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May, 1903
(The Denton Journal)
Passing of the Old Eastern Shore Doctor.
From The Baltimore Herald.
To the student and observer of the changes wrought by time in the social and institutional life of the Eastern Shore one of the most familiar and striking differences between the new and the old is seen in the Eastern Shore doctor. This important professional personage is now typified by a young, aggressive, business-like physician the antithesis of the sedate, courtly, punctilious practitioner of the old school. To the old Eastern Shore, as well as to the old Virginia doctor, with his lancet, calomel and jalap, his mercury and Peruvian bark and his eighteen months or so of medical education, there has come a successor, with a four years' training, under two score of professors, lecturers and teachers, in a score of allied medical sciences, most of which were unheard of a quarter of a century ago, with `a thousand and one drugs for the rapidly expanding list of the ills of man, and, above all, perhaps, with the manufacturing chemist at his back. And what wonders this patient and hard working scientist has performed. From his laboratories come discovery upon discovery of new drugs, of new combinations of old drugs, and vials upon vials of innocent looking pink and various colored pills, granules, triturates, tablets, etc., in which reside the "active principles" of remedial agents.
The old doctor's calomel bottle, alone, now holds an armamentarium of the little "active principles" in a form which the future hid from the eyes of his heroic predecessor. And as the old doctor replenished his saddle-bags from the apothecary's shop, the new doctor fills his pocket case and his carriage medicine chest from the manufacturing chemists of Baltimore, or of Philadelphia, and does his own dispensing. The country druggist, however, complains that he is not doing so well as did the apothecary. He claims that the new doctor sends him few prescriptions. The patient today is prone to patronize the physician who deals out his own remedies. He has but one bill to pay for attendance and medicine, and he is shrewd enough to see that this bill is likely to be less than the two of doctor and druggist. The "spirit of commercialism" has entered into the sickroom as well into all other affairs of this age. The doctor's "honorarium" is now the new doctor's fee- a cold now a clear-cut matter of business. The Hippocratic oath is now a relic of antiquity, and the schools no longer go through the formality of administering the jusjurandum.
Few of the old Eastern Shore doctors survive as a connecting link between the conditions which surround the present day practice of medicine and the flower of medical life which bloomed and blossomed and faded in the nineteenth century. Here and there one is found, in this county of that, who is still active and holds a clientele among old families, although the younger generations regard him askance. For the good old man has lost none of his reliance in the methods which dead and gone masters taught him, and the clash of theories and the actual results in practice of the old and the new the lagging veteran finds much in use by his younger brethren that is superfluous in the application of the art to the old familiar diseases common to this climate. He has seen the dreaded ague, once the scourge of the Eastern Shore, practically depart, and the fevers which once raged so extensively and disastrously in his early days have become lessened in volume and virulence. He is still in demand in certain cases, and when the grip seized the community and was heralded as a new and dangerous disease, and gave impetus to the labors of the chemists in producing the much exploited "coal tar products," he kindly got down an old author and identified the influenza and revived the forgotten treatment from three-quarters of a century ago, with gratifying success.
In the case of the Eastern Shore doctor the new regime has swept him and his virtues and his foibles aside. A man is shot through the abdomen in the morning. Long before night he is in a Baltimore hospital with a surgeon, dressed like a French baker, searching his intestines for perforations; or he may be in the hospital at Salisbury or Cambridge, or that soon to be erected at Easton, or the one in Elkton, with a city surgeon speeding to his side; or an alert, brilliant, daring local practitioner operating upon him.
An onset of typhoid fever or pneumonia sends the patient to a hospital, home or foreign, treatment by a specialist, and the "chronies" are ever searching for strange medical advices. The stupendous field of medical science today in which one man can hope to master little more than one branch has fixed the doom of the family doctor, and scientific and material progress, social changes, and the inexorable fiat of time have seen the (old-time) Eastern Shore doctor a memory.
February, 1941
A "Blood Donors Club" was organized by 40 Pocomoke City residents. Members would voluntarily donate blood when lives of those in need of blood were at stake. The club was one of the first of it's kind in the state.
January, 1927
In a list of construction projects to be covered by a proposed state loan program, Maryland Governor Albert C. Ritchie, designated $55,000 for an armory and land in Pocomoke City.
January, 1970
With Pocomoke's 30-member National Guard unit being transferred to Salisbury arrangements had been completed for the city of Pocomoke to take over the Armory building on Second Street. Mayor J. Dawson Clarke said a portion of the building could be new headquarters for the Pocomoke police department. Sgt. Ames Byrd of the Guard said all the state and federal property in the Armory had been relocated to Salisbury.
Do you have a local memory to share with PPE readers.. such as a big snow storm, a favorite school teacher, a local happening, something of interest your parents or grandparents told you about? It can be just a line or two or more if you wish. Your name won't be used unless you ask that it be. Send to tkforppe@yahoo.com and watch for it on a future TIME MACHINE posting!
Yep, that's old Doc Sartorious, alright! He had a supply of some type of vile red liquid in a storage room above his office. No matter what your symptoms he would trudge up the creaky stairs and returns with a small bottle of the stuff. He would proceed to get a label from his desk drawer, write something on it, like it and affix to the bottle. When one finally deciphered his hand writing it always said the same thing, "Take one teaspoon in a wineglass of water four times per day."
ReplyDeleteYour friend,
Slim
An 1896 newspaper ad in the Peninsula Ledger read:
ReplyDelete"The cheapest place to get your Spectacles and Eyeglasses is at Wm. Sartorious. Eyes tested free of charge." Wonder if that was old doc Sartorious's father?
I remember in the 1950's that Dr. Sartorious's son, in practice then at the same time as his father, was referred to as "young" Dr. Sartorious.
The other Pocomoke physicians from that era were Drs. Trader, Llewelyn, and later Hamilton.
Dr. Hamilton came to Pocomoke after Dr. Llewelyn left his practice in 1955 to return south. Dr Hamilton was in his mid 30's when he was killed in a 1962 car accident near Hebron. He was a passenger in a car with friends, returning from a Baltimore Colts football game. Dr. Fisher of Salisbury also died in the accident.
One of Dr. Hamilton's daughters is Hollywood actress Linda Hamilton. Dr. Llewelyn's son Doug, in later years, was host of the original "People's Court" TV program.
tk,
ReplyDeleteEvery time I pass that curve east of Hebron I am reminded of the accident. I seem to remember, but not positive, that Bill Vessey and Doctor Cohen were in the car as well. And I was one of the first babies delivered by Doctor Trader. I also remember Doc Trader actually made house calls in his big blue Buick!
Your friend,
Slim