Frontier Doctor: Observations on Central Oregon and the Changing West (Northwest Reprints)

""Frontier Doctor" edges out Arthur Hertzler's "Horse and Buggy Doctor" and "The Life of Chevalier Jackson" as the most interesting of the physician autobiographies that were so popular about 75 years ago. In the thirties, doctors who'd lived through a revolution in medical care, found that readers and publishers were interested in the doctors' personal accounts of how medical practice had changed since the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Many wrote their stories. Later a few stragglers added their accounts and still later the university presses published more. "Frontier Doctor" is the best of the genre because of Urling Coe's writing skill. He has a knack for describing people and telling about events that makes his book most readable, interesting, and memorable. It's been more than a decade since I've read the book but I still remember so many episodes vividly. The story of Bend's fishing for the 1905 Fourth of July celebration, many buggy trips to isolated patients, and those people and their medical problems make up one enthralling story about life in the (not so) good old days in Bend, Oregon a century ago.
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~ Written on 2005-12-19