Author: Ronald Guenther
Written: February 18th, 2014

I thought we should say a little bit about how medicine was practiced in those good old days when people were skeptical that even germs existed, and how it impacted the Delsmans and for that matter, the public in general.

I believe it was about 1922 when Oregon first required that physicians and surgeons be licensed.  Before that, all you had to do was to put up your shingle.  Those were the days when the medicine wagon came in and the doctor would have either the elixir of life or some cure all.  Usually, it was just snake oil, but the poor unsuspecting souls from those good old days would buy into it.  At the turn of the century, that is about 1900, some quack had a sure fire cure for obesity.  It turned out to be the seed of a tape worm.  It really worked, too, but people were still talking about it when I was little, can’t be too careful about the cures those fellows are giving.  Another great medicine was laudanum (a mixture of opium), but the tried and true medicine was snake oil which went by different names when it was sold.

The first real doctor that I know of in Coos County was Doctor William Horsfall (Horsfall beach is named after him).  He came to Coos County as a missionary and school teacher at Kentuck Inlet School, was educated and popular with both pupils and parents.  Eventually, people would come to him and say they needed advice about their livestock and he gave up teaching school to be a veterinarian.  That was simple, you just tacked up a sign.  He bought himself a book and was a full fledged veterinarian.  But it was not long before people started to ask about problems they were having and so he bought himself a doctor’s book.  But he was a little squeamish in the long run about that and so went to a legitimate medical school.  The course of study was about two years, but since he knew everything and since nobody before 1900 believed in germs, he finished in seven months, spent some time at the Mayo clinic, and came back to Coos County.  I think he was amazingly smart, Uncle Heini swore by him and he practiced up until his death in 1958.  He was far better trained than most.  When grandma and grandpa married in 1910, one of the wedding gifts was a nurse’s book.  Grandma eventually gave that to mom.  I still remember that book.  It was about eight and a half by eleven, about three inches thick.  I only looked in it once or twice, the pictures in it were terrifying.  They would give anybody nightmares.  But when I was little, if something came up, like ringworm or the seven year itch, mom would consult that book and head on over to Walt at the Rexall Drug Store and get what she needed.  Sometimes, the sickness was not covered in the book and then she would have to see Dr. Johnson.

Well, in those days doctors made house calls.  Once, Aunt Louise had a sore throat, so they called out the doctor.  It is probably tonsillitis said the doctor.  I might as well take out the tonsils of all three of your children.  Tonsils don’t do anything for you and they always get infected.  So, Aunt Louise and mom pushed Uncle Dick in first.  Grandma had put a clean white table cloth on the table and the doctor yanked out the tonsils, Uncle Dick first, then mom, and then Aunt Louise.  Mom said the only one who had infected tonsils was Uncle Dick who did not even have a sore throat, but both she and Aunt Louise had healthy tonsils.  But at least they were rid of the tonsils.

Another time the doctor came out on a house call and one of the cows was bloated.  It was spring and the grass was lush and wet.  Grandpa did not know what to do and so he asked the doctor.  The doctor said, not problem, I’ll show you what to do.  So, he pulled his scalpel out of his doctor’s bags, all doctors had magic doctor’s bags in those years with everything they needed, placebos, aspirin, scalpels, and so on.  So, he went over and made an incision just behind one of the ribs, the air went out of the cow and all was just fine.  Mom and Uncle Dick were delighted.  One of their favorite pastimes for a while was to give the cow some water to drink and then to watch it pour through the whole the doctor had made.  Another time, one of the horses had a growth on its leg.  So, grandpa called the medical doctor again and asked what to do.  Well, he said, no problem, the growth was on the leg.  Tie a cord around it and just keep getting it tighter and tighter and the growth will fall off and sure enough, that is what happened.  Those old boys were quite flexible in the good old days.  In Europe, Robert Koch had won a Nobel Prize for founding the science of bacteriology and Louis Pasteur was making a name for himself, but in Coos County, a scalpel was a knife you used whenever you needed to, and that was fine, and why worry about what you could not see?

Talking about horses, though, reminded me of grandma.  Nowadays, the road from the old farm to Myrtle Point is a good one and it takes about twelve minutes to make it.  When the grandparents got their first car, it took about twenty minutes.  Grandma would make it in a horse and wagon in seventeen minutes.  She drove like a mad woman.  Actually, she always did, even in her old age.  She was constantly being stopped, too.  She called it getting pinched, and I can tell you, she was pinched many times.

So, that was the quality of care in those good old days.  Even Doctor Johnson marveled at mom’s ability to diagnose, though.

To be continued.