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"I started to count the babies I had helped into the world the other day, but something came up to stop the count. It's a large number, though. I put their birth in a little black book, and always send a birthday card to each of them. It keeps my office assistant busy when she has nothing to do. The other day a pretty young lady, fifteen or sixteen, came into my office, threw her arms around me, and kissed me, saying, 'I'll bet you don't know who I am.' Well, I didn't, but I found out that she was one of my babies. The family had been living in California since she was three years old. I had sent her a birthday card every year. You know, I didn't mind that sort of remembrance a bit." The doctor chuckled again.
As we were getting into town I looked at my watch and saw that we had been gone four hours.
"We'll run by the office and see if there's anyone waiting," the doctor said, "and then we'll go over to the house and eat. You've earned your supper."
I said nothing, but I didn't feel as if I would be able to eat.
When we arrived at the office, a little man with blood all over his head sat there holding his face in his hands. He did not look up when we entered.
Across from the man sat a large woman who looked more like a farmer than the man did. She had large angular hands and a bony face.
"I hit him over the head with a shovel," she explained to no one in particular, and then added as an afterthought, "He was drunk."
"Come in," said the doctor, "we'll have a look at it." His voice was cheerful as he motioned me in with the couple.
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In the back room, Doctor Clark seated the man in what looked like a barber's chair. He switched on a light over the chair, washed his hands, and hegan examining the wound. I saw a nasty looking laceration on the little man's head, and a bump that appeared as large as a baseball. While the water was heating over the doctor's spirit lamp, he laid out a scalpel, a razor, a pair of medical scissors, bandages, adhesive, and reached over to a glass-enclosed shelf for two bottles of fluid with long scientific names.
The little man was still silent. He did not act drunk.
The woman said, "I told him if he ever came home drunk again I'd knock him in the head with an axe, but I couldn't find the axe, so I grabbed a shovel." The blood had run down on the little man's brown shirt.
The wounds must have been inflicted several hours earlier, and no first aid had been given.
"I told him," the woman started again. The doctor glanced up from cutting the little man's hair, and she stopped talking and stood in the corner. Doc washed the wound with a hot towel, soaped and lathered the head, and shaved the entire top and both sides. With a scalpel, he began working on the huge bump. The patient raised up stiffly, squirmed, and sank lower in the chair. The doctor motioned for the woman and me to hold his arms. He opened the wound to remove the dust and dirt, swabbed it with iodine, and drained it. The little man gritted his teeth and perspiration broke out on his forehead. When the doctor began taking stitches the patient grunted each time the needle pierced his flesh.
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"I told him," the woman began once more.
"Suppose you wait in the other room," said the doctor. "Every thing is all right now, and we'll be through in a few minutes. He finished sewing the wound, bandaged the scalp, and helped the man out of the chair.
"Come back tomorrow at four o'clock," he said.
"You didn't ask the name. Doc. Do you know then?"
"No, I don't know them, but they'll be back tomorrow." After washing his hands he wrote something in a little black book and said, "Let's go home and see if we can find something to eat.
When we reached the house, twelve-year-old Mary opened the door, flung her arms ahout her father, and kissed him on the forehead. Still wearing pigtails, she was growing up, tall and straight. She took our hats.
"Where's Tommy?," Doc asked.
"He's asleep; it's far past his hedtime," replied Mrs. Clark, coming from the dining room to greet us. "I didn't know we were going to have company, but there's enough for you both. I'll make coffee and you can have it with dessert."
Doc sighed as we sat down at the table. "This doctor's life gets pretty humdrum," he said. "Deliveries, tonsillectomies, fractures, lacerations ~ one bogs down. An appendectomy is a high-water mark for a country doctor. Sixteen years I've put in on this field with no kale to show for it, and not much science left. But when I came here, women were faring little better than animals at childbirth. I feel better ahout that.
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"We have a little money made by careful management of inherited property, but I have made little money from my regular practice. You see, about ninety percent of my patients are farmers and their families. Sometimes they are unable to pay their bills for years, and some never get them paid. If they should pay as quickly as a doctor is expected to answer a call, then we'd be sitting pretty. But crops go against farmers about fifty percent of the time.
"But I was just thinking the other day that the Lord has blessed us. I've always found inspiration in the church. Something my dad taught me to do was tithe. I've always done that. Seems that the Lord blesses people in more ways than one when they tithe. Lucille tithes to her church, and I to mine. She's a Baptist and I am a Methodist; we just never worried about belonging to the same church and it worked out all right. We don't go to church as much as we should, but we take part in all the activities that we are able to support.
"You know, I began from the first giving a tenth of the first payment for my services to the church, and I've been doing it ever since. I'm just a plain country doctor; as the country people say, I'm 'the man with the little black bag.' I'm no good at any special disease, no good at any special operation, just a plain country doctor. But I've delivered a lot of babies. My work is just fair, and there are better doctors. But I have had patients with me for sixteen years.
"I've been fortunate enough to hold a job for four years as contract surgeon for the local Civilian Conservation Camp. When the lads enroll they are healthy, and it's my duty to keep them that way. I go down
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every morning at six o'clock for sick call and stay about an hour. Treatment consists mostly of first aid, caring for colds, athlete's foot, and shots for such diseases as pneumonia and diphtheria. A company first aid man calls me in case there is something he cannot handle."
"Listen, Doc," I urged, "you haven't told me ahout your unusual cases yet."
"They're all unusual. But I'll tell you ahout a strange accident case that occurred ahout eighteen years ago before I came to Carter. A lad was beating his way somewhere on a freight train. He slipped and fell under the train, and had both legs cut off near the trunk. We hurried him to a hospital, where we found that he had a fifty-fifty chance. While he was in a delirium that night the nurse stepped from the room to call for help. He tried to get up. The strain was too much on his heart, and it just stopped beating. We had a difficult time locating his relatives, but finally found that his mother lived in Connecticut. We wired her to ask what to do with the body. She wired hack that she didn't care what we did with it; she didn't want it. The railroad finally took the body and huried it on the right of way. She was one of the few unnatural mothers I ever heard of.
"This was another case I remember well. About ten years ago a Negro woman brought a twelve-year old boy in and asked me to look at his head. He had a scalp disease, and the head was so swollen that it looked like a black balloon. I lanced his scalp and found it full of pus. He had to keep coming to me for months, and every time he came his mother brought a dime or a quarter, saying that she
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