University of North Carolina at Asheville
D.H. Ramsey Library
Special Collections/University Archives

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Medicine in Western North Carolina
 at the Turn of the Century

Medical practice --- North Carolina
Medical care --- North Carolina

A Web exhibit comprised of several collections of material taken from the holdings of D.H. Ramsey Library and intended to bring together similar material that benefits from aggregation and provides useful examples of medical practice as it was employed in the late 1800's and early 1900's or at the turn of the last century. Includes an original Doctor's Bag with instruments and other medical items and papers, photographs, oral histories and correspondence related to medical practice in the western part of the state of North Carolina.

This body of manuscript information, realia, and oral histories are remarkable for the personal and detailed accounts of the actual day-to-day life of the physicians who treated many families in the western part of the state and for the records documenting the enormous respect given physicians during these early years. The accounts cut across racial and ethnic backgrounds and provide both a record of race and ethnic relations, as well as health care, generally. 

For physicians in rural communities, the hours were long, travel was difficult, and often the payments came in the form of barter --- a few chickens, eggs, a pig, or other farm produce. These personal payments often could insure that a mother's new-born came into the world healthy and under a doctor's watchful eye. While the working  conditions discouraged all but the most dedicated physician, these tenacious healers were often rewarded by the legacy of  naming. Many were the grateful parents who named their children for the physician who brought them into the world.

Today the numbers of rural home -deliveries and home visits by doctors is low, as urban center facilities or regional hospitals, or county hospitals have grown to fill the gaps in health care. Yet, the rewards for the early physician were obviously satisfactory as the records show that many turn of the century  physicians chose rural medicine as his or her career path and often their careers as "home-doctors" were remarkably long. Many of the physicians came directly out of school and continued on as a trusted and dedicated pillar of the community.

The versatility of these early doctors, is also remarkable. The range of medical practice extended over the full gamut of healing --- mind, body and often, soul. Child-delivery was by far the most common house-call, but calls to be a coroner,  a veterinarian,  a counselor and a general family physician was also common.

The Doctor's Bag was a working tool and it is remarkable that many of these general service kits like one in  the D.H. Ramsey Library Special Collections, have survived. The doctor's bag in the Ramsey collection seems to have served a multiple-purpose as a tool bag for dentistry, general medicine and also, apparently for animal medicine. The contents of the bag have been evaluated and described in a paper, "The Doctor's Bag" prepared by Donna Barnett. for her US History class at UNCA.in the Spring of 2003. The paper captures the essence of the family practitioner and of the era.

The material for Dr. John C. Rich, a general practitioner from Candler, North Carolina,  gives us the social details related to the practice of one physician and his patients. The newspaper accounts and the accompanying information for Dr. Rich describe his routines, and some of his adventures as a rural physician. The some 3000 to 4000 children brought into the world by Dr. Rich and others like him is a legacy that few specialists could measure up to even in today's busy practices and the personal reminiscences are touching.

Doctor's Bag

"The Doctor's Bag" by Donna Barnett

Medicinal Plants