Imperial County History

The first doctors coming to the Valley had no easy time of it in the pursuit if their profession. There were often long journeys to take out over the trackless desert, and it was necessary to make these on horseback, for few roads were such that one could pass over them with a buggy. As the ditches or canals were cut through there were seldom any bridges put across and the traveler was compelled to ford the streams. There were no hospitals or any buildings that in any way would answer the purpose of these. There were very few houses in the towns and none in the country. What surgical work had to be done was quite often done out in the open.

The summer heat, in those earlier years, was intense. There was little or no verdure to break the blinding glare of the sun, and it was not unusual for the thermometer to rise to 128 or 130 degrees Fahrenheit during the middle of the day. But owing to the dryness of the atmosphere there were few or no prostrations. There was comparatively little sickness in those days. The most of the men who came into the Valley were young and able-bodied and a large percentage of them had no families, or if they had, had left them behind, back in civilization so that the proportion of women and children in the Valley was small. Brave souls there were though who refused to be left behind, who wanted to have a part in the developing of the country and refused to be daunted by the hardships of the desert life, and others soon followed, inspired by their example. Thus the valley homes were established and the doctor became a necessity.

This, perhaps, explains the fact that the first doctors, or most of them, did not come with any definite idea of establishing themselves in the practice of medicine. Dr. W. S. Heffernan, who was probably the first doctor to enter the Valley, came in 1900, not to practice medicine, but as secretary of the then newly organized California Development Company. Incidentally, he looked after considerable work professionally and along this line he covered the greater part of the Valley and often made trips far into Mexico. At one time he left Calexico at midnight on horseback and rode all night and the greater part of the morning, arriving at his destination near Black Butte mountains, at ten o'clock. He holds the distinction of having officiated at the birth of the first white child in the Valley in October, 1900. Dr. Heffernan first took up his stay in Imperial, which consisted of a few tent houses and a number of tents. Later he removed to Calexico, where he spent a number of years, in fact until the dissolution of the development company. So much of his time, however, was spent in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the interest of the company that he could hardly be said to have had a permanent residence at Calexico at any time.

In 1901, Dr. F. P. Blake came to Imperial. It is said that his first office was in a tent, under a mesquite tree. Later he put up a small wooden building, two doors north of the Imperial Hotel. This consisted of but two tiny rooms, but they were ample for his bachelor needs. His equipment was exceedingly unpretentious, but it was considered ample in those days. His practice covered the greater part of the Valley. He was for years the only doctor there. He had no horse or buggy and went out in the country only as the parties came in with their own conveyances and brought him out. He was for three years the only doctor in the Valley who devoted his whole time to his practice. He left the Valley about 1907, and for a number of years was absent from his usual haunts, but has now for several years been located in Calipatria.

Dr. Blake had been in Imperial a year when Dr. T. R. Griffith, coming from Boston, drifted into the town. He had come in quest of health and he pitched his tent under another mesquite tree, not far distant from the one under which Dr. Blake was domiciled. This for a while was practically the entire medical fraternity of the Valley, all lodged under two Imperial mesquites. Dr. Griffith stayed in Imperial a year and then moved down near what is now known as Heber, on a ranch. He took no active part in the management of the ranch and did very little in the way of practicing medicine. After a year's stay here he felt sufficiently recuperated to take up the practice of his profession and, moving to Calexico, which had begun to develop into a small town, he opened up an office in a small tent house on Imperial Avenue. The house is still in existence, though later moved over onto First Street. Possessing a gifted mind, Dr. Griffith, nevertheless, had little or no inclination toward practicing medicine. The varied assortment of anomalous characters, both Mexican and white, possessed a peculiar fascination for him. He was seldom at his office, which bore all the marks of neglect, but could be found out mingling with people of the place. Naturally a linguist, he readily acquired a fair knowledge of the Spanish, and within a year was speaking this language fluently, with a studied Castilian accent.

Knowing the place as we do, knowing the man, we cannot wonder at his attachment to it. The first doctor of the town with a love for pioneering, though not with an adaptability for it, he found here the breath of pioneering on everything and everybody. There was the spirit to do and to dare; to undertake without hesitation the apparently impossible. There were also the unsuccessful ones, the derelicts in life, the down-and-outer, a motley assortment of humanity which had come from all parts of the country to this new land of promise with the last lingering hope that here they might redeem themselves. Some made good and others again sank to still lower depths of degradation, poverty, and crime.

But to the doctor student of humanity, to the lover of the strange and anomalous in character and in life, they formed a most interesting group. There, too, were the officials of the California Development Company, their clerks and attendants comfortably housed in several large adobe buildings, which lent to the community a touch of gentility that would otherwise be lacking and helped to intensify the contrasts. There, too, was the life across the line, a town composed almost entirely of adobe buildings and practically wholly Mexican. Here were stores and drinking booths. Here was the gay, careless life of the land of Manana. Here of an evening could be heard the Spanish guitar, often accompanied by a more or less strident voice, sometimes distinctively plaintive, sounding clear and distinct through the still night air. A town it was, more distinctively Mexican than it has ever been since. The Colorado washed it away, with only a touch of the corruption which later become the whole life of the community.

There had been some high water in the New River during the summer of 1905, which had washed away the approaches to the bridge, thus interrupting traffic to the country lying west of town. A foot bridge was constructed across the river, but this was washed away during one of the winter floods, and thereafter all communication with the country west of the town was by boats. Some enterprising white fellow would build a boat and charge a person from fifty cents to a dollar to ferry him across. Hardly would he have earned enough money to cover the cost of the boat before some sudden rise in the river during the night would carry the boat down stream, and it invariably fell into the hands of some Cocopah Indian, who dwelt down stream and on the farther side. Thus the Indians soon came to have a monopoly in the ferry business. There were then a rather large number of them who lived west of the river. There are still a few living there, but most of them have succumbed to the ravages of tuberculosis and venereal diseases. The Indians used these boats to good advantage. If the ferry business was a little dull and they were a little short of funds in their community settlement, one of their number would suddenly get sick and another one would come across for the doctor. The trip across the river was always free to the doctor, but the patient, of course, had no money to pay him, and he was therefore under the necessity of having to pay him, and he was therefore under the necessity of having to pay for his ride back to town. This method of money making had, of course, its limitations.

It was the writer's good fortune to spend that memorable year of floods in the Valley's border town. The place then suffered most from the break. Many and varied, indeed, were the experiences. It was a time that tried men. Many a brave soul did he see finally give up in despair and leave the Valley, never to return. Many had put their all in here and went out penniless. Practicing medicine during those times had its trying experiences. It was difficult and at times almost impossible to get around over the country. A saddle horse could cover all the dry land, however rough, but he could not cross the river. It was necessary there to resort to boats, and then the difficulty of finding any conveyance on the other side was nearly always present. It was at times necessary to walk a number of miles. The river was not always safe to cross. There were times when the ferryman absolutely refused to go out into the swift and swirling stream, and the writer was compelled to take the boat alone and trust to his college practice with the oars to bring him safely across.

This was a year of confusion and of changes. People were compelled to change their plans to co-ordinate with the whims of the New River. Part of Calexico was washed away and practically all of Mexicali went down the stream. It was a period of transition, too, though we knew it not at the time, for the new towns that sprang up on both sides of the line were different. The old towns as well as the old life were things of the past.

In Brawley, for years after the establishment of the town, the only doctor was Dr. J. A. Miller. He was, perhaps, more of a preacher than a doctor, and thus ministered both to the religious and medical wants of the new-born community. He claimed to hold a medical diploma from a Canadian school, though he never secured a California license. He was in many ways a rather whimsical fellow. On one occasion he appeared at Imperial to attend some Methodist conference, his tall, lank figure crowned with a high silk hat - the only silk hat, as far as known, that has ever had the hardihood to venture into Imperial Valley.

On another occasion during the flood, when a cable had been extended across the river and a carriage run back and forth on this some thirty feet above the water, he was asked to cross in it to see some sick person on the other side. He entered the carriage with some hesitation and remarked that he doubted whether it would hold him. He was assured that it had carried a horse across. "That is no guarantee that it will hold me," he replied, and intimated that his fee ought to be one commensurate with the apprehension he experienced in riding in the carriage.

Dr. F. J. Bold had come to Imperial in the summer of 1904, and had put up what for that time was considered a rather pretentious residence and office on Imperial Avenue, adjoining Dr. Blake's. Unlike the other doctors then in the Valley, he was young and healthy and carried with him an abundance of enthusiasm. It was not long before his practice extended to every part of the Valley. He had two or three saddle horses and changed mounts whenever the one he had been riding was tired. He could pick his way through the desert at all hours of the night, and there were in those days long stretches of desert between the various settlers. He had the happy faculty when through with a case and started on his way home to doze off in the saddle and leave it to the horse to get him home. On one occasion he went to sleep on his way out and awoke at 4 o'clock in the morning in some rancher's back yard, and for the life of him could not tell where he was. He was compelled to wake up the people to inquire his way. Like Dr. Griffith, he enjoyed pioneering, but unlike him he enjoyed it because of the unique experiences it gave him and not because of the strange characters it brought him in contact with. He enjoyed a varied and extensive practice and did considerable surgery too. Indeed it is surprising how much he accomplished along surgical lines considering his limited facilities and the complete absence of hospitals or anything that at all approached them in accommodations, and all with uniform success. He considered the Valley the garden spot of the earth and declared it his intention to make this his permanent home. The tragic death of his sister, who had been his constant companion and invaluable assistant, together with other troubles, dampened his ardor, and he sold his home and practice to Dr. G. M. Bumgarner in the summer of 1906 and went to Whittier where he has been located ever since.

During his two years stay in the Valley he was constantly striving to give to the practice of medicine that dignity and importance to which it was justly entitled, and which it could hardly be said to have possessed hitherto. His efforts were tireless to eliminate the quack and the charlatan and the unlicensed practitioner, of whom a number were finding their way into the Valley at that time.

Holtville was established in 1903, and at its very beginning Dr. Greenleaf located there. He had enjoyed a lucrative practice in Chicago and later at Redlands, but his health had failed him at both places, and he came to Holtville hoping the desert air would give him renewed strength. He was the only doctor east of the Alamo for a number of years. He was never able, however, to give proper attention to his practice on account of his health, and in 1908 Dr. Brooks took up the practice of medicine there, having his office in the Alamo Hotel. It was not long after this that Dr. Greenleaf died. By his death the Valley lost the last of its pioneer doctors - for pioneering, at least as far as the practice of medicine was concerned, could hardly be said to extend beyond the closing of the Colorado River break, in the summer of 1906. After this a new era of prosperity opened for the Valley. A rapid influx of settlers to the Valley, the organization of the county, the establishment of roads and bridges were rapid steps in the phenomenal development of the country. With the growth in the number of settlers there was a corresponding increase in the number of doctors. In 1906 there were only four doctors in the Valley, only two of whom were really in active practice. Two years later there were eleven. Four years later that number was doubled. At the present time there are in the neighborhood of forty, with at least thirty-three in active practice.

The first hospital in the Valley, was a small one in Imperial, established by Dr. E. E. Patten in 1907, soon after he came to the Valley. It was simply a small rooming house converted into a hospital. Dr. Patten was at that time county health officer and he found it necessary to have some establishment in which to house his county patients, as well as the more serious of his private ones. The place was well filled most of the time and remarkably well managed considering the limited facilities. A poorly managed gasoline stove, however, made a rapid end of the doctor's hospital. Brief though its existence had been it served to show the imperative need for the Valley of something along that line, and in the spring of 1908, Dr. Virgil McCombs began the construction of a hospital in El Centro. A one-story structure was completed that spring. By the following spring, however, it had proved its entire inadequacy to meet the growing demands, and the doctor began the erection of an additional story, which was completed by the fall of that year. Soon after the destruction of the Imperial Hospital, Dr. Patten established another hospital in the southern part of the town and put it under the management of Miss Haymer. This hospital flourished for several years, but proved in the end an unprofitable venture. It was therefore closed and the equipment sold to the El Centro hospital.

In March, 1911, Dr. McCombs sold his hospital in El Centro to the Sisters of Mercy of San Diego. They continued the management of it under the name of St. Thomas Hotel until March, 1918, when they transferred it to Mr. H. G. Thomas. It has, on account of its central location and larger size, remained during its entire existence the leading hospital of the Valley. At Calexico the Jordan Hospital was established in 1912. It has remained constantly under the management of Mrs. Jordan. While not a large building, it is pleasantly situated and fairly commodious.

At Brawley the Sisters of Mercy established a small hospital in 1910, but soon after they took over the management of the El Centro Hospital they discontinued it, finding it impossible to keep up both. There is, however, and has been for some years, a small and well-managed hospital at this place, as also at Imperial. At Holtville, Dr. D. A. Stevens has been maintaining a small hospital for several years.

There was no attempt made in the first years of the Valley's history on the part of the doctors to get together. There were not enough doctors to form any organization, but in the latter part of 1908 a county society was formed, comprising the following doctors: Dr. A. P. Cook of Brawley, Dr. E. E. Patten and Dr. Geo. Bumgarner of Imperial, Dr. Brooks of Holtville, Dr. Henry Richter of Calexico, and Drs. Virgil McCombs and F. W. Patterson of El Centro. Dr. Patten was chosen president and Dr. Peterson secretary of the newly formed society. A number of pleasant and profitable meetings were held at the hospital at El Centro during the year. The following year the organization still seemed to have sufficient life to justify an election of new officers, and Dr. McCombs was chosen president and Dr. Richter secretary. The society, however, was more nearly moribund at the time than was supposed. It never rallied sufficiently for another meeting.

For the next six or seven years no effort was made to reorganize the county society. But an attempt was made by Dr. J. C. King of Banning, in 1914, to incorporate the Imperial county doctors in the Riverside County Medical Society. The plan was partly successful. A number of the Valley doctors joined. By 1916 this number had been reduced to three, and Dr. King then conceived the plan of organizing an Imperial County medical society. It was largely through Dr. King's untiring efforts that the organization became a reality and the society emerged full fledged and with unbounded enthusiasm in April, 1916. Dr. L. R. Moore of Imperial was chosen president and Dr. L. C. House of El Centro secretary. It had at the time of its organization a membership of fifteen, comprising doctors from every town in the Valley. During its first year a number of lively and profitable meetings were held.

In April, 1917, election of officers was again in order, and Dr. Eugene Le Baron of Brawley was chosen president, with Dr. F. A. Burger of El Centro as vice-president. Dr. L. C. House was re-elected secretary. It is said that the second year of an organization is always the most trying. If it weathers the storm during this period its chances for a long lease of life are good. The history of the second Imperial County medical society has proven no exception to this rule. With the opening of the second year the enthusiasm that had characterized it during the first year began to wane. Though the year is practically at a close there have been no meetings of the organization; no getting together of the members which is so essential to mutual stimulation and inspiration. There is evident need at present of some regenerating influence, some invigorating leaven thrown into it to vitalize it for its third year's activities.

The climate of the Valley has, in general, been decidedly healthful. In the earlier days it was peculiarly so for tuberculosis patients. Many who came here with the disease in an advanced stage recovered completely. Of late years the climate could hardly be said to be favorable for this class of patients. The increased humidity which is an inevitable result of the increased cultivation and irrigation renders the summer heat much more unbearable. This increased humidity also gives rise to a larger proportion of heat prostations. There were few, if any, of these before 1905. Of other pulmonary diseases there were at first scarcely any, but these have all been steadily on the increase. Especially is this true of pneumonia. From being almost unheard of in the pioneer days it has come to be quite prevalent during the winter and spring months, and carrying with a rather high mortality even for that disease.

Scarlet fever and measles were almost unknown before 1906. Since then there have been scattered cases of the former practically every year and a number of epidemics of the latter. There had been no cases of measles in the southern part of the Valley for three years or more when the constable at Calexico, in the latter part of 1906, in taking some prisoners out to San Diego, was exposed to the disease. He was not aware, however, that he had come in contact with it, so when a week or two later he became sick, with many of the symptoms of the grippe, he decided that he was in for a seige of influenza. His friends came to see him and sympathize with him in his distress. The sympathizing was continued into the next two or three months and several hundred took part. A fairly general immunity was thus established and no further epidemic occurred for the next two or three years. Much complaint was heard in earlier years about the low altitude and consequent heart trouble. Personally this is largely, if not entirely, imagination on the part of the individual affected, for there have been a number of cases of people who found it impossible to live at Calexico, which is about sea level, on account of the low altitude, who found, nevertheless, that their hearts worked in perfect shape at sea level on the coast.

Typhoid fever has been in evidence in the Valley since the first settlers arrived. This is, undoubtedly, due almost wholly to the unsanitary condition that prevails almost constantly along the ditches across the line. The water is in most cases already polluted before it crosses the line into American territory. This, of course, is something over which the health authorities of the county have no control. They may guard ever so zealously the water supply within our own borders, but if in indiscriminate pollution is permitted to go on unchecked south of the line, the danger will ever be with us.