DOCTOR IN A WILD TOWN

Evening Star, Issue 23718, 28 October 1940, Page 6

DOCTOR IN A WILD TOWN

OPERATION WITH BUTCHER'S SAW On a January evening in 1905 a young doctor of 23 stepped out of the stage coach at Bend, one of those pioneer towns in Oregon, United States. Tho young man’s name was Urling C. Coe, and ho tells us in ‘ Frontier Doctor’ that professionally he had the place to himself. There was not a graduate nurse_ in the country, and tho nearest hospital was 160 miles away. Already, however, there were eight clrinking saloons—and they did a roaring trade. Freighters, stockmen, buckaroos, sheep herders, timber cruisers, gamblers, and transients of all kinds who had been attracted to the town by the boom, thronged the bars or played at the gambling games, and the stores were doing a rushing business. The stores remained open in the evenings, and the saloons stayed open all night and all day Sunday, and many of tho labourers from the construction camps spent the week-ends in town, drinking, gambling, carousing, or fighting. BADLY CRUSHED FOOT. The doctor intended to keep a note in that diary of all the important things that happened in his first year of practice; but he was soon too busy to write it up. His first operation was an emergency one performed with a butcher’s saw in a room of a little general store. A man had crushed his foot, and Dr Coe had to amputate it;— “ By that time several more men had gathered in the store, but no one among them had ever seen an anaesthetic giyen. One of them consented to give the chloroform, under my supervision, however, and the foot was quickly amputated without trouble. An unused counter in the back of the store served as an operating table, and the men stood by and watched the operation.” His first serious medical case was a man with pneumonia—and it was a memorable case in several ways. The patient’s lever was so high that tho doctor had to get someone to stay with him night and day. Since there were no nurses, he hit on a young cowboy from Texas for the daytime and a bankrupt gambler who called himself “ The Dead Game Sport, from Bowling Green, Kentucky,” as night nurse. The cowboy was reliable, enough, but one night the gambler got drunk and became abusive toward the unfortunate patient. When Dr Coe came round he found him sound asleep in a chair by the bed: — “ Without saying a word I seized the 'Dead Game Sport’ by tho coat collar, dragged him out on to the landing at tho head of the stairs, and gave him a good swift kick that sent him skidding down the stairs into a pile of snow at the bottom. I then went back and stayed with the sick man until the Texas cowboy nurse came at 6 o’clock. ’ That evening a bar tender from one of the saloons came to warn Dr Coe that the u Dead Game Sport n had sworn to “ get him ” that night when ho was visiting the sick man. So the doctor waited behind the door with a home-made wooden club in his hand. When the gambler saw him he forgot his threats and stammered: “ D-D-D-Don’t hit me. Doc.! I-I-I wasn’t gom to start nothin’. I just came to git ma dinner pail.” “ Well, get down out of here and stay out, and I’ll throw your pail down after you,” I said. I found his dinner pail where lie had left it by the head of the bed and tossed it down to him at the foot of the stairs. I then went hack to the sick man and saw no more of the gambler that night. STRONG-ARM METHODS. The other memorable thing about this case was that the sick man never paid Dr Coe a penny, although he went round telling everybody bow his life had been saved 1 On other occasions, too, Dr Coe was not afraid of using strong-arm methods. Some of his patients had been worried by the too-zealous attentions of a local minister, whose endless questionings and prayings were apt to bring about a relapse. Finally the doctor asked him not to call on patients without his permission. A few days later, however, he found that his request had been ignored. “ Without a word 1 seized him by the coat collar and the ample seat of his over-long trousers and hustled him out of the house. I threw the faded derby out after him and shut the door. When I returned to the sick room the patient was enjoying a hearty laugh. That visit may have accomplished a little good, as it was the first time the patient had laughed during her illness, but that was the last time the preacher called on a patient of mine without permission.” Dr Coe tells us that he thought nothing of driving a buggy and team 75 or 80 miles a day, “ and my regular driving time for 35 miles was just three hours and a-half.” He went to Bend in search of adventure, and the story of how he found it makes a book full of colour and movement.