Book Notes

Many years ago I picked up a book called Miners and Medicine: West Virginia Memories by a second generation coal camp doctor namedClaude A. Frazier. He collected recollections from people who had lived in coal camps where he either grew up or worked and compiled them into this book. Well, lots of other stuff got my attention and held it so I never got around to reading it until recently. Earlier this year when there was a mining disaster near by here I started to wonder where this book had gone and with effort finally remembered to look for it on my shelves in the office. Most medical books have been relegated to the office to relieve the groaning shelves at home. Unfortunately it is usually at home that I wish I could consult one of them. So I finally read it and will share a few excerpts from it here.

"The camp doctor treated just about every contingency either in the patient's home or in his office. Anyone needing his help would leave a request at the mine office or the company store. The doctor would pick up the calls around ten in the morning and again at three in the afternoon. He would keep office hours six days a week, and always took night house calls. If a patient needed more medical treatment than could be provided in the patient's home, the doctor would hold night office hours and would stay on duty as late as it took to take care of everyone."

"Littleton remarked that often people would brag with a smile that they never needed a doctor, but that if they did, the expected him to come at once. And he observed that then the smile would disappear and a deadly serious expression would take its place. He decided that they never considered that he might be out on another emergency when theirs arose..."

A nurse speaking of her husband: "As many as five years would go by without his seeing his parents. If he ever left home to go fourteen miles away to the drugstore, he would return to find a dozen patients on our porch demanding to know where he had been and insisting that he was needed immediately."

I don't find things have changed much.