We Do All This for Babies: Curious Tales from a Pediatrician

By Alex Robertson M.D.

This book is a compilation of monthly medical articles written for the Farmville, North Carolina, weekly newspaper. Its a mixture of stories from my early life, from medical school and residency, anecdotes about unusual cases, descriptions of misguided medicine, travel (France, Bolivia, Iran, Sudan, Denmark and Honduras), and essays about pandemics.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514406649

Alex Robertson M.D.

Dr. Robertson began medicine in 1953 at the University of Virginia. His pediatric and biochemical training was at the University of Michigan. In 1965 he established the Section of Neonatology at the Ohio State University. He was appointed chairman of pediatrics at the Medical College of Georgia in 1971 and moved to the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University in 1989. Since 2002 he has worked as a volunteer at the Kate B. Reynolds Pediatric Clinic in Snow Hill, North Carolina. He and his wife, Etsil Mason, live in the friendly small town of Farmville, North Carolina.

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1

CHILDHOOD (1932-1946)

I WAS BORN AT home on Ridgeview Road in Staunton, Va., Dec. 5, 1932. Staunton is a lovely town nestled in the Shenandoah Valley. Our home was a Federal style brick house, two stories with a steep slate roof. My room was adjacent to my parents on the west side. Along that side were large lilac bushes with fragrant blossoms perfuming the air all summer. Beside the head of my bed was a mahogany desk with two side shelves, where I kept my radio and Compton’s encyclop edia.

I developed asthma early in life and missed up to 45 days of school each year for several years. That was when I acquired my reading habits. While I was at home sick, Mother would go to the library every 3-4 days to get me a new supply of books to read. I would often have an asthma attack when my father was out of town for a medical meeting. Then there were no inhaled drugs so I stayed in a croup tent that my father devised, made from an umbrella covered by a sheet with steam flowing in. I remember vividly the heat of mustard plasters on my chest and the shots of adrenaline which made my heart race. My closeness to my father was, perhaps, enhanced through my asthma. He taught me which medicines to take; we called the specific capsules yellow jackets, bumblebees and he taught me how to sterilize a needle and syringe and to draw up my weekly allergy shots. From an early age we trusted each other.

In the winter I loved to play in the attic. In one of the alcoves I had a table for my chemistry set where I spent hours playing with malodorous reactions. I shared the attic usually with about four salt-cured Virginia hams hung by wire from the rafters so the mice could not get to them. The hams were payment to my father for his medical services and he felt they were best after hanging for about two years.

My mother always called me Angel Face which was embarrassing when I was playing with my friends. I had curly hair and she took me with her to the ladies’ beauty parlor to have my hair cut even after I had started public school. I was afraid one of my classmates would see me going in.

I went with her to the seamstress while she was fitted for clothes. I enjoyed going up the alley to play with Sammy, a little black boy my age. Once we started public school, that stopped.

I had two sisters Ruth and Dana both older than I. You will hear about Ruth later. Dana was ten years older than I and a stubborn, troublesome girl who argued with Mother, did poorly in school and sneaked out at night to go to parties. But from my early life, I remember she made wonderful bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches for me. Her closest friend was the daughter of the sheriff so when Dana was baby-sitting me and a deadly automobile accident happened the two girls would bundle me up and drive to see the wreckage.

When I wasn’t sick, games and school and sports and my dogs were my entire life, it seems. I remember the care I would take preparing a horse for playing cowboys. The horse was, of course, a flexible stick, usually a trimmed tree branch, about as high as my shoulder, with a piece of string or leather shoe lace tied around the top as the reins. I could run, I thought, as fast as any cowboy rode; running with the stick between my legs, holding the reins in my left hand and a cap pistol in my right.

I loved school. At five I went to Mrs. Calhoun’s kindergarten. This was, of course, long before preschool classes or public kindergartens. I remember memorizing parts of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves for a performance in which I was Sneezy. She also had a summer camp for children on a farm towards Deerfield Valley which had a small creek flowing through. I was embarrassed and repulsed by the chamber pot we had in our room where about five boys slept.

We had a period each day when we could play in the creek. Just upstream the cows were also in the creek. One day I stepped into a water hole deeper than my height and was frightened into swimming for the first time.

The highlight of first grade was being the conductor of the Toy Orchestra. For an end-of-year performance the first grade had an orchestra of children playing various simple percussion instruments as accompaniment to music played on a Victrola. As the conductor I was splendidly outfitted, white shorts and sox, a white shirt and a glorious red sash across my chest. I had a baton and made three movements with both arms; a triangle, a square and I can’t remember the third. One of my proudest moments.

In the years 1942-1945 I went to secondary school (grades 4-6) which was about one half mile down Augusta Street from my home so I walked each day. As I remember we wore shorts in warm weather and knickers in the colder months. Young boys did not wear long pants until nearly in high school. The walks to and from school were enjoyable. I was learning to be a prodigious whistler those years and remember moistening my lips with a bit of fruit jam before leaving the house so that my lips would stick together just enough for a fine rendition of the Flight of the Bumblebee.

Each day I passed by Patsy Hamer’s house but seldom saw her. For some reason I thought of her as my girlfriend but today I can’t remember why. I don’t believe we ever spoke.

Since my asthma was spontaneously improving, I got my first dog, a black and white, almost pure-bred cocker spaniel that I named Freckles. I must have been about 9 years old. Freckles was a constant companion. Unfortunately a car struck him and his left front leg was paralyzed so he was put down. My father let me give him a good meal and then a sleeping tablet. I held him in my lap until he was asleep and then we took him to the veterinarian.

My next dog was Inky, a solid black Cocker who was very clever. I spent hours training him to do tricks. My favorite was telling him to stay in the living room while I hid a sock, somewhere in the house. I would come back to the living room and sit down to talk to him. When I would say, you can go find the sock now he would bolt off and search the house from top to bottom until he found it. My only disappointment was that I could not hypnotize him.

My mother died in 1946 when I was fourteen years old so I look back at the years before she died as my childhood. The relatives gathered at our home and at the Stuart House. The night before the funeral Mother was laid out in the guest bedroom. I was scared to have a dead person sleeping in the house with me. The day of the funeral I kept busy shining all the men’s shoes. I still have my father’s shoe-shine box. We gathered in the living room prior to the funeral procession and I made the mistake of cracking my knuckles. Aunt Susie told me I shouldn’t do that and Uncle William, Mary Stuart’s husband, stood up, made a great show of cracking all his knuckles, and said, I think it’s very relaxing. Before Mother was taken out I was told to kiss her goodbye which frightened me. She looked natural but her lips were so cold.

As the procession left Ridgeview road I saw that several of my classmates were standing near our driveway and that act brought the first and last tears to my eyes.

I was confused by her death since she was young and in good health. My father never mentioned her death and I never asked him why she had died. There was no autopsy. One night she came to visit me two weeks after the funeral. I awoke from sleep after midnight and saw her standing beside my bed in a flowing, white nightgown. She sat down on the side of the bed, put her hand on my shoulder and told me that she was all right. And then she faded away. I experienced a wonderful feeling of euphoria and was no longer uneasy about her death.

2

MY SISTER, RUTH

R UTH WAS BORN five years before me, in 1927. I believe my parents first realized she was seriously retarded when she started first grade. Back then, children were noted to be slow, but little emphasis was placed on their developmental delay until school began. Her ultimate development was at a five–year-old level: she could dress and feed herself and speak si mply.

My mother was devastated. My father felt his pretty, dark-haired daughter could be educated, despite the school’s assessment and her convulsions, and sent her to the Woods school in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, an expensive, exclusive school for educable retarded children, as they were known then. At Christmas we would drive to Washington, DC, from Staunton to meet her train and bring her home for the vacation. On our car trips I would sit on the back seat with her, watching her every movement, fearing a seizure.

Her home visits were difficult for, as she grew older, she became more emotionally unstable and combative. She did not respond well to discipline, and when confined to her room for unacceptable behavior, we could hear, throughout the house, her cries and the thuds of her beating her head against the walls. My parents never explained her to me, and, indeed, I doubt they understood retardation back then.

The Woods school accommodated Ruth as long as they could, but when she reached adolescence and was showing no academic improvement, and her convulsions and behavior worsened, they discharged her. My father then arranged private home care for her, which usually lasted only a month or so until each caretaker gave up.

Finally, he agreed that she had to be admitted to a state hospital. In 1828 the Western Lunatic Asylum opened in Staunton. Dr. Joseph DeJarnette, who became the superintendent of Western State in 1905, strongly embraced the eugenics movement, and involuntary sterilization of patients began. Ruth was admitted to