Horse and Buggy, Medicine and Doctors Chapter Seven The life of a pioneer doctor in rural America was rigorous, but it also totaled out as one of the most interesting of all professions. The doctor was on call twenty-four hours a day, every day of the year. There were no smiling receptionists or white clad nurses to assist him, nor ambulances and air planes to rush patients to specialists in large medical centers. No, the country doctor was strictly on his own; it was many years before there was even a telephone he could depend on for consultation with a colleague in a particularly difficult case. He was his own appointment maker and answering service, his own bookkeeper and accountant— unless his wife could help him out.
The pioneer doctor had to be his area’s heart specialist, gynecologist, internist and surgeon. He was the family physician in the truest sense of the word— the advisor in health matters and counselor in spiritual affairs. He helped his patients through their various illnesses, guided them through the trials and tribulations of love and business, and sat by their bedsides while they drew their last breaths. His skill reflected his sympathy and knowledge of human nature quite as much as it did his science. In most cases he was a man with a great heart, ready at all times to help smooth the rough places in the path of life.
Considerable information about the lives of several of Holt County’s early doctors illustrates the ordeals of the men of medicine, and of the places they filled in their communities and in the hearts of the people they served. First in point of time was Dr. Charles L. Sturdevant, who came to Atkinson in 1882.
Charles Sturdevant, a younger brother of Senator Brantley Sturde-vant, was born in Meshoppen, Pennsylvania in 1858. He was twelve when his parents moved from Black-walnut, Pennsylvania, to Fremont, Nebraska. In those days doctors, too, could study medicine in an established doctor’s office and, at age fourteen, Charles began studying with Dr. R. B. Martno of nearby Wahoo. He was twenty-one when he graduated from the Eclectic Medical College of Cincinnati, Ohio, and began his practice in the little town of Ceresco, near Lincoln, where he also went into partnership with A. C. Crossman in a mercantile business and a drug store. In 1882 the partners moved to Atkinson and bought Frank Bitney’s general store. The next year Charles opened a drug store and employed a man named Forney to run it for him while he hung out his shingle, “C. L Sturdevant M.D.” and practiced medicine. A year later, in 1884, he married sixteen-year-old Nannie Hart of Marseilles, Illinois. She died six months later and in 1886 he married Hester Munger, also from Marseilles, who had come to Atkinson to work in the store, which had by then been taken over by Charles and his brother Brantley.
Dr. Sturdevant purchased a tract of land in the town, bounded by Madison Street on the west, Pearl Street on the south and Union Street on the north. He built his big home on the corner of Madison and Pearl. His parents, James and Josephine Sturde-vant, came from Fremont to live in rooms he built for them on the east side of the house. On the corner of Madison and Union streets the doctor built a Sanitarium. His office was there, and equipment for providing various kinds of up-to-date treatment. Today the old Sanitarium has been converted into apartments but the big house, still occupied, looks just as it did when the doctor and his family lived there.
If any one time of the year was worse than another for the country doctor it had to be winter. Dr. Sturdevant’s son, Charles, a pharmacist in Lincoln, in 1973 supplied the following recollections of his father’s business in the winter time. “Those were horse and buggy days, of course, and when Dad made a call in winter he used the cutter.
“A messenger would arrive, probably on horseback as that was before there were telephones. Several bricks were kept hot in the oven of the kitchen range and, while the team was being hitched to the cutter, someone was wrapping the bricks in newspapers to put on the floor boards for warmth. Meanwhile Dad was putting on a coat about the weight of a topcoat, then an overcoat and a fur coat. When he got into the cutter he covered himself with a wool blanket and a fur laprobe on top. Quite likely he would be making a sixteen-mile drive to a confinement— to deliver a patient who hadn’t seen him since her last child was born. After bucking the miles of snow and cold he reached the sod house, heated by a hay burner, and took over. For all this he charged fifty cents a mile— which, many times, he never received.” During the great flu epidemic of 1918 and 1919 Dr. Sturdevant was the only physician left in Atkinson, the other two, Dr. Douglas and Dr. McKee, being away, serving in the Army. It was said that there were as many as seven hundred sick people in the Atkinson community at one time quite a patient load for a sixty-year- old doctor. The epidemics were at their worst in the winter time, of course, when many of the weary doctor’s trips had to be made on horseback. When he could use his buggy he hired a driver to go along so he could catch a few winks of sleep on the way from one farm to the next. Otherwise, he had to give up sleeping for the duration.
Dr. Sturdevant died on May 17, 1973. The finest kind of a pioneer doctor, he was a kindly man, a gentle man and a remembered man. After his death an elderly gentleman told his great-niece, Mary Ellen McKee, “You know if Dr. Sturdevant were still alive, he could help me. There hasn’t been a decent doctor in Atkinson since he died.” Atkinson was fortunate in having Dr. Sturdevant so early and so long.
Only two years behind Dr. Sturde-vant in setting up a practice in Atkinson was Dr. A. T. Blackburn. Born in Wisconsin in 1853, he was tutored by his father, an English clergyman and accomplished scholar, until he entered Carroll College. At seventeen he enrolled in Lawrence Seminary, Appleton, Wisconsin, evidently with the intention of becoming a minister. However, at the age of twenty-one he commenced the study of medicine with a Dr. Deans of Chilton. It was necessary for him to fill the position of principal of small town Wisconsin schools while “pursuing his medical studies ad interim.” After graduating from the medical college of North Western University in 1881, he began the practice of medicine at Hingham, Wisconsin, where he was markedly successful. He was married that same year to a Miss Ella Hutchinson, daughter of the Hon. Hanford Hutchinson of Lyndon. But, as was the case with so many people of that period, he was advised to move to a “high, dry climate” for his health. Atkinson was the location he selected, and there he made his home and carried on his practice for 45 O’Neill National Bank. He owned a business building in the town and a fine home there.
Born in Elizabethtown, New York, in 1867, he grew up in the Adirondacks and earned his way through high school as school janitor. He was eighteen when he came to Nebraska in 1885, traveling to Saint Paul by rail and there joining a party that came to Custer County, Nebraska, by ox team. Later he taught country schools in Fillmore County and worked evenings in the drug store. In the fall of 1886 he returned to New York State and entered Union Medical College at Albany. To pay his expenses there he worked as a purser on the daylight steamer, City of New York, which ran from New York to Albany in the summer months. During the school year his room was furnished by the doctor who was his college procter. After graduation Dr. Gilligan took a year of post graduate work in New York City, then joined a doctor who specialized in chest diseases, probably the very threshold of such specialization. By then he had decided he wanted to be a Westerner, so settled first in Sioux City, Iowa. The location did not prove to be a healthful one for him, so he, too, headed for the high-.dry air of mid-Nebraska and stopped at Anselmo, again in Custer County.
He wasn’t satisfied there and when, a short time later, he was visiting in a store on Main Street, across from the depot, and a traveling salesman got off the train and came in, he fell into conversation with him. He mentioned the fact that he was a doctor and hoped to find a better location. The salesman told him he should try O’Neill, as the town had just lost its doctor. The train was still at the depot and the young doctor grabbed his bag and headed for it, not even taking time to go get his clothes.
And so Dr. Gilligan came to O’Neill. Except for a year of postgraduate work on diseases of the eye in Chicago, he never left it.
Many pioneer doctors also owned the drug stores in the towns where they practiced and Dr. Gilligan was no exception. Soon after arriving in O’Neill he bought a drug store from Jake Hershiser and took as his partner Charles E. Stout, who ran the business. At Takamah, Nebraska, in 1897 he married Maude Stout, sister of his partner, who had come to O’Neill to keep house for her brother. The other drug store in the town was owned by a Mr. Corrigan, and Jim Stout, Charlie’s brother, worked there. The two stores, though rival businesses, were side by side on main street. Charlie became a registered pharmacist in 1900 and took over a half the next seventeen years. Apparently his lungs never became too strong, for, at the age of forty-eight, he died of pneumonia at his home, leaving his wife and two young children. The exact year of Dr. Guy B. Ira’s arrival in Nebraska is not given. Although a resident of Lynch, north of the Niobrara River, in pioneer times he made many trips into Holt County to attend the sick. This was before any bridge was built across the Niobrara and his drives were made more difficult by the necessity of fording the river.
On one occasion he was called to the George Tuch home on Steel Creek, where Mr. Tuch operated a grist mill. Even though a blizzard was blowing out of the north, Dr. Ira started out with his team and buggy; for the stork was on his way and the doctor knew he would not delay because of the storm. The river was frozen over, facilitating the crossing, and Mrs. Tuch’s brother, Thomas Graham of the Crowe ranch, met the doctor on the south bank to guide him to the mill. Trees grew on either side of the road, or trail, and snow had covered the trees, making a sort of tunnel. Mr. Graham went ahead of the doctor, shaking the snow off the frees so the team and buggy could get through.
At the mill things were not going well. It was far into the second day before Dr. Ira had matters under control and could leave the mother and baby. Mr. Graham had to go along again, to guide the doctor back to the river, as if was still storming and the frail they had made two days before was by then obliterated. They put up at the Crowe ranch that night and the next day Dr. Ira made it back to his office in Lynch.
When a doctor made a trip under such difficulties to attend a patient far out in his territory, he thereafter felt free to call on that family for help in reaching another family farther on. If the doctor’s own team was played out by the time he reached such a farm, he would leave if and borow a fresh one there to finish the trip, then pick up his own on the return trip. Or, if he needed a guide in country strange to him, or a driver so he could snatch forty winks before reaching his next patient, he enlisted the man of the house, or one of his older sons, to help him out.
Many doctors were much more to their communities than merely physicians, and Dr. John Phillip Gilligan of O’Neill was such a man. A resident of the town from 1890 to the end of his life, he was the town’s mayor (1922-26), a member of its school board, leader of the County Medical Fraternity and Vice President of the interest in the store. Later he bought the doctor’s share and was sole owner.
Dr. Gilligan’s years of practice in O’Neill spanned the time from saddle bags to airplanes. His office stood where the First National Bank now stands and was a rather spacious suite of rooms; including some used for maternity care before O’Neill had a hospital. He owned the first X-ray unit in Holt County, and other doctors and the area dentists used to bring their patients to him for X-rays. The machine was operated by hand and the doctor wore protective coverings to prevent burns on his hands and arms.
The following items were taken from Dr. Gilligan’s office record book: Delivery Charge (baby girl). . . . $10.00 House Call to Stuart……………… $10.00 Amputation (Office Call)………. No charge recorded In the above case Charley Stout administered the chloroform for Dr. Gilligan to a ninety-year-old female diabetic patient who had developed gangrene in a lower limb. Dr. Gilligan made the incision and the patient’s heart stopped. He revived her and instructed Charlie in the removal of the leg. The patient recovered. House Call to Long Pine (sixty miles distant (Stayed two days …………………………………. $20.00 Two weeks of changing dressings on a badly infected arm .$ 1.00 Twenty-one office calls resulting in surgery. Total charge. .$26.00 Office Call…………………………………… 50 Complete Physical Examination ………………………$ 3.00 A patient with a smashed hand came to the office for emergency care. Dr. Gilligan sent his son, John Jr. across the street to Leahy’s saloon for a pint of whiskey. The patient was given the whiskey and the doctor attended the injured hand. When he had finished he said to his patient, “That whiskey really helped, didn’t it?” “You bet,” replied the patient. “Along with the pint I had before I came in, it sure helped.” Patient at Page (ten miles)………………………….No Charge This patient was a farmer’s wife with a ruptured appendix. Dr. Gilligan examined her and decided a surgeon should be called. He arranged for Dr. Barry to come from Norfolk by train and horse and buggy. The kitchen table served as an operating table. Dr. Gilligan followed up with four house calls to check the patient’s recovery. During that troubled period of the Barrett Scott affair, when no one knew what might happen, Dr. Gilligan carried both a Colt six-shooter and a shotgun with him for protection. 46 Sometimes, on approaching an isolated sod shanty after dark, he was met with the muzzle of a gun until the owner was sure it was the doctor in the yard.
Throughout his forty years of practice as a country doctor, John Gilligan made a habit of taking young men with him when he made long drives into the country. They were company for him and it gave him the opportunity to interest them in the practice of medicine, and acquaint them with its needs. As a result of his efforts thirteen young men in the O’Neill community were drawn into the study of medicine. Of his own two sons one became Dr. John Gilligan of Nebraska City; the other, Ben, a registered pharmacist, lives in Gretna, Nebraska.
In spite of his busy practice, Dr. Gilligan found time to serve in the State Senate for two years (1905-06). Since the legislature convened for only a few weeks each year he did not lose much time from his work in Holt County. He was also mayor of O’Neill (1922-26) and a charter member of the O’Neill country club. In 1915 he was president of the State Medical Association, of which he was a member for years.
Dr. Walter Briggs came to Ewing in somewhat the same manner that Dr. Gilligan came to O’Neill, that is, by accident. In 1897 the Carson, Iowa, paper printed the news that Briggs, the first white boy born in that community, was home, having been graduated from Iowa College with an M.D. degree and having finished his internship in a Wisconsin hospital earlier than expected— due to the hospital burning down. Following that disaster the young doctor walked’ home and was stretched out in a hammock, resting his feet and reading the paper. At about the same hour a doctor in Ewing, a former resident of Carson, was reading the Briggs item in the paper. He immediately got a letter off to the doctor, asking him to come to Ewing and take over his practice so he could get away to consult a specialist about his own health. So Dr. Briggs came to Ewing with his diploma and a small bag, to stay a few weeks and look after the other doctor’s practice. He was twenty-one years old— and he stayed forty-nine years.
His territory, too, covered a huge scope of country. When visiting distant farms and ranches he, too, depended on people along the way to help him from home to home when roads and weather were bad. He delivered babies, set bones, tested eyes, sewed up wounds, did occasion- *The story of the McKee’s elopement and journey McLernon in 1930.
al kitchen table surgery and administered with skill and compassion to all. Sometimes he was snow-bound at an isolated home for as long as three days at a time.
Besides a busy practice, Dr. Briggs also found in Ewing a town and community that offered an abundant life. The countryside was exceedingly pleasant and the town had sparkling, pure streams on three sides— the Elkhorn River and Cache Creek. The surrounding grasslands and sandhills were filled with wild flowers in summer. On occasion herds of antelope could be seen during his early years there. Twice a year migratory waterfowl covered the grasslands west of town. The town was a place of great and pleasing variety, a splendid place to live and raise a family.
The doctor married Grace Belle Hoy, daughter of a Ewing merchant, in 1901. They became the parents of six children who, “all of their lives were glad they grew up in Ewing.” Doctor Briggs died in Ewing in 1946. Another long-time Atkinson physician was William Douglas. Born in Pekin, Maryland, he came with his parents to Nebraska in 1878. Graduated from the Omaha Medical College with an M.D. degree in 1900, he soon thereafter came to Atkinson. Fifty-one years later he had delivered more than 2,400 babies— and had not lost a single mother.
His experiences were those of the other typical frontier doctors whose only hospital was his patient’s bed, his greatest advantage his courageous spirit. At one time Dr. Douglas maintained a stable of seventeen horses. He kept them in good shape and was always sure of a team or two in top condition to make a long, fast drive. For he well knew that speed might, and often did, mean the difference between life and death. When automobiles came on the scene Dr. Douglas was the proud owner of an early Hupmobile. This was not the distinct advantage over the horse and buggy that it might seem; for the car all too often got stuck in bad sections of the road, and if it ran out of gas it could be a long, long haul to find some more.
On one occasion the doctor was called to a farm to attend a boy who obviously needed an appendectomy. At that time such operations in the state of Nebraska could still be counted on the fingers of one hand, but Dr. Douglas knew it was the boy’s only chance for life. When the parents refused to let him operate, he packed his bag and started to town. Then the parents came after him and begged to America is taken from a history of the McKee, McLernon and McMullen families as written by Edward him to come back and go ahead. It was a kitchen table job, of course, with the hired man administering the anesthetic, but it was successful. Dr. Douglas served as a captain in the medical corps in the first World War, and was District Commander of the American Legion in 1933-34. In 1952, with nine other Nebraska doctors, he was honored for having completed more than a half century in the practice of medicine in the state. In 1952, at the dedication of the new St. Anthony Hospital in O’Neill, he was honored as the Dean among medical men of the area, with many of the men and women he had helped bring into the world looking on.
Dr. Neal Patrick McKee was a first generation United States citizen whose parents came from County Antrim, Ireland, in 1869, after eloping from their homes in Loughiel. His father, Charles McKee, was a broth of a man, weighing about one hundred and seventy pounds, strong as an ox, with all the fire of a thoroughbred. Mary Anne McMullen, his mother, was one of the prettiest, wisest and best educated girls in the parish. Both were twenty-two years old when they eloped. Their Irish background is most interesting.* Charles had three brothers in America and the young couple planned to join one of them, Billy, in Philadelphia. At Mary Anne’s tearful request Edward McLernon, a young school teacher who boarded with her family, “eloped” with them and helped them get to America.
Charles and Mary had obtained written permission from the local parish priest, Father McLaughlin, to marry, for which Charles had paid the five dollar marriage fee. With Edward carrying the luggage, they walked the eight miles from Loughiel to Bally- money, arriving at three o’clock in the morning. At eight they went to the priest’s house. He flatly refused to marry them, saying he “was done with marrying Father McLaughlin’s runaways.” So the three took the train to Ballymena, about twenty miles from Ballymoney., where Edward had a speaking acquaintence with the priest, Father Lynch.
They found the priest with “a sick headache, cross as a bear, and also carrying a grouch against Father McLaughlin.” He advised them to go on to Belfast to see the Bishop. Since they had to go to Belfast anyway, to take ship for America, they caught the first train. There they learned the Bishop was dining with other clergy in Hollywood, across the river in County Down. The weary travelers went to 47 Hollywood and tracked the Bishop down. He ordered one of the priests to marry them, which he did, “but charged a whale of a price, three pounds or $15.00.” The newlyweds and Edward then returned to Belfast and, within half an hour, were on a boat bound for Liverpool. The English Channel was very rough that night and all three were terribly seasick. In Liverpool Charles and Mary Anne found they lacked the exact amount they had paid the priest, $15.00, of the price of their tickets to America. Edward did not have enough extra money for all three of them, so offered to loan his friends what he had and remain behind. Instead, they pawned most of their clothing, raised enough money and bought their tickets. All this had taken three days, but at last they were ready to embark on the S. S. City of London, a fine new passenger ship, where they had good accommodations, even though they traveled steerage. The weaher was bad and the voyage took fourteen days. Nearly penniless, the travelers reached New York, where they eventually found work and began to adjust to life in their new homeland. Edward took up teaching again, near Baltimore, where he was soon afflicted with “miasma” and had to seek a better climate. In Nebraska, he was told, there was land free for the taking— and no such thing as miasma. He wound up in Willow Island, a tiny town on the Union Pacific in Dawson County, and there the young McKees joined him in 1876. By dint of thrift and hard work the McKees and McLernons prospered and acquired land and other property. Young Neal Patrick McKee was born in Willow Island in January, 1890, the youngest of the nine McKees. The little town was a pleasant place to grow up in. All five of the McKee boys were good at baseball and Neal was able to raise part of his college money by playing semi-pro ball in the southern part of the state. Neal went to college because his mother, Mary Anne, had determined that at least one of her children should have a college education. Since Willow Island had no high school, Neal walked or rode the five miles to Cozad, where he graduated in 1907.
Although Mary Anne died the year before her son finished high school, (and his father had died a few years earlier), she had done her work well. The desire to see their mother’s dream come true, carried Neal on to Creighton Medical School in Omaha where, with the help of his brothers and sisters, he completed the course. By 1915 he had finished his internship, and that same year went to Atkinson to replace Dr. G. W. Townsend who had moved to Colorado. There the handsome young doctor immediately joined the town baseball team, which may not have helped his early practice, since one lady objected to calling “the new young Doc,” because.”anyone who can play ball that good can’t be a good doctor.” His first stay in Atkinson was brief, for in August, 1917, he enlisted in the Army. The following January in Atlanta, Georgia, he married Olivia Zoe Sturdevant, daughter of Senator Brant-ley and Ellen Sturdevant and niece of Dr. Charles Sturdevant.
Following his discharge from the Army in May, 1919, he and his wife returned to Atkinson. In August the town put on a huge two-day celebration honoring all returned veterans. Dr. McKee played a leading part in the affair and helped with the organization of the John Farley American Legion Post. His association with the Post lasted forty-seven years and he twice served as its Commander and was State Vice-Commander in 1925. He and his wife attended the first National Convention in Kansas City in 1921 and Dr. Neal was on the Distinguished Guests Committee that entertained President Coolidge at the National Convention some years later in Omaha.
Dr. McKee was a “country doctor” in a transitional period of history. He made calls on horseback, but he also made calls by airplane. He, too, was summoned by the midnight knock on the door if the phone lines were down or the caller did not have a phone. He, too, was on call twenty- four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. Traveling was anything but luxurious when the doctor arrived in Atkinson with his little Ford. Heaters were not yet in use and he still needed the overshoes, heavy coat and laprobe his horse and buggy predecessors had used. And even when heaters came into use he took the extra gear along because there were often times when……….. The roads he traveled were little more than trails, even in 1930, and the nearest pavement was far to the east, between Fremont and Omaha. Cars all too often got stuck. If in the sand, the shovel he always carried, hay borrowed from the nearest haystack and a little luck got him out. If in mud, he walked to the nearest farmhouse and enlisted the aid of the farmer and a team. If in snow, he shoveled, or called on the farmer again.
He also counted on the help of the Atkinson Fire Department. When an especially difficult trip was in prospect a group of firemen would drive him to his patient’s home. Several men could shovel a car through the drifts much faster than one. Other times, in bad weather, if the doctor had not returned home when expected, his wife made some phone calls along the country line to verify that he had passed one place, but not the next one. Then she called the Fire Department to tell them where on the road he had last been seen. A rescue team would soon be on the way to haul him out of whatever drift held him captive.
At other times, when roads and/or weather were bad, the doctor’s wife received calls such as this one, “Ollie, I thought you’d like to know Doc has just passed here— and from here into town, after he passes the schoolhouse, the road is clear.” Such calls meant a lot to a doctor’s worried family.
Dr. McKee usually made his house calls first thing in the morning, after stopping at the post office to pick up the mail, and again in late afternoon or evening. Many were country calls. On a pleasant evening, if his stop at a farm home was expected to be brief, his family went along for the ride into the country. Always an avid hunter, during hunting season the doctor combined his calls on country patients with a family hunting trip.
Neither did Dr. McKee ever lose his love for baseball. On a Sunday afternoon he and his family could almost always be found at the ball park. Here, too, the telephone was his standby. Since there would be no one at home to answer the phone he simply told “Central” where he would be. If an emergency call came in Central rang someone who lived near the ball park and that individual would come to get him.
48 Dr. McKee’s office hours were never posted. Everyone knew that they were from the time he finished his calls and arrived at the office in the morning until ten or eleven o’clock at night. In the summer when his upstairs office was hot and he had no patients, he came down stairs and sat in front of the hardware store, or on the bank steps, smoking his cigar where everyone could see him, in case someone came hunting him. Previous to the opening of Atkinson’s fine, modern Memorial Hospital in 1952, the town had two other “hospitals.” Both had minimal equipment and did not operate for long. Several Atkinson women at various times opened their homes to the doctor’s patients and helped care for them, providing a needed service and lightening his workload considerably. Stuart, thirty miles to the northwest, had a successful hospital long before Atkinson did, and for a good many years Dr. McKee made at least two trips a day to care for patients hospitalized there.
Even after the new Atkinson hospital was available many people resisted going to it. To many, especially the elderly, a hospital was where folks went to die and most preferred to do that at home. Dr. McKee usually handled this situation by stating, “You’ll go to the hospital or you can find another doctor.” Because of its soon earned reputation for fine care, the hospital was fully accepted by the community before long.
In Dr. McKee’s time fees charged were minimal compared to those of today. An office call was two dollars, a house call five. A call into the country was fifty cents a mile. A confinement case was $25.00.
But money was scarce, particularly in the drouth and depression years of the thirties and many fine and honest people could not pay these fees, small as they were. Dr. McKee, and most of his colleagues, believed people would pay if they had the money, and if they didn’t it would do no good to bill them. On the other hand many of his patients paid “in kind.” A man might have no money but he could fix a roof, repair a chair, paint a garage. Farmers and ranchers brought in fresh eggs, cream, chickens or garden vegetables. A young country schoolteacher may have initiated installment buying in Holt County when, from her thirty-five dollars a month salary, she paid the doctor twenty-five cents a week on her tonsilectomy.
The stores the McKees patronized were often determined by the state of health of the owners’ families; which explained why they traded almost exclusively at one store, then switched to another. When a friend asked the doctor’s young son, Neal, why they always went to Vaughn’s grocery store, the boy answered matter of factly, “Because Grandma Vaughn is sick.” The doctor also received many gifts: his favorite drink homemade buttermilk, or home baked bread, or a sack of garden vegetables. Some of these were left in his car on the street, with no names attached. On week days he could make an educated guess as to the identity of the donor by remembering who he had seen in town that day; but on Saturday evening, when everybody in the country came to town, he had no way of knowing.
Of course Dr. McKee’s faith in folks’ honesty was sometimes abused, but the times he was disappointed were more than compensated for by those who paid, even years later, when they were able. Letters such as the following proved his contention: “Dear Doc, I am in the army now and stationed in California. I just got promoted to sergeant and things are looking pretty good.
I am enclosing a check for $25.00. I don’t think any of us kids got paid for, but I want to pay now for myself. I sure do appreciate all you have done for all of us through the years. Sincerely,” “Dear Dr. McKee: You won’t remember me, but in 1931 I was visiting my cousin, Sarah S. ——————- in Atkinson and I fell off a horse and broke my leg. I didn’t have any money to pay you but I have never forgotten all that you did for me.
My daughter has a job in an airplane factory now and making real good wages, so we want to send you a check. I don’t know how much the bill was, and maybe you don’t either after all these years, but this will show our appreciation. Thank you again.
Very sincerely,” Dr. McKee was fond of children, and the painful shots and treatments he had to give them in his office were soon forgotten when the nickel he gave them was exchanged for an ice cream cone. A tonsilectomy patient received a hand-delivered malted milk from the doctor. Any child he met on the street was likely to get a nickel for a cone, too, and the admonition, “Don’t let it drip on your shirt.” Some might have called this bribery, for many youngsters would have no other doctor but “Doc Kee.” No one doubts that a dedicated pioneer doctor led a rugged life, but what of the doctor’s wife? Quite likely not all doctors’ wives took as active a part in her husband’s business as did Olivia Zoe Sturdevant McKee. Even so, most of them had to get used to spending the major part of their time alone, looking after the home, the children and other family business, as well as answering calls, taking messages, nursing on occasion, and a hundred other duties not called for in the average home. McKee’s wife, however, went the last mile.
Atkinson’s first Model T runabout. Eulu Stetson on left, Ollie Sturdevant McKee in center. An unnamed school teacher on right. Courtesy A. G. Miller Ollie Sturdevant was born in the Brantley Sturdevant home in Atkinson in 1891. She had two older brothers, Lazelle and George. She grew up an attractive, fun loving, well-dressed young lady, graduated from Atkinson high school in 1908 and from the Nebraska State University, with a Bachelor’s Degree in Physical Education, in 1914. In addition to playing on the University basketball team, she set a high jump record for which she won a plaque. At home again she taught in Atkinson for several years and made an unsuccessful bid for the office of Superintendent of Schools of Holt County.
While in Atkinson she met the new young doctor, Neal McKee, and married him in 1915. After their return to Atkinson from Army camps in 1919, Ollie soon found out what it meant to be a country doctor’s helpmate. In due time their children, Mary Ellen and Neal (Tut) joined the family in the comfortable McKee home, a few blocks from the Brantley Sturdevant house.
Unless Dr. McKee was busy with a patient he could be counted on to come home for dinner when the noon whistle blew, and for supper with the six o’clock whistle. Ollie and the children were expected to be ready to eat at those times, but ” Ollie could never be sure the doctor wouldn’t be called by someone just at meal time so she tried to delay last minute preparations until his car actually stopped in front of the house. More often than not, when they did sit down at table, the meal would be interrupted by a phone call for the doctor.
These calls resulted in a medical education for those at the table, as the doctor gave first aid instructions for an accident, or questioned a list of 49 symptoms to determine whether he should make a house call or hurry to the office. So far as the McKee children knew, at least until they were older, hemorrhages and diarrhea were normal topics of table conversation.
Being the wife of a popular young doctor certainly had its drawbacks. One was the chore of doing the office laundry. There is nothing glamorous about bloody towels, and Ollie McKee often had a bathtub full of towels and white surgical gowns soaking overnight in cold water. (Her daughter, Mary Ellen, never did earn her health bead in Camp Fire Girls because it required a bath every day for a month— and too many times she came up short because the bathtub was filled with bloody office laundry.) Early the next morning, while the towels and gowns were washing for half an hour in hot, soapy water, a boiler full of water was heating on an old oilstove on the back porch. The wash then went into the boiler for another half hour’s boiling, and through two rinses before it went to the clothes line. Doing the doctor’s laundry was a full day’s job.
In those days, too, there was a drug problem— mostly with hoboes who rode the rails during the depression years. Everyone had these knights of the ties knocking at back doors and asking for a sandwich, but at the doctor’s door they asked for a “shot.” Dr. McKee was not cooperative, and in some instances, when a man would not take “no” for an answer, he told his wife to “keep the door locked and the kids in the house.” Neither did Ollie like to answer the door late at night when the doctor was out on a call. It was always a relief to find some one she recognized under the porch light. Sometimes it was her husband. “Ollie,” he would say, “I got into some bedbugs tonight.” His wife would bring a sheet while he removed his clothing outside. Each article of apparel was then carried inside, placed on the sheet and gone over inch by inch for bugs. By such rigid care the McKee home was kept free of bedbugs.
The McKees had a phone in the house and another in the office, both rigged to ring simultaneously. Two rings meant the office, three the house. If the phone gave its two rings more than twice, Ollie answered at the house and took the message. When the doctor was leaving the office on a call he rang the house to tell his wife where he was going and when he expected to be back.
Often, however, if business was slow at the office, he would do downstairs to attend to an errand in the drugstore, the hardware store or Paul Schultz’ barber shop, or just to socialize a bit on the street. In these instances he considered himself to be “around” and did not call his house. Then, when a call came for him, Ollie would call the drugstore and the hardware store. If he were not at either place someone from one of the stores would go out to find him. Billy Schultz, son of the drugstore owner, was particularly obliging about “hunting the doctor.” Sometimes, too, one of the McKee children was called in from play and told to “go uptown and see if you can find your dad.” As the children grew older they, too, had to help with “phone duty.” During the “growing season” Ollie not only set a most bountiful table but canned and preserved the generous gifts given the doctor by his friends and patients. Sometimes she would buy a supply of vegetables from Fred Mlinar when he made his morning rounds with his wagon, only to have the doctor come home at noon with a like supply, given him that forenoon. Preservation of food was something of a problem in the early years of Ollie’s marriage. In winter she kept food cold on the unheated stairway landing, or on the back porch if freezing didn’t matter. In summer she or the children carried perishables to the basement, except for the small quantities that fitted into the little wooden icebox on the back porch. The iceman came every morning with his load of ice that had been cut from the pond behind the milldam the previous winter.
Ollie’s mother, Ellen Sturdevant, from her home a few blocks away often helped her busy daughter. Sometimes she arrived at the McKee’s door at mealtime with a specially prepared dish, turning an ordinary meal into a banquet. After the McKees bought an electric stove food requiring mid-day cooking was prepared in Ollie’s kitchen in hot weather, but in winter foods requiring hours of simmering were cooked on the range in the Sturdevant kitchen, thus saving on the McKee’s electrical bill. And when Ollie had an over- supply of fruits or vegetables, due to their friends’ generosity, her mother took part of it home to process, so that nothing should go to waste.
Ollie abhorred waste. She constantly patched and made over for her own family, and when her children could no longer wear a usable article of clothing she passed it on to some one of her husband’s patients who could. Anything worn beyond wear went to her mother as rags for homemade rugs. The doctor was always finding someone for her to give something to, as when he reported that the children in one home he visited were fighting to read the dictionary, the only book in the house. Ollie had a good supply of old magazines to fill the need. She saved grease to give to women who made their own soap,, and she made Christmas gifts by the hundreds for those who would otherwise have had none.
Ollie was a devoted mother to her two children. In spite of all her duties she was not too busy to sew gunny sack curtains for the “Sheriff’s” office in the old coal house, or to teach them to swim when they were very young, or to dance and play tennis and golf as they grew older. She was understanding of the relative importance of playing baseball or doing household chores.
She was one of the few women in town who knew how to drive a car, after such vehicles came into use, so she also became a chauffeur. Although the doctor could seldom go, the McKee car hardly ever missed a band or an athletic trip, with Ollie at the wheel. She also could be depended on to drive her husband’s patients to Omaha or Lincoln when necessary. Some of those trips were emergencies, whereupon the doctor would call his wife and ask if she could drive the patient to the city. The ensuing conversation often went something like this: Ollie: “yes, when does he want to go?” Doctor AAckee: “He’ll be ready in half an hour.” Ollie would whirl away from the phone and frenzied activity followed. “Call Sadie (Schultz) and ask her if she’d like to ride to Omaha with me,” she would instruct one of the children. “Tell her she’ll have to be ready in half an hour, and we’ll come home tomorrow. Then go tell your grandmother I’m going to Omaha for your dad, and take that kettle of apples and ask her if she can finish making the applesauce. See if she wants me to send the cold chicken for your supper, then hurry back so you can answer the phone while I get ready.” And somehow, within the hour she would be on the road.
The least of Ollie’s responsibilities for the patients she taxied to Omaha was delivering them to the hospital, a hotel, or the home of a friend or relative. In some cases she had to administer medication en route, or stay in the city awhile and provide escort service to and from hospitals or doctors’ offices. For many of her charges it was their first trip outside Holt County and she had to show them how to walk with traffic lights, catch a streetcar, find a place to eat and order from a menu, and so on. Furthermore, driving down to Omaha was not the easy trip it is today. Ollie’s cars were not air-conditioned, 50 and sometimes the heaters didn’t help much, either. The roads were not paved, flat tires and engine failures were not uncommon. Changing tires was a routine matter— except when it was dark and the doctor had taken the car’s flashlight into some home with him, and then left it in his doctor’s bag. When that, or engine trouble, happened she had to depend on the kindness of passing motorists, or walk to the nearest farmhouse to ask assistance.
Indeed, some of the trips Dr. McKee arranged for his wife could only be described as “hairy,” due either to the patient’s extreme illness, or the treacherous condition of the roads. He was fortunate that she knew how to drive and could be depended on to “get there” some way; and also in that, while she was gone with the car, some one of the few men in town who owned cars were willing to loan his wheels if the need arose. Most dependable of these individuals was Gib Morgan, a hardware merchant. On the other hand, if the patient being transported was not “critical,” the doctor could give his wife longer notice for the impending journey. In such cases pleasure could be combined with business and the trip planned to coincide with some event of special interest in the city. She often invited a friend to go along then, and in summer she took her children, giving them the opportunity to enjoy gala affairs that most Atkinson children would not experience until years later. The doctor’s daughter, Mary Ellen, wrote long afterward that her father was devoted to his family, but remembered that, if he sometimes seemed cross and unreasonable it was usually because he had a seriously ill patient for whom, with all his skill, he could do no more. At such times, she said, “it was politic to be on one’s good behavior.” But any member of the family with a problem could depend on the doctor’s statement, “I’m in your corner.” On summer evenings, after the stores closed, Dr. Mckee liked to come home and sit in the front yard with his family, “with his cigar smoke keeping the mosquitos away.” This was the time for exchanging the news of the day, or for a lesson on the Big Dipper and the North Star. Any neighbors who happened to walk or drive by were sure to stop, too, to visit awhile. And that is the way it would be until the phone rang, or some one drove up and said, “Doc, can you look at this leg? I think it needs a few stitches. I cut it this morning but couldn’t get to town any sooner because I had to finish my haying and milk the cows first.” In all his years in Atkinson the doctor took few vacations. The longest was a week’s trip to the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933. Cars and roads being what they were then, one wonders if that was much of a “vacation.” Now and then the Mc-Kees drove down to Lincoln to a football game, and every year the doctor took his family “home” to Willow Island for a two or three day visit. Again one questions the recreational value of the trip. The drive from Atkinson to Burwell, sixty miles, took all day on the sandy crooked trails where they often got stuck, or hung up on a high center.
At Willow Island there was always a day of joyous reunion between the doctor and his six— and sometimes eight— brothers and sisters. A great deal of visiting and rollicking Irish laughter and mountains of good food made up a day the doctor needed and loved. Then the long trip back over the same difficult road to Main Street, where the children were sent running to tell Grandma Sturdevant they were home, and the doctor called “Central” to ask if there were any messages. Of course there always were, so it was immediately “business as usual” again.
As soon as his own children were old enough. Dr. McKee organized them and their friends into baseball teams. Then he and Albert Frost each took a team to coach— Albert the team on the north side of the railroad tracks, the doctor the one on the south side. All summer long they played their games on Tuesday afternoons, and afterward Al Frost treated his team to icecream or pop at his cream station while the south-side team enjoyed a case of pop on the McKee lawn, and all the while envied the north-siders their choice of either pop or icecream.
Years ahead of women’s liberation, Dr. McKee permitted his daughter to play on his south-side team until the members were old enough to be merged into the American Legion Baseball Program, after which the doctor turned his attention to the Legion ball team, helping develop many fine teams during the 1930’s. Dr. McKee never neglected his practice for any of his other activities, yet he somehow found time to serve twenty-four continuous years on the Atkinson school board, part of the time as its president. During this time he vigorously promoted three major building projects: the new gymnasium, elementary school and the agricultural building.
Not all men who serve their communities so long and faithfully live to see the value of their services recognized. Dr. McKee did. In 1961, while he was still actively practicing, the mayor and city council of Atkinson set aside August 31 as “Dr. McKee Day.” The day of recognition was jointly sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce and the American Legion and all the stores closed from 10:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. There was a long parade put on by the babies he had brought into the world since 1915, a smorgasbord picnic dinner and a program at the city park. The doctor received a multitude of awards and messages that day, from scores of organizations, dignitaries and friends. Governor Morrison commissioned him an Admiral in the Nebraska Navy. Mrs. John Mohr, Sr., his first patient in Atkinson, and Earl Dickau, the first baby he delivered, were there to greet him.
Blanche Spann Pease, one of Atkinsons’s most talented and best known writers, in a speech made during the program, said in part, “In his forty-six years as a country doctor, Doc has gone from the era of the horse and buggy, and operations performed in country kitchens by the light of a kerosene lamp, to the modern antiseptic hospital. But he can also tell you that of the 3,000 babies he delivered, most of them arrived in the traditional old-fashioned manner— and most of them at night. There is an exception or two. Three . . . were delivered by directions given over the telephone, due to the fact that country roads were closed because of blizzards. “In his forty-six years as a country practitioner Doc has been on call for 16,790 days and nights (or) 402,960 hours. This is a record of service which no one in this community could possibly begin to match. And so today. Dr. McKee, we say to you with love and admiration, WELL DONE THOU GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT.” The following day the Atkinson Graphic carried a two page letter that began: “Dear Doctor: To lots of us around Atkinson it really doesn’t seem like nearly half a century since, fresh out of medical college, you came here, tacked up your diploma on the wall of a little old frame building and hoped for the best.” And ended, “It is our great pleasure to salute you on Doctor Mckee Day!” It was signed by all the business men of Atkinson.
Two other pioneer doctors for whom very little information was submitted were Dr. W. F. Finley of O’Neill and Dr. T. S. Hunt of Stuart. Dr. Finley was one of a family of thirteen children. In 1913 he graduated with honors from the University of Minnesota, married the following year and practiced medicine in Laurdale, Min- 51 nesota for two years prior to coming to O’Neill in 1918. He was county physician for Holt County for many years.
Dr. Hunt came to Stuart in 1882. It is too bad that we don’t have more data on this unusual man. The John Slay-maker family history relates that he was “a family doctor (who) was highly praised at get-togethers for what he had done for his patients. He was somewhat of a character. He drove a team of elks and could sure travel.” Dr. Hunt was killed while boarding a train in March, 1906. On the distaff side Holt County boasts one outstanding doctor and three high-ranking registered nurses. The doctor is Nadine Coyne, or “Niki” as she was known at home. The daughter of Hugh E. and Anna (Dwyer) Coyne, she was born in O’Neill September 6, 1920. After finishing her elementary and high school education at St. Mary’s Academy in O’Neill in 1938, she enrolled at St. Theresa’s of Winona, Minnesota, then transferred to the University of Nebraska for two years. She was graduated from Northwestern University School of Physical Therapy in 1942 and the next year enlisted in the United States Army Medical Corps as a physical therapist with the rank of First Lieutenant.
Doctor Nadine Coyne Following service in Texas and New Jersey, in May 1945 she embarked for the European Theatre of Operations where, with two of her classmates, she was stationed at Birmingham, England, to aid in the rehabilitation of maimed and crippled soldiers flown to England from the continent. She was discharged from the service in December, 1945, at Camp Sibert, Alabama.
Niki at once went back to school and earned her medical degree from the University of Illinois in 1950, her residency in physical medicine and rehabilitation work was completed at the university of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas. At this point Dr. Coyne was awarded a three-year fellowship under the National Foundation of Infantile Paralysis. She continued her study at New York University— Bellevue Medical Center and at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. After completing the fellowships in 1955 she became director of physical medicine and rehabilitation in Cuy- hoga County hospital and assistant professor of medicine, physical medicine and rehabilitation in Western Reserve University Medical School, both in Cleveland, Ohio.
In February, 1959, Dr. Coyne was appointed coordinator of training for physicians in the department of physical medicine and rehabilitation of New York University— Bellvue Medical Center and the Director of the Respirator Center at Goldwater Memorial Hospital. Dr. Coyne, born and reared in a town and county where total service to humanity had been the high aim of a generation of dedicated doctors, had gone far in that field herself. Although her field of service lies far from her native land, O’Neill is proud to claim her as one of its own, a brilliant patriotic American. Her love and devotion to the ill and the handicapped has equalled that of her county’s revered men of medicine and they rate her equally high. Major Cathem Ullom The earliest of the nurses,was born in March, 1902, at Ballagh, just south of the southern border of Holt County. She came of a line of American ancestry tracing back to West Virginia of the 1770’s. Her parents were John and Mary Louise (Jones) Ullom. Cathem graduated from St. Mary’s Academy high school of O’Neill in 1922, taught rural schools for a short time, then went off to the Army School of Nursing in Walter Reed Hospital. Graduating there in 1930, she joined the Army Nurse Corps. Twenty years later she retired (1951) with the rank of Major. She was making her home in Tucson, Arizona, at the time of her death in 1966. Major Ullom was brought “home” to O’Neill for burial in Calvary Cemetery.
Lieutenant Colonel Madeline Ullom Madeline Marie Ullom was born in 1911, after the family had moved to O’Neill. In 1930, the year her older sister was graduated from Walter Reed, Madeline was graduating from St. Mary’s high school in O’Neill. Following in Cathern’s footsteps, she, too, taught school for awhile, then entered training in the Thomas Jeffer- Lt. Col. Madeline M. Ullom son University Hospital School of Nursing in Philadelphia. Graduating in 1938, she, too, joined the Army Nurse Corps.
Madeline was sent to the Philippines, where she served side by side with the heroic soldiers of Corregidor. She was still caring for sick and wounded Americans when the fortress fell to the Japanese in May, 1942. With sixty-six other nurses Lieutenant Ullom was interned in the Santo Tomas Prison compound, where she was held with three to four thousand prisoners until freed by the return of the American troops on February 3, 1945.
During nearly three years of imprisonment Madeline carried on under unbelievable conditions, caring for the sick, which were present at all times; for malnutrition and lack of sanitary facilities were breeding grounds of disease. Upon her return to the United States, after a short hospital stay to regain her own health, she was assigned to Foster General Hospital in Jackson, Mississippi. She then served two years with the Army Nurse Corps in the European Theatre at Heidelberg, Germany. That assignment completed, Madeline returned to her homeland to continue her education and received her MS degree in Nursing Education at the Catholic University in Washington D.C. She was then named Assistant Chief of Nursing Service at William Beaumont Army Hospital in El Paso, Texas, where, on March 4, 1958, she was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
She retired from the Army Nurse Corps in 1964 and presently resides in Tucson, where she is active in civic and community affairs. O’Neill is justifiable proud of Lt. Col. Ullom who 52 nobly upheld the principles of her faith, church and training to serve her God and her country.
Major Dona Rae Shellhase Dona Rae Shellhase, only daughter of Clinton G. and Mary Shellhase, was born at Atkinson in September, 1923. She received her elementary education in District thirty-six, near her farm home, and graduated with the class of 1941 from Atkinson high school. She taught two and one-half terms in the rural schools of her county. Then, following the induction of her only brother, Keith, into the Army, Dona Rae enlisted in the WAVES in September, 1944, at Des Moines, Iowa. After boot-camp training at Hunter College, Bronx, New York, she was transferred to the Naval Air Station at Seattle, where she remained for the duration plus two six-month sign- overs. Discharged in June, 1947, at the U. S. Naval Hospital at Bremerton, Washington, she promptly enrolled in Norfolk Junior College at Norfolk, Nebraska. Two years later (1949) she entered the Methodist Hospital School of Nursing in Omaha and graduated in 1952. She practiced her profession as a General Duty nurse at the Methodist Hospital until May, 1954, when she enlisted in the U. S. Army Nurse Corps at Omaha with a commission as 2nd. Lieutenant. Following basic training at Fort Sam Houston and seven months of duty at William Beaumont Army Hospital in El Paso, she was assigned to serve in Japan, arriving there on May 1, 1955. She served two years there in the Eleventh Evacuation Hospital at Sendai, and while on duty in November Dona Rae was promoted to First Lieutenant. A tour of duty at the Ireland Army hospital at Fort Knox followed her return to the states, after which she was assigned to the 14th ‘Sophia’s medicine doubtless derived its value from the tannic acid used Field Hospital at Bad Kreuznach, Germany, as a General Duty nurse. While there, on August 4, 1960, she was promoted to the rank of Captain and was one of five nurses selected from the hospital to take part in Army Field Maneuvers with the armored troops at Gratenwohr, known as Win-tershield No. 1. This was a high honor. In June, 1961, Captain Shellhase was sent home to take an Advanced Military Nursing Course at Fort Sam Houston. Her next overseas assignment was to Korea, where she was promoted to the rank of Major. The final assignment of her long and illustrious career was to Camp Sheridan in Illinois, from which she was retired in August, 1970. Shortly afterward she married Mr. Dennis West of Shenandoah, Iowa, where she and her husband now live.
Major Dona Rae, too, is a beloved daughter of Holt County, a patriotic American imbued with the love of her profession and a sense of duty to her fellowman.
Horse and Buggy Medicine Horse and buggy medicine was as rugged as the doctors of the pioneer years. During the earliest settlement days in the scattered new communities doctors were few and the distances- between them and their patients long. On the whole, however, the settlers were a healthy lot; but babies were born, accidents happened and now and then somebody fell ill. As more people came and settlements grew larger, epidemics— measles, diphtheria, smallpox, typhoid fever— scourged the country. At such times the people helped each other and used such simple remedies as they had on hand. Medicants for “self doctoring” that could be found in every home, no matter how poor, were coal oil or kerosene, lard and, usually, vinegar, salt, soda, sugar, mustard and molasses. As time went on many homes kept a well stocked “medicine chest,” often merely a shelf high enough to be out of reach of the children. It provided some or all of the following: quinine, turpentine, epsom salts, castor oil, sweet oil, sulphur, glycerine, sassafras bark, wormwood and other “simples.” Many households also kept a bottle of high proof whiskey on hand for relief of the aching misery of “the Gripe.” Goose grease, rendered from the fat of a goose, was highly regarded. Many settlers didn’t keep geese, in which case nearly anyone could trap or shoot a skunk. The fat of the animal, if properly rendered, had no odor and was as good or better than goose grease. The hot oil of either one, used alone or mixed with in curing or tanning the leather. turpentine, generously rubbed on the chest and back seemed very effective for the treatment of chest colds or pneumonia.
A spoonful of sugar with a few drops of turpentine or kerosene added, was good for sore throats and croup. For those who could “down” it, a teaspoon of kerosene was even better for cutting phlegm from a child’s throat. Poultices made of fried onions were standbys for chest colds. There was a variety of homemade cough syrups:the sweetened juice baked from onions; a syrup made from boiling the needles of the red cedar; or sugar, vinegar, honey and water boiled together.
A tea made from sassafras bark helped stomach cramps. Catnip tea was good for colic in babies and a tea made from boiled watermelon seeds could be depended on to get the internal organs of a newborn baby working. Wormwood tea, made from a whitesh plant that grew in the area, was a general remedy. As one early resident said, “After a strong cup of wormwood you forgot for awhile what ailed you.” Soda and salt was a good sore throat gargle, and also good for bee stings.
Quinine was used for fevers, and turpentine for all kinds of cuts, sores and rusty nail holes in the soles of bare feet. Warm sweet oil was best for an earache and oil of cloves would sometimes stop a toothache. Frequent doses of sulphur and molasses, after a long winter without fresh fruit or vegetables, thinned the blood and toned up the system. Nearly all children, of course, wore little bags of horribly odoriferous asafetida around their necks in winter. This was supposed to ward off colds and a variety of other ailments.
Alum crystals were burned on top of a hot stove while all the family stood close, breathing the fumes for a preventative against contageous diseases. Most households had alum on hand as it was used in the brine in which they cured their meat. Sophia Hoppe of Emmet used to burn old shoe leather to a crisp, mash it to a powder and administer one teaspoon of it in a glass of water, milk or wine. It was an instant cure for diarrhea.* Tallow relieved chapped lips and hands. Rock salt, beans or whole grains, heated in bags, took the place of modern hotwater bottles for aches, sprains and sore spots, a “knee stocking” wrapped around the neck upon retiring for the night was supposed to cure a sore throat. The longer the stocking had been worn, the better its curative power. Poultices made of yellow laundry soap and sugar, mashed together, or 53 of bread and milk, with a little sugar added, were excellent for binding onto deeply embedded splinters, or boils and carbuncles. In a few hours time the “sticker” would be drawn out or the abscess brought to a head. Probably the most frequently used poultice was the good old “mustard plaster.” It was a “sure cure” for “colds that had gone down on the lungs.” They could be hazardous, however.
During the flu epidemic of World War One, teenager Dena Richardson fell ill of it while staying in Spencer to go to high school. By the time she recovered and was immune, her whole family, including the hired man and hired girl, were down in bed with it out on the Eagle Creek ranch. So Dr. Bradley of Spencer took her home to nurse the family. A day or two later her mother, from her bed, told her to make mustard plasters for everybody and told her the proportions— one part mustard to three parts flour, moistened to a thick paste with water and spread on cloths to be applied to backs and chests. Dena somehow got the formula reversed but everybody was well enough to get up the next morning, although with very red backs and chests. Another instance had to do with a man who complained of a sore back. He wouldn’t take time to go to a doctor, but insisted there must be something his wife could do to relieve his pain. She had heard of mustard poultices, and that they were even used on babies for bad colds, so she mixed one up and covered her husband’s back with it. In no time he was complaining that his back hurt worse than ever. His wife turned a deaf ear. If babies could stand it, she said, surely a grown man could. The next morning she removed the plaster, “plus all the hide from his back.” They had to send for the doctor then, and hire a man to come and do the chores for three weeks. The man never complained of a sore back again. And his wife felt pretty bad when she learned that a “mustard” plaster was supposed to have flour in it.
Medicine In the beginning the scarcity of doctors forced the people to become quite skilled in the art of helping one another. This was especially true in the practice of midwifery. Every community had at least one, maybe several, of these good women who were ready and willing to go at any time of day or night, through all kinds of weather, when a call came.
But, in spite of the settlers’ best efforts, tragedies were inevitable because of the long, empty distances that too often lay between the sick and injured and the nearest help. Even with a midwife on hand, someone usually tried to get the nearest doctor there, too, before the stork arrived. One night, when a child was due to be born in the Leslie Puckett family, someone went for the nearest midwife, Mrs. Dougal Allen, while an older lad, Faye Puckett, set out on a half broken bronc for O’Neill, twelve miles distant, to fetch either Dr. Gilligan or Dr. Flynn. The boy did not know the way very well and it was difficult to tell, in the darkness, which of the frequently branching sets of trails he should follow.
In O’Neill at last, Faye wakened a doctor, who sent him to the livery stable for a certain team. By the time he returned with the team and buggy the doctor was ready. Tying the bronc to the back of the rig, they headed back across the prairie. The account does not relate whether or not they reached the Puckett place before or after the baby, Clyde, was born. But the trip for the doctor undoubtedly took hours.
Up in the north end of the county the doctor was needed one dark April night in 1904 to attend Mrs. Charles Adams. A small son was sent to the neighbor’s home to ask someone to ride to Dustin to telephone for Dr. Stockwell from Butte. The doctor knew the family but wasn’t sure he could find their place. When a man volunteered to guide him there, the doctor hired him and they started out. After crossing the Niobrara the guide became completely lost. The doctor kept a constant watch as they drove on— and presently saw a light in the distance. Knowing that no one would have a light at that hour of the night unless there was trouble, they headed for the dim glow. Sure enough, it led them to the Adams’ home. Several neighbor women were there, and after the little girl, Mabel, was born the women fixed breakfast and the doctor stayed to eat a bite. The fee for the delivery was ten dollars.
In the wide scope of country that lies between Atkinson and O’Neill Mrs. John Steskal and Mrs. Henry Winkler helped deliver babies and lay out the dead. A Mr. Bausch who had been educated in Germany to be a barber, was often called on; for “he could set broken bones, tend to sprains and dislocations or lance boils and infections.” He set Lucy Winkler’s arm many times as she was subject to dislocations of the shoulder and elbow.
Another source of help for humans was the local veterinarian, if there was one. Dr. James Brown was an early practitioner of veternary medicine in Holt County. “He had no office, just came and went with his white horse and single buggy.” In 1879 Morgan Hayes was hunting with his son Patrick and a neighbor lad, Tom O’Connell. The boys were carrying the antelope home and Morgan was carrying the three guns. One went off accidentally and the bullet passed through the man’s right hand and left arm. Another son, Jack, was sent at once to Neligh, sixty miles away, home of the nearest doctor. The doctor there could not leave so the boy rode on to Norfolk, another thirty-five miles, and got an Army surgeon to go back with him. They arrived at the Hayes farm five days after the accident, and found Morgan’s left arm so badly infected that it had to be amputated.
On at least two occasions the John Ziska family took care of their own surgery. When one of the children was born with an extra appendage on the side of one hand the father examined it carefully. It seemed to be only flesh and he decided to remove it with his razor. However it was a more complicated matter than he had anticipated, for there was bone in the growth. Once started, he went ahead with the operation, but the ordeal haunted him for the rest of his life. He often said he would never have attempted to operate on the baby “if I had known there was bone inside.” Another time, when ten-year-old Ella was chopping wood for the smoke pit fire the head of the axe came loose. She was trying to pound it back onto the handle when it slipped and chopped off one of her bare toes. The bone was completely severed and the toe hung by a bit of skin and flesh. Her father wanted to take off the toe but the mother objected, so they put it back in place and bandaged it as well as they could. It healed, but was never quite right and always bothered her in cold weather.
The extreme poverty of many of the settlers emphasized the starkness of illness and death on the prairie. Some, conditioned by life in the home countries they had so recently left, or by pride, would not call a doctor because they had no money to pay him. When nine-year-old Tom Dobro- volny became ill his parents excused him from his work in the field and let him stay inside, where he lay all day beside the stove. They did not call a doctor because their neighbor had taken their son to the doctor the year before “and brought him home dead.” Finally the boy became so weak that his mother, too, stayed in from the field to attend him. When he developed “terrible pains in his abdoman,” a younger boy was sent to 54 the field to call the father. The frantic parents gave him teas and tonics and put a bag of heated oats on his stomach. The lad soon died and the neighbors came in and laid his body out on two chairs while Joseph Kubart was making the coffin. The parents went to the funeral “but the brothers remained home as they had no shoes.” Diphtheria, one of the most dreaded of all diseases, swept through villages and communities every few years, carrying off many children, sometimes several from the same family. In the spring of 1895 Maude and Daisy Henderson became extremely ill. A neighbor who had much experience with many kinds of illness told the parents she was sure they had diphtheria. They called a doctor, who confirmed the diagnosis. Daisy, nearly fifteen, died. Maude, though ill a long time, finally recovered. Hoping to prevent an epidemic, the Hendersons advised their neighbors of the nature of the disease and asked them not to come to Daisy’s funeral. One family, the Humphreys, and the neighbor woman who had been helping all along, were the only ones who dared come in to comfort the family and prepare the young girl for her coffin, which was brought out from Atkinson.
Twenty years later, after antitoxin had somewhat abated the diphtheria scourge, typhoid fever was still a killer. When a man hired to mow hay on the Bob Clifford ranch became very ill, no one knew what ailed him. After a week of trying to “whip” it without the aid of a doctor, he went home. Then Mrs. Clifford, who was never sick, also became ill and was taken to her father’s home in Atkinson, where Dr. Douglas was called in. He immediately pronounced it typhoid fever. After many weeks she recovered. Meanwhile her daughters, Sylvia and Fern, had contracted the fever, and before they were well the “steady” hired man had come down with it. They all recovered, but a neighbor lad, eighteen-year-old Oliver Gorman who had ridden over on Sundays to fraternize with the hay crew, took the fever and died of it. His father came to the Clifford place to ask Bob to use his Hupmobile to take the boy’s body to the undertaker at Atkinson. They wrapped the body in sheets and strapped it to a board laid across the back seat. The roads were “terrible,” but they finally made it to town, a distance of about thirty miles from the Gorman place. Sometime later the Cliffords learned that it all started with the temporary hired man, who also recovered from the fever.
A few years later, after the neighborhood had telephones, Frank Nei- bauer called in the middle of the night to ask Mrs. Clifford to come as soon as she could, as his wife had just given birth, prematurely, to twins. Mrs. Clifford went at once, but it was too late to help the babies. She made a tiny coffin from a grape basket and the father buried them in the yard. Later, when the Neibauers had another baby, Mrs. Clifford was called again. The baby was bleeding profusely from the navel and they had been unable to reach Dr. Gilligan. Mrs. Clifford had heard that a silver dollar, placed on the navel and bound firmly, would stop the bleeding. She tried it and it worked. When Dr. Gilligan finally arrived he told her her first aid treatment had saved the baby’s life.
Rattlesnake bites were a real, though rarely occurring, danger in pioneer times. Charles and Bertha Mitchell’s twenty-two-months-old daughter Hazel was one of the victims. She was bitten in the days before there was a bridge across the Niobrara and the only way the doctor from Butte could cross the river was by a ferry operating about two miles west of the Mitchell home. The Daily place was very near the ferry and the baby was taken there to await the doctor, who had been summoned by a galloping horseman. When he arrived he had the child placed on the table, where he lanced her swollen leg in nine places between her toes and knee. She completely recovered.
In 1913 Mr. and Mrs. George Conard, who lived twenty miles north of O’Neill, left their three children, Catherine, Nathan and Warren, at home while they went to town. The three Slaight children, who lived with their uncle, John Liddy, were visiting the Conard children that day and about noon they went to the creek to play.
While digging in the earth beside the stream they uncovered some wild parsnips. The year before Mr. Conard had raised some artichokes in his garden and Catherine Conard thought the parsnips were artichokes. She and Mary Slaight took a bite of the plant. Emma Slaight tasted it. It burned their tongues and they thought it would be fun to have the boys try a bite. The Slaight boy thought the thing tasted “queer,” so took one of the parsnips to his uncle to ask about it. Mr. Liddy knew how poisonous the wild plants were and went at once to see about the children.
He found Catherine, age six, near the house and already in convulsions. Mary Slaight, nine, still at the creek, was also in convulsions. Emma Slaight, eleven, was sick but he put her on a horse and sent her to a neighbor’s house to call Dr. Gilligan. The doctor came as fast as he could but found Catherine Conard already dead and Mary Slaight in poor condition. After suffering great agony, she passed away a few days later. The two boys, though very ill, recovered.
It seems fitting to conclude this chapter on pioneer medicine with some lines written in tribute to Dr. Gilligan in the 1930’s by Ruby Swenson McLean. The sentiments expressed could well apply to all those hardy souls who ministered to their fellowmen in their time of need. THE COUNTRY DOCTOR No waiting room of luxury and pretty white-clad nurse, To copy down your history and estimate your purse.
Instead, a well-worn shabby room, himself to greet you there, With deep blue eyes to note your need as he tilted in a swivel chair. Somehow you lose your panic, your dark fears drop away, As he talks of crops and weather and passes the time of day.
Before you leave you’re grinning and your chin comes up again, And you’re sure the sun shines somewhere behind today’s cold rain. He had no shining limousine to purr on well-paved street.
But a sturdy car that goes beyond where mud and pavement meet.
He churns along without complaint to where an anxious woman stands Waiting in an open doorway with a lamp held in her hands.
His patients are not smartly clothed, the sleek white-collared clan; Instead, perhaps in overalls, dead pale beneath the tan, A man with twisted leg lies still and seeks with pain-filled eyes The doorway. When the doctor comes there, peace from torture lies. I think when Gabriel blows his horn, a special greeting waits, The man with the little well-worn bag, beyond the golden gates.
Somehow, I sorta wonder if he won’t be lost indeed, For his happiness has always been in tending those in need.