I know this is hard to believe, but once upon a time, doctors made house calls.
Really! They would pick up their black leather bags, get in their cars and come see you if you were sick. Today, it’s hard to get an appointment at a doctor’s office, even months in a advance, but they used to come see us.
Growing up, I was lucky. When I was about 5, Dr. Fred Richmond lived right across the street from our house in Beckley, so house calls were easy for him. A few years later, we moved across town, but Dr. Richmond would still come see us. One day, his house call saved my dad’s life.
Daddy came down with something and got a shot of penicillin, not knowing he was allergic and he almost died. It just so happened that Dr. Richmond had stopped by to check on us and saw that Daddy was in trouble. I remember them shutting the doors to the bedroom and Dr. Richmond was there for hours. He had to do some sort of transfusion, or the penicillin shot would had been lethal. Finally, Dr. Fred solved the problem and Daddy would live, but never again get a shot of penicillin.
When we moved to Lewisburg, there were 7 families in our neighborhood, and one was Dr. Lemon. He stopped by our house often, as it seems either Mom or one of my three younger siblings was always sick with something. Strep throat and earaches were the most common. Interestingly, when I went off to a boy’s camp one summer, polio was going around and they took all the campers to a nearby hospital to get a shot of Gamma Globulin to strengthen our immune systems. After that, I rarely ever got sick and didn’t need house calls.
House calls by physicians flourished in the 50’s, then began to wane. They were time consuming and costly for doctors and as specialized medicine took hold, it was better for the patient to come in and see a specialist as opposed to a General Practitioner.
But those were good days, the days of house calls. The days Americans can look back on with pride.
