Originally published in The Coaster Tuesday April 21, 2009. .

On a beautiful Saturday back in September of 1946, Frank Williams, along with his mother Florence and his brother and sisters, travelled up a hill near their house for a quiet day of picnicking.

However, the family’s picnic plans quickly vanished when Frank, who was five at the time, became very ill with pain overcoming the right side of his body. So, the family went home, but Frank’s ordeal was far from over.

Two days later, Frank’s condition continued to get worse, so his mother, his uncle Bert and the minister, Mr. Watts, took the Reyerson mission boat and travelled via sea 30 miles to Harbour Breton.

The doctor and nurse at the Harbour Breton Cottage Hospital were Dr. and Mrs. Cant. Dr. Cant examined the young Frank and gave his mother the horrible news.

“I can’t help this child,” Dr. Cant informed the distraught mother. “His appendix has ruptured and the poison has gone through his system.”

However, ever persuasive, Florence pleaded, “You have to try.”

Frank underwent surgery on Tuesday, September 10, but there were complications. Frank was healing so fast that the poison was still inside. Frank had to endure yet more surgery. Frank spent six weeks in the hospital and his mother spent six weeks sleeping on a blanket on the cold hospital floor beside her son’s bed.

During his six-week stay in the hospital, Frank was given 200 needles to counteract the infection. The ongoing needles began to take their toll. After about 100 needles, Frank began to cry whenever he saw the nurse – the five-year-old knew what was coming.

Despite the crying and the pain, Frank continued to take the needles, which were filled with Penicillin. Frank was a guinea pig for Penicillin being experimented with at the Harbour Breton Cottage Hospital.

From this experience, after what Frank was later told, a doctor arrived from St. John’s to check and see how the Penicillin was working for the boy Dr. Cant had diagnosed as someone who would not survive.

Luckily from Frank this new drug Penicillin was discovered 18 years before he was stricken with illness. The first patient successfully treated with Penicillin was in 1942, four years before Frank was treated.

Grace Williams
Pools Cove, NL