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What are Country Doctors & When Did They Exist?
& Mighty Gem, circa, 1950 (1903- 1993) |
the elder country doctor (1866- 1935). |
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Dr. & Mrs. Edwin Crafts Remick were given this house at 58 Cleveland Hill Road in 1929 as a wedding and graduation gift from the elder Dr. Remick. Dr. Remick, the son, graduated from Tufts Medical School in Boston, and was married in the same year. It is now the Remick Museum Farm House and Visitor's Center. Dr. & Mrs. Remick lived on the second floor, while their farm crew lived in the rest of the house. Herdsman Cliff Warren and his family lived on the first floor; single staff had individual rooms on the third.
Country doctors lived and worked in the same town, generally a rural or farming community. Their patients were neighbors and friends as well as visitors to the town. A country doctor often tended to several generations of the same family. They addressed a wide range of medical issues, caring for a patient’s physical as well as emotional health. By the 20th century, much of the rural medical profession was well organized, regulated and forward thinking. Country doctors still exist, and the notion of a holistic, small-scale community health care practice is experiencing a small renaissance in response to today’s highly specialized, costly and often impersonal health care industry.
Dr. Edwin Remick and his son, Dr. Edwin Crafts Remick, the founder of the Remick Museum, provided Tamworth and surrounding communities with continuous medical care from 1894 to 1993. They administered to patients in almost every area of their health, from prenatal care, delivery, and winter colds to vaccinations and minor surgery. The first doctor Remick was confronted with the 1918 influenza epidemic, which caused the death of nine people in Tamworth (or 41% of all the deaths that year). He made decisions about whether to send a person to the hospital or if he or she was beyond saving.
Early on doctors mixed, rolled, cut and dispensed medicines themselves. A patient need not go to a pharmacy for the pills or tinctures he or she needed to get well. Later doctors purchased medications from pharmaceutical companies and made them available in their office to dispense to their patients.
House calls were a major component of a rural doctor’s work. If it was impossible or not practical for patients to come to the doctor, the doctor went to them. Frequently doctors or nurses in rural areas would stay for extended periods of time with critically ill patients or while waiting for a baby to arrive.
Country doctors needed a broad range of practical knowledge and skills and good old-fashioned ingenuity. They developed strong relationships and trust with their patients and the community. A good rural doctor also needed the skill of good listening. Dr. Edwin Craft Remick’s patients were in turn asked to be good listeners, since the doctor urged each one, in the course of his or her medical appointment, to listen to a tape of a particularly exciting horse race.
Dr. Edwin Crafts Remick, like his father before, took in patients whether or not they had insurance, could pay in cash for their services, lived in town or were just visiting. The doctors Remick were dedicated to their patients and the medical profession, and they viewed themselves as servants of their community.
