Is there a Doctor in the house or, ahh cabin?

sunnyd

sunnyd

Joined
Jul 17, 2004
Messages
6,425
In 1968-69 as I was just learning the art of "still hunting"(tree stand hunting) from my uncles and as practiced by my friends and I.. My best friend Jeff and I traveled on one of our first great adventures 350 miles or so to the north of where we lived from south Florida to north Florida in a place called Stienhatchee Wildlife Management Area.. Way up in the stix where the real Oak trees grow in the hills and the trees. It looked more like south Gorgia than any part of Florida that I ever saw and to this day has a fine place in my heart!

In this place we met some very interesting Folks. My very first introduction to true-blue 'Folksy' Folk.. Now, make no mistake, these people were bona fida country folk to the T.. And as I found out there were pluses and minuses to that fact.. My Friend Jeff and I were "still hunting"(tree stand hunting) in the early fall during Whitetail Buck season in the same place and time that these good ole boys were Dog Hunting Whitetail Bucks.... For those of you who don't know the time honored tradition of Dog Hunting deer,, let me explain it to you...: Several parties of the good old boys in there trucks with CB radio's basically run the deer in several planned directions after letting their Deer Dogs run after the Deer while in contact with their buddy's across the way(distant acreage) via radio contact with the others,, and shoot whatever runs their way.. Meanwhile, after some libation is been had by all.. the whole process is repeated until many Deer tags are filled!.

OK now,, Jeff and I don't know this until its waaay too late,, and while we are in our tree stands we get pelted by several volleys of pellets/buckshot.. Me in the arm and shoulder and my friend Jeff in the ass and legs a lot worse than I.. To these gentleman's credit when they found us we were cared for like I have never been cared for before or since.. Which is now bringing me to my knife story..

..They(these fellows, Mr. Whit and his son Whitley, Jr.) and Mr. Whit's daughters Miss Carol-Anne and Miss Mary-Joe patched us up and fed us like you read about in their little country cabin.

They eventually sent for a Doctor Watson who had a legitimate Doctors knife with a spatula.. No BS, He actually mixed up and heated up dried powdered medicine in and on that spatula and blade.. I wish I paid more attention to that Doctor and his knife back then, but I was just pleased to have the buck-shot out of my arm and my friend and I on the mend..

Here is one I own that I purchased several years ago during a time when I thought about Dr. Watson and the good ole Folks in Stienhatchee, Florida..

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That was a good experiance to be had. That old country doctor was probably a better doctor that many you will find in the modern ER. Those old country doc's had a better knowledge of what to do than now-a-days.

Probably was'nt the first time he plucked some shot out of a hunter!:D
 
That is a story of an event you will NEVER forget,I'm sure Sonny.Thanks for telling it
Not much on Dr's knives,but when I recently flipped out over Bose spearpoints,I started drooling over some of their Dr's.
One of 'em,posted somewhere,was a Vetinarians version,that had the smaller pen blade,it had a recurve.I guess,for castration,or amputations on animals or something like that.
-Vince
 
Nice doctor's knife. :thumbup:

I am a little confused why the hunters were shooting at deer in the trees. Did it have something to do with the libations?
 
Guyon said:
Nice doctor's knife. :thumbup:

I am a little confused why the hunters were shooting at deer in the trees. Did it have something to do with the libations?
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Guyon,it's a southern thing,I'm sure :)
 
Vince,
That is too funny, as this Doctor Watson(who worked on us) was a Vet by trade, but did have a set of castration blades in his bag at the time which begged the question who he was there for..:D I've got to tell you this was one of the freakiest times of our lives as we still recall today!
 
sunnyd said:
Vince,
That is too funny, as this Doctor Watson(who worked on us) was a Vet by trade, but did have a set of castration blades in his bag at the time which begged the question who he was there for..:D I got to tell you this was one of the freakiest times of our lives as we still recall today!
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Sunny,I guess it's a good thing Doc Watson wasn't sippin' the same stuff as the boys who were shootin' deer up there in your stand.Fire in the hole !
-Vince
 
jackknife said:
That was a good experiance to be had. That old country doctor was probably a better doctor that many you will find in the modern ER. Those old country doc's had a better knowledge of what to do than now-a-days.

Probably was'nt the first time he plucked some shot out of a hunter!:D
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Jackknife,

I had the chance to recently speak with my dear old Mother not to long ago and in an unrelated story that happened in 1971,, the subject was on the early morning before Thanksgiving Day I had a all night long belly ache that would not quit!.. Well, no Doctor available, my Mother took me to her friend(an old county Doctor, Doc Braymen) one of her then bridge partners at the time, and he felt my gut, over and over, took my temperature, examined me a little more and said to my Ma, "Get this boy an AMBULANCE!." (Back then there was no 911 operators) It turned out he saved my life.. Later she asked him, "How did you know Anthony had appendicitis???.. He replied: After 40 years as a Country Doctor, you get to know just about everything there is too know about folk's ailments!. I was sold on country Doc's after these two incidents from then on..

Fast Forward to 2005 when my daughter complained of a stomach ache one night late and I rushed her to the hospital and had an inkling that it might be a burst appendix.. After um-teen hospital tests this 22 year old female Doctor who was on duty, but clearly did not want to be their at the time told me she thought it must be a female plumbing thing. She finally ordered a Cat Scan, but only after I ultimately had to beg the brand new dumb B***h She Doctor to give my daughter a Cat Scan over, and over again(otherwise I would bring phsical harm to her) so the ditzy female Doctor finally honord my request after my many pleas.. She only gave into my request(so I thought) so she could be certain what my daughter actually had wrong with her, I already knew in my heart of hearts.. because the same thing happened to me when I was a young teenager.

Low & Behold, Long story Short, she finally said, "I'm sooooo sorry Mr. Ettorre your Daughter has a burst appendix and its a good thing we caught it it in time,, I just called the surgeon so he can operate on her."........ As my blood was boiling, I was wishing that my good old Country Doctor Braymen was there instead of this clueless she Doc, and if so I would have gotten the propper diagnosis many hours before!!

Thanks Jackknife!.

Your Friend,
Anthony
 
Guyon said:
Nice doctor's knife. :thumbup:

I am a little confused why the hunters were shooting at deer in the trees. Did it have something to do with the libations?
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Yup, after carefull consideration on that point, I'm thinking it might'a did!.:rolleyes:
 
What is the purpose of the spatula? Was it really for mixing medicine, or mainly for some other reason? Was it sharpened on one edge?
 
RobbW said:
What is the purpose of the spatula? Was it really for mixing medicine, or mainly for some other reason? Was it sharpened on one edge?
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Yes, it was used for mixing the medications that in the early days came in powdered form. The old doc's had to be doctor, pharmasist,and diagnostic machine all in one.

No it was not sharpened, it was only to dish out on a scale, and mixing the stuff. Some doctors knives had a flat bottom bolster for crushing pills into a powder to use the chemical in the pills sometimes to combine with something else.

The funny thing is, the human body has not changed in basic phisiology in many thousands of years. By the time of the ancient greeks, they knew what certain symtoms ment. Now they need a month of tests and a million dollars worth of high tech gizmos to tell you whats wrong with you. My mother had a medical symtoms book, and she had to tell the doctors that she had pancriatic cancer. My old friend Bill Moran had the same book, and he knew he had colon cancer before the doctors had it pinned down. I guess I don't have much respect for the modern medical proffessional.

Give me a old country doctor any day!
 
You could be right, modern doctors are terribly expensive, the old school was more to the point. But then, here in 'socialist' Europe most of our medi-care and all emergency is free, it just comes out of taxes at source:thumbup:

There's no substitute for experience in whatever field though.
 
jackknife said:
Now they need a month of tests and a million dollars worth of high tech gizmos to tell you whats wrong with you.
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That's what happens when the insurance companies and lawyers run the medical industry. Everyone's so afraid of being sued that they have to do everything imaginable to CYA.
 
jackknife said:
No it was not sharpened, it was only to dish out on a scale, and mixing the stuff. Some doctors knives had a flat bottom bolster for crushing pills into a powder to use the chemical in the pills sometimes to combine with something else.
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Interesting. Having never seen or held a Doc's knife, I always assumed the spatula was a spatula blade, and that was useful in making some type of special incision. Really surprising to find it's just a regular old dull spatula.

Having learned that, now I'm also surprised the Doc's knife is as popular a pattern as it appears to be. I would have expected most spatulas to be replaced by something like a pen blade on most contemporary Doc's knives, now that the spatula is not really needed in medicine. Maybe people use the spatula for a screwdriver/scraper/prybar?
 
Now, about physicians themselves. I'll take any physician who is seasoned with enough experience to have an intuitive knack around the body. Doesn't matter--old country doc or someone trained in the latest diagnostics. Don't forget that the old country doc was not always old or experienced, but probably made a lot of mistakes along the learning curve. That wisdom had to come from experience and mistakes--and it was hard earned.

The same problems with inexperience and lack of wisdom are also apparent with sunnyd's 2005 ER experience. The upside of modern diagnostics-based medicine is that many more problems get properly diagnosed and cured, or at least treated, than in the days of the old country docs. The downside is that in these days of specialization, many of the old and useful arts are lost: such as palpation, or simply having enough skill with a stethoscope to discern a mitral-valve pro lapse.

That's why I say I'll take a seasoned doc from either category. I believe it's experience, as well as the ability to make connections and use common sense, that makes the difference. One thing I don't hear discussed enough is that medicine is still very much an art. Docs often deal with incomplete information, educated guesswork, and their own sense of probability, trying something out, and risk. They don't speak openly about it because of the threat of malpractice suits, but it's not as cut-and-dried as we patients would like.
 
wintermute said:
That's what happens when the insurance companies and lawyers run the medical industry. Everyone's so afraid of being sued that they have to do everything imaginable to CYA.
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Agreed with the CYA mentality. But no one can reasonably argue that modern diagnostics don't catch more diseases and allow for more cures and treatments. Maybe we've lost sight of how high our expectations are of medicine in general, compared to 50 years ago. Sure, occasionally something slips through the cracks--but it's a big deal precisely because our high expectations tell us that shouldn't happed. In the old days, people just kind of accepted that docs couldn't do much about most things and that was that. Now our expectations are so high that we get offended if something isn't accurately and quickly diagnosed and cured.
 
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