Country doctor

“ It was on the southern [pg 91] boundary of this plateau, living in a pioneer hamlet and practising far and wide through a wilderness, that a country doctor became the father of ovarian surgery in the United States and won the reverence of the world of science and the gratitude of humanity. In another pioneer settlement one of the greatest of American lithotomists spread the lustre of his name and the goodness of his deeds over the whole country west of the Alleghany Mountains ”

“ Then, again, country doctors cannot often make more than one call on a patient in twenty-four hours, and by an aerial messenger service they can get practically the same information as the doctors in the city or hospital practice by leaving two pigeons and getting morning and evening reports. The country doctor often is called from one patient to other persons sick in the neighborhood. ”

“ I believe you will be one more great Kentucky country doctor. And whatever race you may have to run in this world, whether you win or whether you lose, I know it will be a hard, a gallant, struggle: that is all the thoroughbred can ever do. Having delivered over to you everything I own and retaining only the things I cannot will away,—my judgment, my confidence in you, and my devotion to you,—I wager these that you will win life's race and win it gloriously. ”

“ On one wall hung his diploma from a New York Medical College; on another a diploma from Vienna for post-graduate study and hospital work.
The rooms taken together bore testimony in their entire equipment to a general outside truth: that the physician who lived in them was not a country doctor because he had been crowded by abler members of the profession out of the cities where there are many into the [pg 90] country where there are none: and this fact in turn had its larger historic significance. ”

“ One of the difficulties of the average country doctor is his lack of facilities for the expert diagnosis of disease and for the care of patients who need to be kept under observation and given supervised care. ”

“ Either through thrift, or through sheer poverty, the country people starve themselves; any illness among them is caused in this way, and as a rule they enjoy very fair health.
“When I first decided to devote myself to this life of obscure renunciation, I was in doubt for a long while whether to become a cure, a country doctor, or a justice of the peace. It is not without reason that people speak collectively of the priest, the lawyer, and the doctor as ‘men of the black robe’—so the saying goes. ”

“ Newman, who accepted his proffered heart and home, and they were married in Linn County, Oregon, February 15, 1853, and settled on the farm the doctor had located. Here he entered upon the practice of medicine, and continued with slight intermissions for more than thirty years.
A country doctor's work is always hard. ”

“ But we have to work our way and depend upon ourselves, we country doctors, to whom a consultation is more or less a downfall of pride. Whenever I hear that an old doctor is dead I sigh to think what treasures of wisdom are lost instead of being added to the general fund. That was one advantage of putting the young men with the elder practitioners ”

“ For three or four years he applied himself to the mastery of the elements of surgical and medical knowledge—dispensing medicines, assisting at operations, and performing all the duties which a country doctor's pupil was expected to perform. But he had not nerve enough for the surgical department of the profession. "For a physician," he used to say, "I might have done well, but for a surgeon never." His father consequently sent him to Cambridge, and allowed him to turn his intellects to those pursuits in which Nature had best fitted him to excel. ”

“ The doctor of a country settlement was then—they have become so common now as to place it in the power of nearly every planter to own a physician, and consequently they attract little regard—a very important character in the community. ”

“ The country doctor, such as we know him—a well-read and observant man, skilful in his art, with a liberal love of science, and in every respect a gentleman—is so recent a creation, that he may almost be spoken of as a production of the present century. ”

“ A lifetime would be required to bring about the needful changes in a canton that Nature had made so wealthy, and man so poor; and I was tempted by the practical difficulties that stood in the way. As soon as I found that I could secure the cure’s house and plenty of waste land at a small cost, I solemnly devoted myself to the calling of a country surgeon—the very last position that a man aspires to take. I determined to become the friend of the poor, and to expect no reward of any kind from them. ”

“ Nothing in the above act shall prevent any person, not a British subject, who shall have obtained from any foreign university a degree or diploma of doctor in medicine, and who shall have passed the regular examinations entitling him to practise medicine in his own country, from being and acting as the resident physician or medical officer of any hospital established exclusively for the relief of foreigners in sickness ”

“ LETTERS FROM A BABY. BY A FORWARD CHILD.
SETH TINDER'S FIRST COURTSHIP, HOW HIS FLAME WAS QUENCHED!
THE DEATH STRUGGLE; OR, THE WAY SMITH DID UP JONES.
“WHO ARE THEY?” A QUESTION OF VITAL IMPORT.
THE CITY PHYSICIAN versus THE SWAMP DOCTOR. The city physician, or the country doctor of an old-settled locality, with all the appliances of cultivated and refined life around them; possessing all the numberless conveniences and luxuries of the sick-room; capable of controlling the many adverse circumstances that exert such a pernicious influence upon successful practice ”

“ The doctor’s profession, no doubt, was his first care; but his heart was with his farms and his fox-hounds. The doctor had practised over, or, as we used to say there, “ridden” the south side of the country for nearly forty years. He had studied medicine with the intention only of saving the doctor’s bill in his father’s household of eighty negroes. He had soon, however, dropped into a regular practice, and for the last five-and-twenty years, at any rate, no birth or death within a radius of ten miles would have been considered a well-conducted one without his good offices. ”

“ The doctor is a confidant in more matters than one, and the right man will often smooth down little frictions and mollify sorenesses which bid fair to cause widespread conflagrations.
A medical mission is a pacific, as well as an essentially pioneer, agency.
There was a little missionary dispensary on the frontier, in charge of a native doctor, a convert from Muhammadanism, [69] who had gone in and out among the people till he was a household friend all down the country-side. ”

“ Probably the chief reason for the slow progress of modern sanitation in rural districts is the lack of training of country doctors in the modern aspects of their profession. In the country, sanitation is largely a household matter, and women have most at stake and the greatest influence here. In a few months or years one trained nurse or woman physician could raise the ideals of sanitation and hygiene in the country homes of a large area. ”

“ Before the reader is introduced to the modest country medical practitioner who is to be the chief personage of the following tale, it will be well that he should be made acquainted with some particulars as to the locality in which, and the neighbours among whom, our doctor followed his profession. ”

“ The weight as of a glacier had melted away from him. A new verdure of joy started forth. The beauty and happiness of the country about him found counterpart and response in his own nature.
One day as the two were driving across a fine growing landscape the doctor was trying to impart a larger idea of service; and so he was saying that there were three fathers: he was the first father—to be looked to for counsel and guidance and protection: this father was to be served loyally; he must be fought for if there were need, died for. ”

“ There was not one of the young village people so well known as the doctor's little girl, who drove with him day by day, and with whom he kept such delightful and trustful companionship. If she had been asked in later years what had decided her to study not only her profession, but any profession, it would have been hard for her to answer anything beside the truth that the belief in it had grown with herself. ”

“ Benassis suddenly knitted his brows, but by a gesture he entreated Genestas to continue.
“A child,” repeated the commandant, “whose life may yet be saved by constant watchfulness and incessant care. Where could I expect to find a doctor capable of devoting himself to a single patient? ”

“ If I settled myself into a respectable practice I should be obliged to march with the army of doctors who carry a great array of small weapons, and who find out what is the matter with their patients after all sorts of experiment and painstaking analysis, and comparing the results of their thermometers and microscopes with scientific books of reference. ”

“ It is all very well to know how to draw maps when one gets lost on a dark night, or even to begin with astronomical calculations and come down to a chemical analysis of the mud you stand in, but hang me if I wouldn't rather have the instinct of a dog who can go straight home across a bit of strange country. A man has no right to be a doctor if he doesn't simply make everything bend to his work of getting sick people well, and of trying to remedy the failures of strength that come from misuse or inheritance or ignorance. ”

“ Whoso cares to know where and how the doctor's life-path started and across what kind of country it had run until now, a middle-aged man, he sat there this day at the tragedy of its forking, may if he so choose follow the road by the chart of a narrative.
But let him remember that this narrative [pg 106] goes back into a society unlike that of to-day and into a Kentucky that has vanished. Back there are other manners, other customs, other types of men: a different light on the world altogether. ”

“ The secrets of many hearts and homes must be told to this confessor, and sadder ailments than the text-books name are brought to be healed by the beloved physicians. Teachers of truth and givers of the laws of life, priests and ministers,—all these professions are joined in one with the gift of healing, and are each part of the charge that a good doctor holds in his keeping.
One day in the beginning of her year at Oldfields, Nan, who had been very busy, suddenly thought it would be well to give herself a holiday ”

“ There was a great change in the village; there were more small factories now which employed large numbers of young women, and though a new doctor had long ago come to Oldfields who had begun by trying to supersede Dr. Leslie, he had ended by longing to show his gratitude some day for so much help and kindness. More than one appointment had been offered the heroine of this story in the city hospitals. She would have little trouble in making her way since she had the requisite qualities, natural and acquired, which secure success. ”

“ In the sick room one can hardly breathe the air. The neglected cooking stove is smoking. I want to push open the window, but first I’ll look at the sick man. Thin, without fever, not cold, not warm, with empty eyes, without a shirt, the young man under the stuffed quilt heaves himself up, hangs around my throat, and whispers in my ear, “Doctor, let me die.” ”

“ Therefore, gentlemen, the word election, to my thinking, is in a fair way to cause as much mischief as the words conscience and liberty, which ill-defined and ill-understood, were flung broadcast among the people, to serve as watchwords of revolt and incitements to destruction. It seems to me to be a right and necessary thing that the masses should be kept in tutelage for the good of society.”
“This system of yours runs so clean contrary to everybody’s notions nowadays, that we have some right to ask your reasons for it,” said Genestas, interrupting the doctor. ”

“ Now that stage of the medical work among the Indians is past, and the agency doctor has no valid excuse for failing to perform his professional duty. It is true that he is poorly paid and too often overworked; but the equipment is better and there is intelligent supervision. At Pine Ridge, where I labored single-handed, there are now three physicians, with a hospital to aid them in their work. To-day there are two hundred physicians, with a head supervisor and a number of specialists, seventy nurses, and eighty field matrons in the Indian service. ”

“ The sister says that to the mother, the mother tells the father, the father tells a few guests who are coming in on tip toe through the moonlight of the open door, balancing themselves with outstretched arms. “Will you save me?” whispers the young man, sobbing, quite blinded by the life inside his wound. That’s how people are in my region. Always demanding the impossible from the doctor. They have lost the old faith. ”

“ In our country most people are enslaved by their debts, incurred because they had been enthralled by the illusion of happiness secured by the possession of material things. Debt slaves believe they cannot miss a week of work. People who feel they can't afford to be sick think they can afford to live on pills. So people push through their symptoms by sheer grit for years on end, and keep that up until their exhausted horse of a body breaks down totally and they find themselves in the hospital running up bills to the tune of several thousand dollars a day. ”