|
This was the room before its fresh coat of paint and thorough
reorganization in the latter part of 2010.
In the Summer of 2010,
Museum's volunteer
Mary Gay Hickman
"adopted" this room. In that role, she organizes, labels,
updates, and makes displays more attractive as
well as making recommendations to the Museum
Director and/or the Board of Directors
regarding needs. She played an important
role in the room's renovations.
|
The Caldwell County
medical history room
is on the
Museum's second floor. It displays equipment from several
one-time Lenoir physicians, along with a range of other related
items, some of which are pictured below. Come see all of it
for yourself!
All of the pictures below are
thumbnails, that is, clicking on them will bring up larger
versions.
A portrait of Dr. Caroline McNairy is one of the
focal points of the
back wall of the room. "Dr. Caroline" was the second formally
trained woman doctor to practice in Lenoir, starting
in 1917; and she did so for over 50 years. -- The
lettering was used on the hospital walls. |
Nancy Alexander's A Medical History of Caldwell
County (©1981) is available for purchase in the Museum's
gift shop. The primary focus of her text is the
many known doctors and other medical practitioners
who have served in the area over the past 200 years.
The mini-history below is derived from this
pamphlet.
(Scroll below the text for more pictures.) |
Even into the early 1900's,
"[m]erely by deciding to do so, a [white] man could declare
himself a doctor"; although by the late 1800's, the man would
"read" with another doctor before setting out on his own. One of
the first doctors in Caldwell County to have formal medical
training (at the first medical school in the country, Jefferson
Medical College in Philadelphia, PA) was Dr. Andrew Scroggs, who
began practicing in Lenoir in 1860.
Women, though usually more
experienced in treating family illnesses, attending childbirth,
and mixing medications, were not allowed to call themselves
"doctor", and had great difficulties being admitted to any
medical schools until the early 1900's. Dr. Margaret Sturgis was
the first formally trained woman to practice medicine in
Caldwell County, starting in 1916. Dr. Arthur G. Dula (Lincoln
University 1907) was the first, and for a long time
the only, formally trained African-American doctor in the
county.
(Note: Dr. Dula's degree was dated by the 1907/08
Catalogue of Lincoln University.)
The first hospital in
Caldwell County was established in 1899 in Lenoir, but it did
not succeed because people were used to being sick at home and
having doctors come to them. The second was opened in 1910. It
listed nine doctors on the medical staff along with the county's
first registered (that is, formally trained) nurses. This
second Lenoir hospital closed right after the first world war,
during the 1918 flu epidemic. A third county hospital, named
Caldwell Hospital, opened in Lenoir in 1926. It was renamed
Lenoir Hospital in 1945, but closed in 1951. In the 1930's, two
hospitals opened in downtown Lenoir: Blackwelder Hospital in
1931 and Dula Hospital in 1935. However, presently (2010) there
is only one hospital remaining in the county, Caldwell
Memorial Hospital, which opened in 1954.
|
