[Peter Herman Barclay--a Norwegian physician in the West Indies in the 1820s]

When Peter Herman Barclay (1781-1833), a Norwegian of Scottish descent was sixteen, he went to Copenhagen for his medical education, during which he suffered from illness and financial distress. He qualified as a surgeon and, during the Napoleonic Wars, served with the Danish and French navies (allies at the time) and in the land campaigns in Holland and France. This article describes Barclay's experience as a surgeon on the Virgin Islands of St. Thomas and St. Johns in the 1820s. These islands were under Danish jurisdiction from 1755 to 1917, at which time they were sold to the USA. Barclay had a hospital with 40 beds at his disposal. He observed various infectious diseases and the efficacy of his treatments. An experienced surgeon, he did not hesitate to trepan or amputate. He used Hagedorn's apparatus for fractures of the hip and a French caustics treatment for strictures of the urethra. Barclay wrote about his experience in Bibliothek for Laeger, a medical journal, and in a book published in 1830.