THE DOCTOR'S BLACK BAG

A collection of debut short essays recalling the author’s experiences during five decades as a general practitioner in the American Southwest.

After completing medical school at the University of Texas’ Medical Branch at Galveston in 1956 and an internship in Columbus, Ohio, Schmidt began his career in 1957 in Keams Canyon, Arizona, working for the United States Public Health Service on the Hopi Reservation, which is surrounded by the Navajo Reservation. Some of his most compelling anecdotes come from this period, as they offer a window on midcentury Hopi and Navajo lifestyles and cultures. By 1959, he was ready to try private practice, and so he, his wife, and their two young sons moved to Slaton, Texas, where he joined the practice of an older doctor. Schmidt writes that he “failed to thrive in Slaton” for a variety of reasons, including inexperience, and he felt that it was time to move on. In 1961, he joined the practice of a physician in Jal, New Mexico, and when the other practitioner unexpectedly departed for a surgery residency, he became its solo practitioner. After 11 years of being on call at all hours of the day and night, an emotionally and physically drained Schmidt moved his family once again, this time opening a practice in Yuma, Arizona, where he would remain for more than 23 years. This memoir, which has a fluid timeline that moves back and forth over more than four decades, is loaded with vignettes about Schmidt’s experiences with individual patients. As a result, it effectively illustrates the day-to-day life of a general practitioner before the days of medical conglomerates. He opens, for instance, with an amusing tale about Christmas Eve 1962, in Jal, when he was repeatedly called to the emergency room to treat patients’ injuries after they tried out skateboards they gave their kids. He also occasionally vents about Medicare regulations regarding such things as doorway widths and about “new societal norms” that discourage diagnostic physical contact, but he also counsels that doctors must always listen to what their patients are saying—and, yes, he has a story for that.

Engaging, sometimes-poignant, and occasionally acerbic stories from a longtime physician.