An Excerpt From, "When I Was a Country Doctor"
By J.B. Cranfill, MD, 1926 DMJ Vol. 12, No. 5, p. 92-95

My father was a doctor, my brother was a doctor; I had two first cousins who were doctors. The lure of the medical profession was strong in our family. I began studying medicine when I was 12 years old. The first case I visited was an Irishman who had pneumonia. My father took me over there to give me some dope on pneumonia and, doubtless to save him some work. In those days we did a good deal of counter-irritation, mostly with stimulating liniments. At the home where this Irishman was sick, there was a bride and groom of recent vintage. We went to see the Irishman early in the morning, and my father gave me the big bottle of liniment and told me to go into the room and rub his chest vigorously. I went in. I took hold of the bed-covering and asked:

"What is your trouble?"

The woman screamed: "It isn't any of your business. Get out of here!"

I had gone into the wrong room and had attempted to anoint the bride.
My father was one of the best doctors I ever knew. I yet give him pre-eminence in my thoughts as an internist. He was not strong on surgery, but he was a wizard in diagnosis and in internal medicine. He did a very large practice covering, in part, four Southwest Texas counties. His diagnosis was almost uncanny in its intuitional accuracy, but that is another story.

I hung out my shingle at Turnersville, Coryell County, February 8, 1879. I had married the previous autumn. I rented a little two-room house, was possessed of a sorrel pony, a saddle, bridle, saddle-blanket, a pair of brand-new pill bags, five bushels of corn, and a fairly good medical library.

The old physician was Dr J.D. Callaway, long since in heaven. He looked upon the young interloper with that benignancy and sympathy characteristic of the gray-beards of our latter day. He complimented me. On every street corner and in every little crowd, wherever my name was mentioned, the darling doctor would say:
"This young Cranfill is a nice boy. I like him. After he has had 10 or 15 years experience, he is going to make a good doctor."

Fine, wasn't it? For three mortal months, I was idle except as now and then I would string my pill bags on my pony and gallop over to see my father and mother down on Hog Creek, 3 miles away. There were some nuts who thought I had some patients down that way and I never made them any wiser.

Early in May, just as the twilight deepened into darkness one evening, a man galloped up to our door. He asked if Dr Cranfill was at home. Yes, the doctor was at home. He had been nowhere else but at home. He had the worst spell of nostalgia of any man in Coryell County.

Seeing that the doctor was at home, the messenger said that his wife was ill 6 miles out in the Coryell Creek country. The doctor saddled his pony, strung his pill bags in earnest across his saddle, and fared forth with the messenger to see the suffering wife.

It was strange the way I got the call. It was not my call at all, but Dr Callaway's. The messenger came first to the dear old doctor and the doctor sent the messenger after me. On the surface it seemed like a piece of profound Christian philanthropy on his part, but a closer scrutiny revealed the fact that, first of all, the man was poor pay and, second, the young woman was bound to die. The introduction of the young doctor to a death-bed scene was a superlative achievement for my cherished medical compatriot, but I did not sidestep because I would have answered a call to a mausoleum, if that had been all the call I could get.

She had puerperal peritonitis. She was past all human aid when I reached her bedside, but, unwilling to let her die without doing the best I could for her, I dragooned the old doctor the following morning and made him go out with me to see the case. I resolved that the responsibility for her passing should be divided between us. He was very kind about going, the fact being that he couldn't do otherwise because we were both members of the County Medical Society and he owed me that courtesy.
Yes, she died. She died promptly. Now, the strange sequel-the husband paid me the bill. Moreover, the young doctor had made a distinctly favorable impression in the Coryell Creek neighborhood and Dr Callaway never had a look-in out that way as long as I remained in practice there. The moral to the bald-heads is that they be careful about sending calls to the young doctors. It is hazardous.

My medical compatriot was fond of hunting. I was a home man. I never went anywhere except to see my father and mother and out on my professional business. Dr Callaway's absence on a hunt brought me my first case of obstetrics, the wife of the leading merchant of the town. Providence was kind and no trouble arose in the case. She was delivered of a 10-pound boy (if there ever was one, which I doubt), and mother and child progressed to a very happy recovery. Really, the child was well when he was born and the mother was soon up and about her work.

That started the fireworks again. The young doctor was making headway. The old doctor couldn't help himself. The bad-pay patrons whom he did not want sent for the young doctor, and, marvelous to tell, they paid him.

I think one reason they all paid me was that I was generous in my collections. I took anything and everything on account, from a load of wood to a stack of fodder. I accumulated pigs, yearlings, cows, watermelons, corn, cotton, wheat, oats, millet-in fact, I accepted on account the barter that my clients had and turned these products into channels of revenue.

In August 1879, I "took the board," which met at Stephenville. Dr U.M. Gilder, of Gatesville, was our member at that time, and he and I drove up to Stephenville in a buggy. The other members were Dr George F. Perry, of Hamilton, and Dr W.M. Crow, of Stephenville. These older doctors were very kind to the young physician and treated me with great courtesy.

During my years of medical practice, we had an epidemic of pneumonia one year, which was the most strenuous period I knew. For 2 weeks I never undressed. I would snatch 5 or 10 minutes of sleep as best I could, from time to time, but was on the run all the time. I did not lose any of my cases, and I think much of my success in pneumonia was due to the fact that my patients got so much oxygen. The houses were open and the best we could do for these pneumonia patients was to stretch wagon sheets around the bed so that the cold north wind would not blow right on them. It did blow, however, all through the houses, and thus Nature helped the doctor achieve his successes.

I had great success in my obstetric practice. I never lost a child, or a mother. I never used mechanical means in my practice. These western women were strong and healthy and, while no doctor can escape complications, I met all the complications that arose without having to bring into requisition any mechanical means in the delivery of the many children I welcomed into the world.

We didn't have a great deal of surgery. Those western men were such dead shots that the next thing in order after the consummation of a feud was a visit to the graveyard with the remains. With one exception. A man named Smith had been waylaid and shot in the stomach. It was Dr Callaway's case and he asked me to go down with him and see Smith. Both of us thought he was going to die, so we called a meeting of the County Medical Society for the following Saturday and seven of the medical celebrities of the county assembled to sit on this case. Dr S.M. Bayne, of Gatesville, examined the patient. During the examination, which was very thorough, Smith suffered a gastric hemorrhage, the like of which I have never seen.

I would not like to exaggerate in a sober paper like this to be read by thoughtful men of science, but it seemed to me like this man vomited a 5-gallon canful of clotted blood. He lapsed into a cold, colliquative perspiration and became unconscious. I was detailed to arrange for an autopsy because we thought it important to have the proper evidence to submit to the court when his assassin came to trial. I had a good deal of trouble gaining the consent of his brother, but finally he agreed for me to come down next morning and cut him to pieces.

Next morning, bright and early, Dr Callaway and I went down to arrange for the autopsy. The man had rallied. Much to our surprise, he got well. The last time I saw Smith, he weighed 200 pounds and was picking 400 pounds of cotton a day.
I visited Gatesville a few weeks ago, which was then and is now the county seat of Coryell County. Turnersville, where I practiced, is 14 miles north of Gatesville, which was a good little ways in those days, but I covered the distance the other day when I was over there in about 20 minutes. I was a member of the County Medical Society and, during my residence at Turnersville, I joined the State Medical Association and attended the meeting of the State body, which met at Waco in 1881. Sad to tell, every man who was contemporaneous with me in practice there has passed away.

I loved my work as a doctor and through all the years have loved the medical profession with a fadeless love. I am not blind to its faults. I think it goes nuts on the question of advertising and have always been amazed at the persistent hostility witnessed in nearly every community among leading members of the profession. When I was a young doctor, I had praise from my competitor, as I have already shown in the liberal quotation from his eulogies of the young doctor. I had help from him, too, because he sent me my first patient! If all the present-day doctors were as generous and as reciprocal by nature as was Dr Callaway. . . but this article is already long enough, so I will finish the treatment of this case and call the next number.