J. T. H. Connor and Stephan Curtis (eds), Medicine in the Remote and Rural North, 1800–2000

Extract

The remote and rural North has a romance all its own, be it Northern Lights, pine forests, mountains and snow, or tundra, musk ox and herds of caribou. Some Norths are relative, of course. The Orkney Islands, Britain's northernmost point, are on latitude 59° N, roughly on a level with Oslo, Stockholm and St Petersburg, none of which would count as the remote North in most estimations. Indeed, Stephan Curtis's introduction downplays the idea of the North as a geographical location, preferring to understand it as a frontier region. It is perhaps the ‘exceptional difficulties of distance and isolation’ (p. 84) as Marguerite Dupree phrases it in her essay on the Highlands and Islands Medical Service, that most strongly link the communities considered in this volume. None the less, geography cannot be dismissed here—there is nothing tender about the North in winter, and factors of snow, ice, bitter cold and the long deep darkness of the months from October to April clearly add to the exceptional difficulties of distance and isolation in this region.