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Dr. John M. Sloan

DR. SLOAN is a prominent and successful physician of Nome, who came to this country to mine. During the first three years of his residence in Seward Peninsula he prospected and mined in the Gold Run region, and carried a pack on his back through a large area of the northern country. He is a native of Huron County, Ontario, Canada, and began this life with the first day of the new year, 1868. His ancestors were Scotch, and after graduating from the Clinton Collegiate Institute and the Manitoba University he went to Scotland to perfect his education for the profession he had selected, and was graduated from the Edinborough and the Glasgow Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons. From the Edinborough College he received the degree of L. R. C. P. and S., and from the Glasgow College, L. F. P. S. After graduating he went to London, and spent a few months in the Moorfield and London Hospitals.

When he returned to America he went to the United States, and located in Chicago, where he began the practice of medicine. This was in 1894, and during that year he received the appointment of Professor of Surgery in the Harvard Medical College. Later he was Instructor of Surgery in the Post Graduate Medical College of Chicago, and held both of these positions when he started for Nome in the Spring of 1900.

After arriving in Nome he went to the Port Clarence and York Districts, and was one of the first in on the Bluestone strike, which at that time promised to eclipse the strike on Anvil Creek. The prospects were not realized, but there is gold in the country, and with plenty of water, the utilization of which will require the expenditure of considerable money, the hopes of the early explorers of this country may be realized. After three years of hard work and the privations incident to camp life far away from a base of supplies, Dr. Sloan returned to Nome and opened an office in the Golden Gate Hotel. He immediately met with the recognition which ability and thorough education always command. His brother, Dr. W. Sloan, is the operating manager of their mining interests, which are extensive, comprising gold mines in the Bluestone and Gold Run country and tin properties in the vicinity of Ear Mountain and elsewhere in the York District.

Dr. Sloan's slight physique is a parcel mostly brains and nerves. Guided by an unerring intuition and equipped with the very best education, possessing natural ability and the skill that comes from experience, Dr. Sloan tried to spoil a good physician to make a miner.

Source: Nome and Seward Peninsula by E. S. Harrison. Seattle: The Metropolitan Press, 1905.

 

 



 


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