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wait until I could undergo it myself, and arranged instead to
borrow money and lend it to Mr. Noice so that he could pay the
surgeon in the ordinary way. This was done and, as said above,
the shoulder was still in a cast when Mr. Taylor sent word that he
would furnish the money for the passage to Nome.
As stated above We have set down here the story of the talked-of
dietetic experiment on Mr. Noice because of the light thrown on his
mental processes by his reactions to the proposals of Dr. lieb and
myself. For he has since given this as one of the reasons for his
bitter general attitude towards me generally and for his peculiar interpretation of my plans specific attempts
and actions with regard to to discredit the Wrangell Island undertaking. His view is that
medical experiments are made on animals, and that any man who will
treat his friend as an animal, considering that loans of money have
given him the right to do so, is capable of anything, and therefore
open to the suspicion of bad motives, - such as those he has alleged
in connection with the Wrangell Island expedition.
We have told earlier in this book (Chapter VI) how
Noice himself and Knight were taken ill when they were two of only
four of us traveling over shifting ice/floes seven hundred miles
from the nearest human beings. He now thinks I brought on this
disease by crafty manipulation of their diet, just perhaps or the thrill of
danger it would give to be in such an apparently hopeless position,
for the credit I would later get by telling how I saved the situation
where there appeared to be no escape, and because of my scientific
curiosity to see if scurvy could be cured by raw meat as well as by
the vegetables and fruits which had previously been considered the
only means of cure. In this belief Mr. Noice seems at present to
be wholly sincere. It is only logical, therefore, for him to use it as
he does as one of the reasons for his later attitude about Wrangell Island.
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