George McReynolds, M.D., King’s Daughters Hospital chief of staff, was optimistic. In February 1929, McReynolds told hospital trustees, “If conditions remain good, we hope to reduce this indebtedness very materially this year.”
Still, effects of the October 1929 crash had not yet rippled to Texas by early 1930; thus, King’s Daughters Hospital had increased patient admissions and income.
Just a few blocks east on East Avenue D the hospital serving African-Americans, open since May 1918, also managed to flourish under difficult circumstances.
Across town, Scott & White Hospital, then situated on more than five city blocks with its main building on Avenue G, had enjoyed equally expansive years during the 1920s. The hospital’s assets amounted to nearly $1 million at the close of 1928.
Just a few blocks east on South 25th Street, the Santa Fe Hospital for railway employees opened a new north wing, its second in a decade. Scott & White prospered, thanks to its reputation and its unique partnership with the Santa Fe Hospital as its chief supplier of medical services. King’s Daughters, too, benefited as a line hospital for the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railway. Railroad workers paid monthly dues to their associations; in turn, their medical costs were covered when they were sick or injured on the job.
By the end of 1930, the life’s blood of Temple’s economy and the area’s largest employers - railroads - cut salaries drastically and laid off workers. Problems started to ripple to hospitals, dependent on paying patients.
The Santa Fe Hospital’s financial health was tied to the railroad. The Santa Fe was first to experience troubles. By January 1930, Santa Fe Hospital Association trustees faced a tough issue: disbursements were exceeding receipts. By June 1930, the Santa Fe Hospital was in the red $20,964.92.
Disagreements arose between the medical staff and the Santa Fe Hospital Association trustees: Dr. Arthur C. Scott Sr., co-founder of Scott & White Hospital, advocated cost-saving measures, including asking employees to take pay cuts. He maintained that reduced salaries were
better than no paychecks at all. Trustees disagreed, preferring to dismiss hospital employees.
Santa Fe trustees eventually took both options - laying off workers in 1931 and asking remaining employees to take 10 percent salary reductions by 1932. The hospital also closed the hospital’s south wing and cut patient services.
By 1930, the three hospitals halted new construction, renovations and other additions to buildings and services. By fall 1932, economic conditions cratered further. In 1933, Scott also closed his downtown clinic. Nevertheless, Fred Stroop, Scott & White business manager, said that the hospital survived by enforcing “a rather drastic policy of retrenchments.”
To compound difficulties, King’s Daughters lost two pivotal, gifted leaders in a short time. Mary Julia Putts, hospital and nursing superintendent for 15 years, died suddenly in May 1929. Then, McReynolds died suddenly in 1931. Facing severe financial crisis, King’s Daughters was now grappling with a leadership vacuum.
Despite the economic difficulties, Scott & White carried on its mission of research and education. Its training program for medical residents, begun in 1928, continued throughout the next decade. The American College of Surgeons in August 1933 approved Scott & White as a cancer treatment center, the first in Texas.
Conditions were worse in rural areas. Killeen had a handful of physicians who were on-call all hours of the day and night. They sent sick patients 30 miles east along a narrow dirt road to Temple or Belton hospitals. Joseph Anthony Fowler, M.D., opened his Killeen practice in 1932, and, because of attrition, became the only doctor in town, according to “Unforgettable Decade: A Pivotal Era,” compiled in 1993 by the Killeen-Project 1930s.
“The first 16 months of practicing medicine here, I grossed $900, a far cry from what doctors get today,” he told the Killeen Daily Herald in 1982.
.Lobar pneumonia, diphtheria and typhoid were frequent maladies, he said. “In 1933, we had a bad flood and the city water wells got contaminated, resulting in an epidemic of typhoid fever,” Fowler said. “Eight people died out of 54 diagnosed cases in Killeen. (We) had no treatment for the disease, just sustained the patient, and he got over it or he didn’t.”
Vinegar, salt, wild herbs and berries, plus ample doses of whiskey, were frequent home remedies. Physicians were frequently “paid” with live chickens, slaughtered pigs, home-canned foods and fresh produce. Hospitals wrote off many bad debts. From 1933 to 1938, Scott & White treated more than 1,700 charity patients, whose hospital bills would have reached more than $56,000. At the same time, Scott & White physicians were unable to collect $123,552 from the patients.
The county’s economy was stagnant by the late 1930s, with little hope of recovery. Overseas conflicts loomed ahead. Just six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Army also activated McCloskey General Hospital in Temple. Gen. James A. Bethea, M.D., moved to Temple to assume command.
First, he had to create it from a huge open field on South First Street. When Bethea arrived in Temple, he was the only person assigned to the hospital, still under construction. “I didn’t even have a postage stamp, much less an office or typewriters, or a nickel to spend,” he recalled. McCloskey with 1,500 beds soon grew to become one of the Army’s largest general hospitals, developing as an outstanding center for orthopedic cases, amputations and neurosurgery.
As patients poured into the unfinished military hospital, construction crews continued working around them. McCloskey became, according to Bethea, “the biggest business (in Temple). Our payroll at McCloskey was over $1 million a month at its height.” Now, with people working - from carpenters to trained hospital staff - the local hospitals experienced boosts in patient loads and income.
The bruising economic depression of the 1930s was ending, war was looming and medicine was radically changing.
pbenoit@temple-telegram.com
