BACK IN 1953 I had just begun my practice in the small town of Clemson at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains in South Carolina. In the beginning I spent a lot of time reading medical journals and waiting for the local people to find out I was in town.
One August evening near dusk, my wife, Jane, and I were sitting in the swing when two farmers approached the porch and asked: "You the new doctor?" I nodded.
"Well, Doc, Daddy's down and sick and the doctor we called isn't treating him right."
"What's the matter?"
"This here doctor wants to put Daddy in a hospital."
I asked what he'd been treating him for.
"He hadn't been treating him for nothin'. Last time Daddy had a doctor was in '33, when he fell out of the loft and broke his leg."
"Well, what did . . . [Full Text of this Article]