Newfoundland’s Dr Rusted

Dr Nigel Rusted, a Canadian doctor much honoured and credited with having made outstanding contributions to the medical profession in Newfoundland and Labrador, died 10 years ago today - aged 104! Throughout his long life he kept daily diaries, one per year, for nearly 90 years. All these diaries, every manuscript page of them, are available online thanks to the Memorial University of Newfoundland - Digital Archives Initiative.

Rusted was born, son of a reverend, in 1907 in Salvage, Newfoundland, the eldest of six children, and grew up in Upper Island Cove. He attended the newly-established Memorial University College, graduating in 1927, before training at Dalhousie Medical School. During two summers, he worked as health officer aboard the SS Kyle which visited communities along the Labrador coast. On qualifying, he took a position at St. John’s General Hospital (New Brunswick). But, after suffering a severe throat infection in 1935, he worked on the floating clinic ship MV Lady Anderson for a year. He married Florence Anderson and they had three children.

In 1936, Rusted opened a private clinic in St. John’s and also became a junior surgeon at the General Hospital. He married From 1954 to 1968, he served as chief surgeon; he also served as medical director, chief of staff and chief surgeon at the Grace General Hospital, and senior consultant at St John’s two other hospitals. In 1968, with the opening of Memorial University’s medical school, he was appointed Clinical Professor of Surgery.

Rusted retired from surgery in 1982 and from clinical practice in 1987. Over the years, he received numerous honours, including the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador and the first William B. Spaulding Certificate of Merit for contribution to the history of medicine in Canada. In 2011, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada. He died on 18 March 2012. Further biographical information is available at Wikipedia, the Canadian Medical Association Journal, or the Memorial University’s website.

Rusted kept a daily journal from 1925 through to the year of his death - 88 yearly diaries in all. Every single one of them has been digitalised and made available online by the Digital Archives Initiative of the Memorial University of Newfoundland. They have not, however, been transcribed, and so, although Rusted’s handwriting is legible enough, the pages cannot be scanned or searched efficiently. Rusted also published a memoir based on his diaries and this was published by the university in 1985 - It’s Devil Deep Down There.