When Doctors made house calls in Valencia County

Last week’s edition of La Historia del Rio Abajo described the heroic services performed by many of Valencia County’s early doctors. Selfless physicians were especially busy with house calls made at all hours of the day and night.

Some house calls were in town, but many were in distant places over rough terrain. Doctors traveled to their patients on horseback, by horse and buggy and by car.

Home deliveries

The vast majority of house calls were for routine illnesses like colds and the flu. Thousands of other calls were to deliver babies, especially when many pregnant mothers still had their babies at home rather than at distant hospitals. Some doctors carried portable delivery tables in their vehicles.

Local doctors delivered thousands of babies in their long careers. Many births were in the same family, as when Dr. Arthur Llewelyn delivered nine of a family’s 10 children in Belen. His personal record was five babies delivered on a single night in 1946, at the start of the Baby Boom after World War II. He delivered 14 “howling newcomers” in one 12-day span, and 1,000 infants in the first decade of his 41-year career in Belen.

Childbirth did not always go well. Some homes were small and not always sanitary. Dorothy Llewelyn, who often accompanied her husband on such calls, remembers whole families being present in a single room.

Dr. Ralph Brower delivered 2,000 children from 1962 to the early 1980s, and Dr. Richard Brubaker delivered about 3,500, not including a calf he delivered for a friend.

Dr. William Radcliffe Jr. was born while his father, Dr. William Radcliffe Sr., was out on a house call in a terrible storm.

Once grown with a practice of his own, Dr. Radcliffe Jr., like most doctors, carried a big brown medical bag into a house to deliver a baby. The children who observed his coming and going concluded that he must have brought the baby in his medical bag because it was suddenly there and crying when he left. It gave a whole new meaning to the word delivery.

Well-stocked leather “doctor bags” were essential on house calls. Doctors made sure that their bags had bandages, tongue depressors, medicines (or at least samples), prescription pads and such standard equipment as stethoscopes and thermometers. Some, like Dr. Brower, also carried suckers for their younger patients.

Emergencies

In emergencies when they did not have needed medicine, equipment or supplies in their bags, doctors had to improvise the best they could. For unexpected home surgeries, they were known to use bent forks and tablespoons as retractors and ordinary sewing needles and thread for sutures.

Dr. William Wittwer remembered that it was best to tack a sheet to the ceiling of a kitchen “operating room” to prevent ceiling dust from falling on a patient’s open wounds.

Working on the railroad was one of the most dangerous occupations, comparable only to coal mining in fatal injuries. Railroads like the Santa Fe hired their own physicians so that they would always be available to get to the scene of an accident.

Dr. Wittwer’s first surgery in Valencia County involved one such railroad emergency. A Japanese male had somehow fallen under a train. The victim was carried to a one-room adobe house, where Dr. Wittwer found him lying on the home’s kitchen table. With poor lighting and the worst operating conditions, the doctor amputated the patient’s leg to save the man’s life.

In another tragedy, Dr. Brower was called to the scene of a railroad accident where a man had been run over by a train. The victim lost both his legs, but the train’s wheels had miraculously sealed his blood vessels so he did not bleed out and die.

In 1951, Dr. José Alfonso Rivas was called to the scene of a terrible accident. Belen’s old flour mill was being torn down when a worker fell through the rafters and broke his back. Dr. Rivas and a local priest bravely crawled through a small window to get to the man, give him aid and strap him to a makeshift stretcher. Public Service Company cranes were used to lift the injured man up and to safety.

Doctors dealt with so many common and uncommon diseases that it was a wonder that they or their families did not fall ill themselves. Some doctors did catch the flu and died during the terrible Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. Many suffered from stress, especially when they were separated from their families at irregular hours or long periods of time.

During the widespread polio scare of the 1950s, Dr. Rivas saw as many as 17 patients in his office each day before visiting many others in their homes after office hours.

Upon returning home, Dr. Rivas always changed his clothes in his garage for fear of bringing the disease into the house and infecting his three-year-old daughter, Gloria.

Great bedside manner, but little pay

Small-town doctors were famous for taking their exceptional bedside manner with them wherever they traveled. Doctors usually maintained an outward appearance of calm and composure when nearly everyone around them were on the verge of hysteria.

Dorothy Llewelyn recalled her husband “had a way of talking to his patients during labor. It was like magic. The expectant mothers would just calm right down.”

In 1962, one of Dr. Brower’s patients suffered from an incurable case of cancer. The doctor came by the man’s house every day for the last six months of his life to administer a pain killer and simply talk to the patient to calm him and his family the best he could. The man’s son recalls that Dr. Brower was “a good doctor but even a better person.”

According to Dr. Brower’s obituary, he “was a person who would lay a hand on your shoulder or take your hand and interact with you. His physical presence, great listening skills and caring attitude were healing experiences in themselves.”

For all their hard work and limitless hours, family doctors seldom accepted payment from those who could not afford to compensate them monetarily.

“I was just glad to be able to take care of them,” said Dr. Brubaker. “My motto has always been that a doctor’s duty is to cure occasionally, to relieve frequently and to comfort always.”

Dr. Brubaker’s colleagues agreed. Helping others was their greatest compensation, which brought their greatest satisfaction as professional physicians.

Dorothy Llewelyn remembers her husband telling new fathers that “this one’s on me.” When she would tell him that the Llewelyns could use the money, he would reply, “Aw, it’s all right. We’ll make out.” And they always did.

Patients appreciated their doctors’ generosity but often insisted that they accept other means of compensation as a matter of gratitude and pride.

Compensation took the form of everything from homemade cakes and sacks of chile to pigs, IOUs and parcels of land. Dr. Brubaker accepted Indian blankets as payment for medical services rendered.

Many grateful families offered doctors gifts of homemade meals and overnight accommodations, much appreciated after long days when doctors had little time to eat or the hour was late and the distance to home was too far.

It is hard to believe that with all their house calls and regular office hours, doctors often found time to serve their communities in other ways. Among their many activities, doctors served on school boards, belonged to fraternal organizations and joined civic clubs like Rotary. Dr. Wittwer served in many roles, including as the village treasurer in Los Lunas.

Dr. Brubaker dressed as Santa Claus at Christmas and as the Easter Bunny at Easter. In 1989, the Valencia County Commission named him the county’s Outstanding Citizen.

Other doctors received awards from their peers. The New Mexico Medical Association named Dr. Wittwer the “General Practitioner of the Year” in 1961.

Retirement

Most doctors who made house calls served their patients nearly all of their careers, seldom thinking of their own health and welfare. Many worked long enough to deliver grand-babies of the babies they had delivered years earlier.

Some doctors worked to the end of their lives. Dr. Samuel Wilkinson died on a Sunday morning in 1934 after spending all night delivering a baby in Tomé.

Dr. Brubaker retired in September 1989, only to die of cancer five months later.

Of the eight most well-known doctors who made house calls in Valencia County, the average age of death was 73.

Dr. Wilkinson was the youngest at 54. Dr. Wittwer was the oldest at 94.

Most doctors got to enjoy retirement for at least a while, taking time to relax, eat regularly, enjoy time with their families and sleep through the night. They deserved their rest and, without exception, our appreciation and deep respect.

(La Historia del Rio Abajo is a regular column about Valencia County history written by members of the Valencia County Historical Society since 1998.

The author appreciates the observations made by Dr. Rick Madden, a much-admired primary care provider in Belen for many years.

Opinions expressed in this and all columns of La Historia del Rio Abajo are the author’s alone and not necessarily those of the Valencia County Historical Society or any other group or individual.)