Taissumani, May 18

Last week, I recounted how Peter Freuchen saved himself from a miserable death by freezing in a snow hollow where he had tried to catch some sleep after getting lost in a blizzard. He had saved his life, but unfortunately he was unable to save one of his feet, which had been badly frozen in the ordeal.

Once back in camp, he was treated by Patloq, one of the Iglulingmiut with whom he was travelling. Patloq cut off Freuchen’s kamik and, as the foot thawed, it swelled to the size of a football.

The only thing to do was to keep the foot frozen, Patloq insisted. If it thawed, the pain would be too unbearable for Freuchen to travel back to their main camp at Danish Island. So, with his bare foot exposed, Freuchen and the Inuit made the journey back to their base.

There, Patloq’s wife treated him. Freuchen recounted:

“And as the flesh began falling away from my foot she tried out her special treatment. She captured lemmings, skinned them, and put the warm skin on my rotting foot with the bloody side down. Every time she changed this peculiar kind of dressing, some of my decayed flesh peeled off with it, but she insisted on this treatment until there was no more flesh left… At night when I could not sleep I stared with horrible fascination at the bare bones of my toes.

“The gangrene did not spread beyond the toes. Once the decay had bared all five toes to the roots, it did not go farther, and the flesh stopped peeling. I could not stand the sight, however, and one day I decided to do something about it. I got hold of a pair of pincers, fitted the jaws around one of my toes, and hit the handle with a heavy hammer. The excruciating pain cut into every nerve of my body, an agony I cannot describe.”

Freuchen repeated this procedure with each of the toes. Able to find humour in life’s most bizarre situations, he remarked in his best-selling book, Adventures in the Arctic, “Perhaps one could get used to cutting off toes, but there were not enough of them to get sufficient practice.”

Unfortunately, Peter Freuchen’s wounds did not heal. Deciding that he needed medical attention, he headed for Chesterfield Inlet where the Hudson’s Bay Company supply ship, Nascopie, would put in that summer.

Finally the ship arrived. The doctor came ashore and operated on Freuchen’s foot on the kitchen table in the Hudson’s Bay Company manager’s house.

Freuchen was a non-drinker but on that day he made an exception. A very large man — he measured two metres in height — it is said that he was anesthetized by drinking half a bottle of rum. The doctor cut away any parts of the foot that he thought were likely to give the explorer trouble.

The doctor did what he could but was not satisfied with the results. He advised Freuchen to go out on the Nascopie, to get treatment that might save his leg. This the explorer was unwilling to do.

Back in Denmark in 1926, Freuchen ended up having his left leg amputated below the knee and was fitted with a peg leg, all this the result of a night’s carelessness in seeking temporary shelter while lost on the land.

Taissumani recounts a specific event of historic interest. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.