Québec entre deux mondes – la salle de dissection du Dr James Douglas

En mars 1826, le docteur James Douglas, d’origine écossaise, vint s’installer à Québec. Quelques semaines auparavant, il avait dû quitter de façon précipitée Utica (New York). Une histoire de dissection de cadavres qui avait mal tourné.

Dans l’annuaire Marcotte de 1826, on annonce que le Dr Douglas est domicilié au 10 Mountain Street. C’est à cet endroit que sera érigé en 1855 le Mountain Hill Hotel House qui sera détruit dans un incendie le 24 février 1948.

Entre 1833 et 1837, James Douglas enseigna les rudiments de la médecine à Edward Worthington qui publiera plus tard ses souvenirs. En 1910, James, le fils du Dr Douglas publia le témoignage de Worthington.

Dans ce passage, le Dr Worthington racontait qu’il avait vu de drôles de choses dans le sous-sol de la demeure du Dr Douglas. Jadis, cette partie de la maison de la côte de la Montagne abritait une salle de dissection. À l’époque où se déroule l’histoire racontée par Worthington, la dissection se pratiquait plutôt dans le grenier. Le sous-sol servait de cuisine.

Extrait de Journals and reminiscences of James Douglas, MD p.167-168
»One Sunday morning, knowing to a certainty that I was alone in the house, I went down to the kitchen for a light. A man sat on a chair in front of the coal (?) stove, his feet on it’s hearth, his elbows on his knees and his face in his open palms. I had firmly believed the man-servant to be out, but there sat someone. I passed behind him and coming to his left side, stooped down to open the stove door. He did not move, not one foot, so I said in my blandest tones, looking up at the same ttime, ‘Will you have the goodness to move your foot? I want to open the door. » If I had had my hat on, I would have taken it off, I was so awfully civil. No, he never moved. I repeated my request, without result, so losing patience I pushed the door open forcibly. It opened back to its hinges, but the feet never moved. The stove door went right straight through them.

»I stood up quietly with my eyes fixed steadily on the figure. I had always heard that that was the correct thing to do when attacked by a lion. I had seen it recommended in books of Eastern Travel, but this man never moved. He was worse than a lion and I might be annihilated at any moment. O, for a word from old Kitty [la servante du Dr. Douglas]. She would have prayed to the Saints for me. I had to act for myself, and I acted quietly, Oh so quietly. I retired backward with my face to the foe – until I reached the foot of the stairs; then, I took about 18 steps in three bounds. Never before was such time made on that stairway.

»This was the first ghost, I may as well call it by that name, as by any other, I had ever seen. I had not been eating cheese, I had not then even tasted beer. I firmly believe to this day that I saw what I have described, and as I have described it, and further deponent saith not.

»If tobacco had never been discovered, or, if parlor matches had been introduced, and I had not been obliged to go to the kitchen for a light, would that ‘poor ghost’ have been there?

Résumé

Un dimanche matin, Worthington, seul dans la maison, descend dans la cuisine. Il voit un homme assis sur une chaise en face du poêle. Worthington demande à l’homme de bouger pour qu’il puisse ouvrir la porte du poêle. Mais celui-ci ne bouge pas. Worthington le fixe du regard, car il a entendu dire que c’est la chose à faire lorsqu’on est, par exemple, attaqué par un lion. Or, l’homme persiste à rester immobile. Worthington prend peur, dit qu’il est pire qu’un lion et décide de quitter rapidement la pièce, le plus silencieusement possible. Il termine son récit en qualifiant l’apparition de »fantôme » et en nous assurant qu’il n’avait pas mangé ni fromage ni bu de bière ce jour-là.

Le docteur en fut quitte pour une bonne frousse et suffisamment de matière pour raconter une bonne histoire.

Bibliographie

A. J. Holland. Bulletin de la Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network. ‘‘DR. E.D. Worthington, an early Quebec anaesthetist’‘. Juillet-août 2006, p. 14-15.