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A
COUNTRY DOCTOR
by
Bob Bowman |
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The image of
the country doctor -- riding his horse and buggy into the night to
deliver a baby in the bedroom of a farmerıs home -- is a cherished
part of our history.
In the Arnold family of Hemphill,
in Sabine County, that image is larger.
In 1906, William Thomas (Tom) Arnold, Jr. of Hemphill, one
of nine children of a Confederate soldier, earned his medical degree
from the University of Tennessee and returned home to establish a
medical practice on the East Texas frontier.
In the thirty-one years that passed before his death in 1937, he influenced
thousands of lives with his skills, compassion and devotion to medicine.
Dr. Tom's earnings were meager. His cash income seldom exceeded $4,000
a year and his services were often paid with fresh vegetables, pigs,
chickens, stovewood, homemade preserves and syrup.
But Dr. Tom left a medical legacy in East Texas. Of his five children,
three became physicians (one was a founder of Diagnostic Clinic
of Houston) and one was a nurse.
When he began his practice, Dr. Tom opened an office above Fuller's
Drug Store on the Hemphill square. He later married Jim Fuller's
sister Sarah Pearl, and their kids helped around the doctorıs
office and drug store, sometimes making braces for patients.
In 1928, Dr. Tom installed Hemphillıs first X-ray machine, a crude
device that had been invented in 1898. "Dad taught us how to
use it, and I remember we had to put on lead-lined gloves and aprons
to keep from burning our fingers and body," said Hiram Arnold
of Lufkin, a retired physician. Dr. Tom made house calls for two dollars.
He provided nine months of care and delivery for a mother and child
for twenty-five dollars. When he found it difficult to deliver babies
in feather beds, he invented a delivery bed he carried in an automobile
seat when he replaced his old horse and buggy.
He helped organize Hemphill's first hospital, also on the courthouse
square, and charged patients a dollar a day for care, room and board.
The hospital had seven beds and was closed with the arrival of the
Great Depression.
Working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, Dr. Tom battled diseases
with the barest of medicines, mostly aspirin and morphine. Pneumonia
was often treated by opening the patient's chest cavity to allow the
pus to drain away. Surgeries and broken bones were repaired with only
the application of "deadening medicine."
When a Sabine County manıs abdomen was sliced open by a knife-wielding
drunk and his intestines fell on the ground, Dr. Tom washed them with
distilled water, stuck them back into the manıs stomach, and sewed
him up. The man survived.
During his career, Dr. Tom contracted rabbit fever when he was stuck
by a syringe needle -- an incident that weakened his body and led
to a heart attack and his death two days before Christmas in 1937.
In clearing up his books, his children found that Dr. Tomıs patients
owed him nearly $75,000 for services.
They tried to collect the debts to settle his estate, but managed
to bring in less than $400. Most patients told them they felt they
didnıt owe the bill since Dr. Tom had died.
But when Dr. Tom was buried in Hemphillıs cemetery, it was one of
the largest funerals in the history of Sabine County -- a solemn and
fitting farewell to an American institution, the country doctor.
All Things Historical
Dec. 30-Jan.
5, 2002
A syndicated column in over 40 East Texas newspapers
Published with permission
Bob Bowman is a former president of the East Texas Historical Association
and the author of 28 books on East Texas history and folklore. |
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