Now & Then The difference in hospitals years ago and today

— After spending some time in the hospital in mid-November, I’ve been thinking of some of my earlier experiences with doctors, and being confined for medical treatment. Actually I don’t have any early experiences of being in a hospital. I don’t think the Pea Ridge Hospital was open and functioning when I was a young boy, during World War II. I would really like to hear from people who remember the old Pea Ridge Hospital and who could tell me more about it. What years was it open as a hospital? Who were the doctors who practiced there?

The first doctor that I personally know of in Pea Ridge was Dr. Lee O.

Greene. He was the attending doctor when I was born, and he was our family doctor until about the time I started school. I never knew Dr. Greene to use the old Pea Ridge Hospital in his practice. Does anyone know if that is right? Dr.

Greene was a doctor of the old school. He made house calls as well as seeing people in his upstairs office over what is now our Pea Ridge City Hall. I remember that when I was about 5 years old I came down with a serious ailment, scarlet fever or scarlettina, and Dr. Greene put me in isolation at home. I was not isolated from my Dad orMother, but I was isolated from other kids and outside adults. No one could come in to see us during those times. I had to take some special tablets for six weeksor so, was confined to the bed, and couldn’t go out of the house. I don’t remember what that medicine was, only that it was a small pink pill with a bad taste if I didn’t swallow it right down.

So far as I know, there was not even a hospital in Bentonville or Rogers until the late 1940s. Usually when people were confined to the bed for medical treatment, it was confinement at home. The nurse was usually someone in the family, a mother, sister, aunt or grandmother. The doctor would come in from time to time to check up on us and maybe to do some treatment. Sometimes there were ladies in the community who had come to be known as good care-givers for the sick, and they would be called in to help take care of the person who was confined for treatment. Oneof those nurses that I know of was Ernest Hileman’s sister. I don’t know her name, but my folks often spoke of her. She and Dr. Greene took care of me and my Mom when I was born at home on the farm in January of 1940.

In the late 1940s, we began going to Dr. R.M. Atkinson in Bentonville as our family doctor. Dr. Atkinson had an office upstairs in a building a short distancewest down Central Ave. in Bentonville, on the south side of the street. To reach his office, you climbed a long, long flight of stairs.

It was very common in those days for doctors and dentists to have offices upstairs over a store or other business place. I used to think I remembered Dr.

Atkinson’s office as having a connection with the Callison-McKinney store near the Massey Hotel. I may be wrong in that memory, but I’m thinking a few times we went up on the elevator in Callison-McKinney to reach the doctor’s office. I think I also remember Dr.

Atkinson as having several extra rooms near his office which could function like a hospital. When someone went into confined treatment like that, the family might hire someone to sit with them and take care of them, like nurses later came to do in hospitals.

As I recall, Dr. Atkinson had much to do with the establishing of the Bates Memorial Hospital in Bentonville. The original hospital opened in about 1947 or 1948 on South Main Street.

That old hospital building now serves as a nursing home. Later Bates Memorial moved to a larger building on what is now NorthWalton Blvd. Then, not too long ago, the new Northwest Hospital was opened in the much expanded city of Bentonville, on today’s site near Interstate 540.

That’s where I was taken after my heart attack two weeks ago.

So many things about the treatment I received two weeks ago would not have been possible in the 1940s or 1950s. I was able to watch a monitor showing a picture of the arteries of my heart, and could see where the circulation was goodand where it was not good, even as the doctor was implanting the stents to hold the restricted places open.

Somehow I wasn’t afraid. I felt like the good Lord was watching over us all, even as I watched the treatment going on.

◊◊◊

Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at joe369@ centurytel.net, or call 621-1621.

Community, Pages 5 on 12/08/2010