Cottage Hospital Doctor: The Medical Life of Dr. Noel Murphy, 1945–1954

Melvin Baker is an archivist and historian at Memorial University of
Newfoundland, and the co-editor of Dictionary of Newfoundland and
Labrador Biography.

Cottage Hospital Doctor describes the author’s experiences as a public
medical doctor at the Bonne Bay Cottage Hospital at Norris Point, on the
west coast of Newfoundland, from 1945 to 1954. Murphy was the only
doctor serving a coastal area of about 120 miles with a rural population
of more than 6000. The area had few roads and, according to the season,
transportation was by boat, plane, horse, dogcart, or snowmobile.

Murphy has a keen eye and provides detailed observations of the
working, living, and social customs of the people he served in the area
prior to Confederation in 1949. There are accounts of the physical
isolation and the myriad problems of communications and transportation.
The memoir is rich, too, with descriptions of the author’s various
medical experiences and his efforts to bring administrative order to the
delivery of hospital services to rural patients.