Dr. Skookum

A Vagabond Surgeons Adventures in Alaska

By: John Michael Hewitt

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Adventures and Misadventures in the Klondike from the Doctor's perspective.

The search for gold is not what kept the surgeon Dr. John Hewitt coming back to the booming gold camps of Alaska. The Gold Rush is merely what compelled him north. The love of adventure is what kept him vagabonding around Alaska long after the lust for riches had faded.

Alaska of 1898 was unadulterated chaos. Gold had just been found and the Gold Rush was begun! John Hewitt swore up and down he was not going. He even had most everybody convinced of it—for about a week—then he too was swept up in the tide of prospectors, sourdoughs, and tinhorns heading north to strike the next bonanza.

His first year in Alaska was one of fabulous adventure with mis- and missed fortunes. A new life of intense excitement navigating perilous rivers, staking claims, and panning for color. Then ultimately fighting for survival through the bitter winter and curtailing cabin fever waiting for spring breakup.

However, surgeons cannot be good prospectors and prospectors cannot be good surgeons. After a few failed attempts at placing claims, (one of which was later found by someone else to be fabulously rich and which he never registered) Dr. Hewitt reassumed his rightful role as a surgeon.

From the wild and wooly streets of Nome to later joining the U.S. Army as a field doctor with the military telegraph line he wandered the booms and busts of the last frontier. With necessity being the mother of invention in this primitive environment, his cases included a gangrenous bowel, a tuberculoid native, and the many victims of the violence that seems follow gold. His many stories of frontier medical practice unweighted by pretense and technicalities are brilliant and fascinating.

Taking place in Alaska during the infamous Gold Rush, Dr. Skookum is the memories of a successful surgeon who caught gold fever and spent many years in the far north. It is a colorful glimpse of the people and humor of the time as well as an unforgettable journey through the most wonderful of places—Alaska.