Unintended Consequences: An Autobiography

By Nathan E. Martin M.D. DNB DABA

This book includes the things that happened to me over ninety years of my life. It begins with my childhood, progressing through all levels of school, military service, medical career, and retirement.

Some of it is sad. Some is hilarious, and some will make you very happy. You will read about the smart things I did wellsome that were really stupid and some that I regret.

You will learn about the workings of a feed mill run by a waterwheel. The artificial insemination of cattle may be something amazing to you.

Life in Korea in the army was depressing from start to finish. I consider it the lowest point of my life. It was endless, pointless, and a constant source of irritation to all concerned. It was the first war we fought without the goal of winning. We have not won a war since.

The practice of medicine was fascinating, watching new drugs being made, new equipment introduced, and new techniques developed constantly. It was a great time of innovation, and I always looked forward to the next advancement.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543432381

Nathan E. Martin M.D. DNB DABA

Dr. Martin is a self made man progressing from a farm youth to becoming an anesthesiologist with the highest credentials available. He helped develop many innovations in equipment and techniques to relieve pain and suffering and prolong active life. He served in the Navy in WWII and was discharged to the active reserve. After medical school he served in the Army Medical Corps as a general medical officer in Korea. He rose from the rank of Second Lieutenant to Captain while in Korea and held command positions that had Lieutenant Colonel status. He was the youngest of six children all of whom became self made professionals in their chosen field. He met his wife in medical school and they had four sons. Near the end of his career he held the honor of being elected to Chief of Staff of the hospital which is unusual for an anesthesiologist. He is currently retired living in an adult community in Florida. He is in good health physically and mentally and is active in community affairs, playing bridge, a member of the bowling league, on the board of the HOA.

Book preview

Chapter 1

There are many decisions made in a lifetime that translate to happenings in the future that are different from what you expect. That happened to me many times, and this is a short list of some of them. There are so many people who have shaped my life, and I want to sincerely thank them. I like to think that I was responsible for shaping the lives of others in a good way. I have certainly tried. Who can tell what life will bring?

I challenge you, dear reader, to compare your life experiences with mine. What would you change or do differently? Could you do better, or have you done better? Please take into consideration the time that these decisions were made, what the outside influences were. Walk in my shoes, if you will. Since this is an autobiography, it remains a work in progress.

It started in 1924, long before penicillin, sulfa, telephones, radios, electricity, Internet, and others. We didn’t have cars with seat belts or even side windows, just isinglass curtains. No heaters or defrosters. The windshield was made of plain glass, not the special tempered variety, with hand-operated windshield wipers. Horses were the only power equipment on the farm, and we went barefoot most of the time. Electricity was made available in 1936 as the result of the rural electrification program. I was twelve years old before I heard a gramophone that recorded voice and played it back. I witnessed the inventions that were added over the years, each one becoming more sophisticated than the previous one. I still look forward to the innovations now in the development stages.

Those were the days of freedom, delightful, enjoyable youth. Ever since then they have added laws concerning everything you can imagine in the name of making life safer for us. It must be because we are not intelligent enough to look out for ourselves. The laws protect us from ourselves. But it has been an extremely rare event to remove a law from the books, even the ones that no longer make sense. Lots of the laws are no longer relevant.

We all make choices about our lives—whether we will be wealthy or poor, successful or a not, a giver or a receiver, healthy or sick. The place we live, the jobs we get, where we work, and the professions we admire are all our personal choices. I firmly believe we have lots of control of our lives; we are not at the mercy of other people.

I made the choices that had an eventual goal of being a doctor. That was the profession I admired the most. Since my brother was a doctor, I knew it was possible for me also. I don’t think I was as smart as he was, because he graduated salutatorian of his high school class and I only graduated near the top of mine. I didn’t think I could have become a lawyer, because I was a slow reader and I thought it would be difficult to cover all the material required. I had contact with doctors in my youth but no lawyers.

My ancestry was German going back at least four generations. Since we were on the fringe of the Amish, the true Pennsylvania Dutch, my parents were able to speak German but they always spoke English at home. My dad occasionally swore in German using the term "Gott im Himmel." Our church was not as conservative as the Amish—maybe two steps up the progressive ladder. By Amish standards we were extremely progressive.

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There were variations of the Amish. To this day, the most conservative have no phones, radios, or electric lights and travel by horse and buggy. They call it sinful to have all those luxuries. Because they travel among modern cars, they now have lanterns attached to the buggy, but they are difficult to see even in the day, and coming around a corner, it’s very easy to be surprised by one. They are very slow-moving. The buggies are all black and blend in with the night. Accidents happen frequently, with injuries sometimes serious. The homes and barns are kept up, neatly painted and repaired.

They work together in groups for big projects. After they assemble all the material, all the neighbors come together for a barn raising. The men build the barn, and the ladies prepare meals for them. In just a few days, they will have a completed barn ready for use. It is tradition for a father to buy a farm for a son when he marries. Since their expenses are so low, they accumulate enough money to pay cash for a farm. When an Amish man marries, he grows a beard. The men and women are easy to identify because of the way they dress.

The more progressive Amish groups are allowed to have electricity in the barn but not in the house. A very progressive group is allowed to have a few cars. The general idea is that by denying pleasures here on earth, your reward in heaven will be so much greater. They are small groups, so they could hold their meetings in homes, sometimes in the barn. Each group has a slightly different interpretation of the bible and the restrictions they should follow. They are very self sufficient and take care of each other. For that reason they are exempt from Social Security and the Affordable Care Act.

They are very frugal, buying only what they need. They make most of their clothes and the tools they use around the farm. They grow their vegetables and fruit and preserve seasonal harvests. They butcher their own meat, canning what is not eaten fresh. They sell what they don’t consume, and that provides their main source of money.

It was an Amish man who invented the New Holland baler that made a great improvement in harvesting hay. He became wealthy from this invention and bought a new Cadillac every year, but he was required to paint the chrome black. He was the only one in his congregation who was allowed to have a car.

The Amish instill in their children a discipline, a strong work ethic, and strong religious feelings. They are expected to find a wife within their own religion, and when they marry, the father will buy a farm for the young couple. Since they are frugal, not spending money on luxuries, they have the money to buy farms. As the communities expand, the value of land goes up.

Similarly, the Talmud states that a Jewish father must do these things for his son: circumcise him, teach him the Torah, find him a wife and teach him a trade.

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The religious group between us and the Amish was the Mennonites. They didn’t have to wear beards after they married, they were allowed to have cars and electricity, and they were allowed to go to school beyond the eighth grade. They were not supposed to go to movies, play cards, dance, or wear ties, and certainly not drink alcohol. The adult men wore coats that had no collar, and the women wore bonnets. They were mostly farmers like the Amish. Their groups were quite large, so they built churches where they held meetings Sunday afternoon and evening. There were also prayer meetings during the week. They didn’t have musical instruments in the church, and all singing was a cappella.

When they didn’t have hymnals, one member would read a line then the congregation would sing that line. One reader had trouble seeing the words, so she said, Mine eyes are dim. I cannot see. Then the congregation sang that line. Her next line was, I have not brought my specks with me, sung by the congregation.

*     *     *

Our religion was just a little more progressive, called the Brethren in Christ. We were interacting with society, working in assorted professions, and gradually the customs became more modern, discarding the collarless coat and the bonnets. There was very little interaction between the religious groups. The Amish met in homes, but the other religions built churches to accommodate larger groups of members. We were not supposed to play cards, go to the movies, or drink alcohol. Alcohol was forbidden by all the conservative religious groups. The saying was, Lips that touch alcohol will never touch mine.

In recent years the Mennonites and the Brethren in Christ have discarded the old dress. The women wear their hair in modern style and dress in modern clothes. The men have given up the colorless coats and wear modern suits and ties.

Tobacco growing was acceptable because it was a cash crop. Some of the tobacco growers smoked cigarettes or cigars, but not near the church. It was hilarious to see a cigar sticking out from between a mustache and beard. All of the conservative religions were pacifist and did not condone war. If their young men were draft eligible they could choose conscientious objection and were given alternative service. That was the background of my youth.

Chapter 2

I was born and raised on a farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, at the end of 1924, or as the locals say, I was fetched up. My mother said I was born near midnight with the doctor coming to our home. I don’t remember much of that. My siblings were all born at home also. I was the youngest of six. We were spaced nearly two years apart.

It was a successful farm with a herd of cows, four horses, a few pigs, a big barn, and a flock of guinea hens. We helped the neighbors, and they helped us. The nearest town was five miles away, and that’s where we all went to church. We felt very safe. There were no locks on the doors. When we went to church a few times a week, we went as a family, leaving the farm unprotected. All the neighbors did the same. No crimes were ever reported.

I had plenty of play time and enjoyed every bit of it. We had a collie dog and three cats to keep me company. My two older sisters guided my young years and taught me most of what I know about housekeeping, ironing, cooking, and cleaning. They had chosen a name for me before I was born. They thought I should be named Jean. When I turned out to be a boy, they changed it to Eugene. My dad chose the name Nathan, so I became Nathan Eugene. Little did I know how much I would use the housekeeping skills I learned from my sisters in later life. I now feel deeply indebted to them.

On a special occasion, we would kill a guinea hen, clean it, and cook it. Other than that, we ate meat from the animals processed right on the farm. My mother made butter from some of the milk. The rest of the milk was sold to the co-op. Our diet was rich in butter, meat, bacon, and lots of veggies from the garden. My mother canned fruit and vegetables to give us a variety of healthy food during the winter. We were very self-sufficient. I was given my daily dose of cod liver oil both winter and summer to keep from getting bowlegged.

On one occasion my mother asked my brother John to kill a guinea hen for the meal. He used a shotgun, and instead of getting one, he shot into the flock and brought down five of them. We had leftovers for quite a while. He was twelve years old at the time. I was four.

We sold most of the produce and animals raised on the farm, and that provided the family with a good living. It was a prosperous time. We all worked as much as we could to help out on the farm. Very soon I was able to collect eggs without breaking any of them, and my mornings and evenings were involved in milking the cows. I learned the discipline of getting up early and working hard.

My dad had been a schoolteacher before he started farming and was very gregarious. He could carry on conversations for hours. It was boring for me because he took me along on most of his visits. He met a man named Edmund Fritz who was selling bonds to build a bridge across the Susquehanna River that flowed past Harrisburg, the capital of the state. My father invested some of his money, and he talked his neighbors and some church members into investing also.

And then the big depression hit. Boy, did it hit. The bridge was cancelled, and the bonds became worthless. Since my dad talked others into investing, they blamed him for their loss. He was a proud man and promised to make up their loss. It involved so much money we had to sell our farm and most of the animals and equipment to satisfy the supposed debt. It amounted to starting over. He was severely chastised, was told he could no longer be a member of the church. He was allowed to attend services but had to sit in the back of the church. I was just five years old at the time, and it had a profound effect on my life and my future. My siblings were more affected than I was. Instead of being affluent, we were poor. Everybody in the family worked to help out. Looking back, it may have been a blessing because all of us turned out to be successful self made professionals. Unintended consequences.

I remember driving a few cows several miles on the road to a tenant farm that would be our temporary home for two years. During that time, we sharecropped to make a living. It was quite a change for the whole family. I started school then, riding a bus for four miles to the East Donegal Township School in Maytown. I made lots of friends on the bus and at school. All the nonschool time was spent working on the farm.

Chapter 3

My dad was a proud man, and as soon as he was able to find a smaller farm, he bought it without a mortgage. He had some residual money from the sale of the previous farm. It came with a house big enough for our family of eight, a good barn, and forty acres of land separated into four ten-acre fields. He bought it, and soon we moved to the permanent family home. I lived in that home until I graduated from high school. Since the school was only a mile from home, my siblings and I had to walk to school rather than ride the bus.

Our home was a well-built two-story brick house with a basement that had a ground floor. Each spring the basement would fill with water nearly six inches deep. We would borrow a hand-operated pump to get the water outside. All of us took turns manning the pump. My dad eventually dug a trench and installed a pipe that would drain the water to one of the fields. The main floor had three rooms: a kitchen, a storage room, and a parlor. The kitchen had a cooking stove that heated the room, an oven, and a stovetop. We used mostly wood for fire and sometimes coal. During the winter it was the only room heated, and all our activity was done there. I did all my homework on the kitchen table with the light of a Coleman lantern. Just off the kitchen, we had a storage room that contained things we used occasionally, such as cleaning supplies and tools for gardening.

The parlor was used only on weekends or when we had guests. Those were the only times the room was heated in the winter. There was a fireplace at one end and a potbellied stove at the other end.

On the second floor we had three unheated bedrooms: one for the four boys, one for my two sisters, and one for my parents. We all slept two to a bed. There was just enough room to get around between the beds. One night during a thunderstorm, lightning struck the chimney just above my bed. It was light enough to see that all four of us were standing up in the beds. The bricks from the chimney were scattered around the yard. There was a lightning rod that guided the lightning to the ground, and it left a burn mark along the side of the house. The roof was slate that would last forever. The repair of the chimney took two weeks. Under the chimney, the fireplace in the parlor was only used on special occasions when we had guests or if one of us was sick. When I had the measles, we were quarantined, and I was kept in the heated parlor. The potbellied stove in the room was more effective than the fireplace.

All the water used in the house came from a cistern on the back porch. It was water collected from the roof of the house. That was used for cooking and bathing. Saturday evening was bathing time. My mother heated the water in the kitchen then put it in a tub on the back porch where we all bathed. I was usually the first one to use the clean water. The laundry was done in the same tub, put through a hand-operated wringer, then hung on a wash line in the backyard.

We had no bathroom. All ablutions were done in the outhouse twenty yards from the main house. We used that outhouse day and night, winter and summer.

My dad built a workroom that was used for sharpening axes, storing shovels, pickaxes, and various other tools. As the years went by, we bought a car, and my dad built a garage big enough for two cars. My brother Roy was the first to get a car, a Dodge. When my sister Mary got her teaching job, she got a car also, a Model A Ford. During the summer we made ice cream in a metal mixer that held two gallons. It was placed in a wooden container with ice and salt and had a hand crank. Roy figured a way to jack up one wheel of the Dodge, place the handle between the spokes of the wheel, start the engine, and use the wheel to turn the crank. Those were special occasions.

The first car my dad bought was a Dodge Touring car. His driving habits were primitive by modern standards. He was interested in looking at the farms he passed to get ideas for his farm. If he was looking at a field on the right, he drove on that side of the road. To see a farm on the left, he drove on that side. He was constantly weaving between the sides. He did not believe in stop signs, and this eventually caused his death.

Chapter 4

I had three brothers and two sisters. Since they were all spaced nearly two years apart my oldest brother Roy, was sixteen years my senior. After he graduated from high school, he got a job in the local bank. He worked his way up from teller to be one of the officers of the bank. He took continuing classes in finance all the time. Near the end of his career, the bank installed computers, and the transition was more than he could understand, so he retired. To be fair the computers then were not that great. He was old enough to retire. In retirement he kept busy doing janitor work at their church and working around the house. On his seventieth birthday, he ate a big meal. After the meal he said he was tired and wanted to lie down. He was only there for a few minutes then stopped breathing and died. I was living in Pomona, and my sister Sara was living in Pasadena. We traveled to Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, for the funeral. His wife, Mary, assured me that Roy had left her well off financially and she would be well cared for.

Roy and Mary had six children. The first two were twins. In their adult life, the children scattered around the world, to New Jersey, Ohio, the western states, and Australia. During WWII one of the twins chose alternative service for religious reasons. He was sent to Nova Scotia to teach school. He was there two years, and he dearly loved the area and the people. He returned several times in the following years to visit some of the friends he made there.

My oldest sister Mary went to the Millersville State Teachers College. Her first job was a one-room school in the center of the Amish district just east of Lancaster. By state law the students were required to attend school until age sixteen, then they could stay home to work on the farm. All eight grades were in the one room. Mary seemed to enjoy it. Discipline was not a problem. Each Christmas she had a special ceremony at the school. I was invited to go too. The students sang Christmas songs and recited poems. That was the program. Each student was given an orange and a small box of candy. Mary taught in that school for seven years before she got married then became a housewife. She and her husband, Herbert, had two children, a boy and a girl.

The next brother John, the one who was eight years older than me, went to Elizabethtown College for two years then he was accepted to the Philadelphia College of Osteopathy. He graduated with a doctor of osteopathic medicine (DO) degree and immediately set up a general practice east of Lancaster in the little town of Blue Ball in 1938. For osteopathy at the time, there was no internship required. The standards even for medical doctors were not very rigid, so anyone attending a healing school of any type was allowed to practice with a token examination by the state. Chiropractic training was very minimal. Apprenticeship for doctors had not been used for many years.

John and his wife, Miriam, had two beautiful daughters. Miriam developed multiple sclerosis that gave her bizarre symptoms, pain, weakness, and some mental aberration. She went to Philadelphia to a small clinic that claimed benefit from fever therapy. To get the fever elevated to 105 degrees, they injected killed typhoid bacteria intravenously. It was gross treatment and didn’t seem to benefit her. I was in medical school at Penn at the time, and I visited with her during some of those treatments.

The town of Blue Ball was named for the little inn that had a blue glass ball hanging at the entrance. It was also in the Amish country, and about half of John’s patients were Amish. They all spoke English that they had learned in school but spoke Pennsylvania Dutch at home. He took care of nearly everything from sore throats to delivering babies in the home. There was no pharmacy nearby, so he dispensed his own medicine. Anything that was beyond his ability, he referred to the two hospitals in Lancaster, about ten miles away. He was not drafted for WWII because he was the only doctor for miles and was considered essential in the area.

Blue Ball was a tiny town, just big enough to warrant a post office, a volunteer fire station, and a doctor’s office. There were very few homes in the town. It was considered the hub of a farming community. The nearest towns had the interesting names of Intercourse and Paradise. Geographically if you were in Blue Ball, you had to go through Intercourse to get to Paradise. It’s true—check your map.

*****The only joke I remember John telling was this: Two men were sitting at a counter having coffee. The one put four teaspoons of sugar in his coffee and started to drink. The second man said, I noticed you put in four spoons of sugar, but you didn’t stir it. The first one said, I don’t like it that sweet.

*     *     *

My second sister Sara became a nurse, training at the osteopathic college that John attended. She got married just after getting her nursing degree and started having babies. They moved to California where both Sara and her husband, David, found work. After their children were older, she became the head nurse at the Pasadena Drug and Vitamin factory and worked there until retirement. They had three children, two boys and a girl. They lived, worked, and retired in California.

Vernon and I were at home during Sara’s training. We visited her in Philadelphia a few times. She made us fried eggs in a blanket. To do that she removed the center of a piece of bread, placed the ring in the pan, then broke the egg into the middle. Since then, when I was cooking on my own, I have used that method. It is so easy and delicious.

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My next brother Vernon attended Penn State University one year then married a classmate and started work. His first job was artificial insemination of cattle. He described one caller to the office asking, Do you do artificial respiration?

His answer was, No, respiration is inspiration and expiration. This is insemination. There’s no inspiration to it.

He described how he does it. He said, First you put on a gauntlet glove covering the forearm and put your arm into the cow’s rectum far enough until you can put your hand around the cervix of the uterus. Then you guide a glass tube through the vagina into the cervix. With the syringe attached to the tube you inject the sperm directly into the uterus. He said, Once in a while you do this to a cow that is already pregnant. In that case you cause an abortion. Oops.

OK, how do you get the sperm? He said, You start with a cow in heat. You lead the bull in and when he mounts the cow you guide his penis into a glass tube that has warm water in it. The bull doesn’t know a glass tube from a cow. You get enough sperm to inseminate a dozen or more cows.

He and his wife, Doris, had seven children. That kept them pretty busy. The children learned to take care of each other, which was a blessing. It has been my observation that where finances allow, large families are happier. In addition to the housework, Doris drove the school bus. Vernon got into the carpet-laying business, and he continued that until he was seventy-five years old. He got contracts from Marriott and other hotel chains. They chose him because he guaranteed his work. The family was active in their church. They formed a singing group with all the children and gave concerts at their home church and surrounding churches. Vernon had a tenor voice, and Doris was an alto. The children sang the chords. They gave very entertaining concerts.

Two of his sons went into the carpet-laying business also. They formed two companies, Vernon had one company, and the sons had the other. They bid