the child,” he would have done better had he given him some dry clothes, or sent him for a time to a warm bed. In 1831 John Wanless left Dundee and went to Edinburgh, as a student in the Royal College of Surgeons, under the then celebrated professors McIntosh, Liston, Lizars, Ferguson, and others, fellows of the college, all of whom are now gone to their final rest. During the college session of 1831, his friend, Mr. Hay, offered him the position of surgeon on board the whaling ship Thomas, which office he cheerfully accepted, although he was then only seventeen years of age. This good ship sailed from Dundee in March, 1832, and returned with a full cargo in time to permit the young surgeon to attend the opening of the college session of 1832–3. Subsequently during college vacation he went three times to Davis Straits in the same ship, and thereby greatly invigorated his previously rather slender physical frame. While on one of his whaling voyages he one day was out in a boat shooting loons, which are very numerous in Davis Straits, and a good many can be killed by one discharge from a gun. In the act of gathering the killed he espied a wounded bird at a short distance, and in his endeavour to reach it he leaned too far over the gunwale, lost his balance, and went head first into the Arctic sea. His shipmates were alarmed, and waited in dread suspense for some time, but at length he came up, holding on to the loon by one of its legs. The mate afterwards remarked “that the doctor should always be taken with the shooting parties, for he could dive for the wounded fellows.” It may be here mentioned that the doctor was a good swimmer, and as a youth practised swimming in the Tay at Dundee, and was in the habit, sometimes, of carrying younger boys on his back out into the stream, and then throwing them off; but before doing this, however, he always gave them instructions how to swim on their “own hook.” He has been known to swim for three miles on a stretch, resting occasionally on his back. At Pond’s Bay he one time fell out of a boat, while steering with a long oar, amongst a lot of whales. There were about fifty ships’ boats and their crews in a crack in the land ice, which extended about twenty miles from the shore, and in some places the rent was about one hundred yards wide. In this opening the whales were so numerous that the harpooners only selected the largest fish for capture. During the excitement, and when passing another boat, the blade of one of their side oars unshipped the doctor’s steering oar while he was pushing it from him, and, losing his balance, he fell into the water. He however did not feel the least alarmed, but at once struck out for the ice, and, drying his clothes as well as he could, walked to his ship, which was anchored about two miles away, in the field ice, and soon found himself on deck, not much the worse for his ducking. In the spring of 1835, having passed his examination before the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, he returned to Dundee and married Margaret McDonald, the only daughter of Duncan McDonald, a well-known manufacturer of that town, and Margaret Rose, his wife. To Miss McDonald he had been betrothed for several years. He then became house surgeon in the Dundee Royal Infirmary, and having filled this position for about two years, gave it up, and entered into private practice, his office being in the same house in which he was born and married. In 1843 Dr. Wanless, accompanied by his wife, mother, brother, and sisters, with their husbands, emigrated to Canada, and ultimately settled in London, Ontario. While in this city the doctor built up a good practice, and as coroner for the city of London and county of Middlesex he was highly spoken of by the press for the luminous and logical way in which he presented evidence to his jurors. In 1849 he received his license from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Lower Canada. One day, in 1859, as he was walking along a street in London to visit a patient, he observed Dr. Bull, a homœopathist, give some pellets to a man who had fallen out of a two-story window. Having a prejudice against homœopathy, he accosted Dr. Bull in these words, “Don’t you think shame of yourself in giving that useless trash to a man in that condition?” Dr. Bull rose up, in a defensive attitude, and said, “I have always taken you for a sensible man, and instead of acting as you have done in your persecutions of us, why don’t you try to test our remedies according to the law of cure? I will give you some of our books to read, and also some of our medicines for that purpose.” Dr. Wanless accepted the offer, and took the books and medicines, thinking that he would be able to expose what he then thought was a humbug. After studying the principle of homœopathy for some time he gave the medicines to some of his patients, strictly according to the principles of homœopathy, beginning with some cases which had resisted the allopathic treatment under his own care, and that of some of the ablest men in the country, keeping a strict account of the symptoms and disease, and the symptoms and pathogenesy of what the medicine would produce on the healthy body, and after carefully testing this method of practice for nearly two years, he found that, instead of persecuting the homœopathists, he would have to become a homœopathist himself. After thorough conviction of its benefits to his patients, like Paul with the Christians, and in order to carry out the practice of homœopathy with more efficiency, he ceased from practice in London, and devoted himself to renewed study at the age of fifty years, and obtained the degree of Bachelor of Medicine from the University of Toronto in 1861, and the degree of Doctor in Medicine from the same University in the following year, 1862. He then, in order to have a wider field to labour in, went to Montreal (but before leaving having been complimented by the press of London upon his previous professional attainments), where he now resides, enjoying a good practice. In politics, as in medicine, Dr. Wanless has sought to conserve the good, and set aside the effete and worthless. Both in London and Montreal, by his spirited and able contributions to the press, he has done much to popularize homœopathy, and establish its prime
