Willoughby: A look at medicine now compared to then

If you have watched television series like “Grey’s Anatomy,” and especially “New Amsterdam,” you will have seen open-heart surgery hundreds of times. It is so commonplace that you might think little of it, but, as a senior, I and my generation know it is a relatively recent, miraculous development in medicine. Looking back through the history of Aspen, there are many such advancements that today we give little thought to.

My uncle, Elmer Johnson, was one of the early patients of Dr. Norman Shumway of Stanford University Hospital. Shumway did the first successful adult heart transplant in 1968. Elmer had bypass surgery in 1975 and lived decades after it.

Aspen, in its early years, made accessible medical care available to all. To facilitate that, it began raising funds to build a hospital in the late 1880s. Organizations and individual donors raised $20,000 ($4,800,000 in today’s dollars), including a $1,000 gift from D.R.C., Brown, and $500 from mine owner George Newman. Aspen’s Black citizens organized cake walk fundraisers and contributed $614. Dubbed Citizen’s Hospital, it opened in 1893. 

The first major surgery was soon after it opened. A miner, Tom O’Kane, injured his knee in a mine accident. The leg injury festered and led to complications. Five doctors – Green, Rose, Melin, Scully, and Robinson – worked together, intending to fix his knee by cleaning out the infested areas. Instead, “they cut down to the bone and found the tissues so badly diseased and eaten away and so much dead bone that it was deemed and advisable to amputate the leg entirely rather than have the patient in bed recovering from the effects of the operation.”

Imagine a skier’s knee operation starting and then ending with an amputation of the whole leg.

Respiratory problems were the most common ailments treated for several decades. Miners suffered from the occupational hazard of silicosis that, in those days, came under several respiratory names but most often pneumonia. There were no antibiotics then. Penicillin was discovered by Scottish Alexander Fleming in 1928. It wasn’t until 1942 that it was used to treat meningitis. You did not see much in the Aspen papers about penicillin until after 1943.

I was afflicted by pneumonia in 1957 and was out of school for five weeks. Thankfully, penicillin was in common use then, but it was administered – a deep memory of mine – using a very large-in-diameter and long needle in my rear end that had little fat. Like most children, to me, the cure was worse than the disease.

We don’t even think about blood transfusions and blood banks, but that didn’t begin until 1943 during the war. The American Red Cross operated the fist blood banks and had a goal, in 1943, of four million pints. Dr. Robert Lewis, in 1948, addressed the need for blood for Aspen: “An actual blood bank is an impossibility in a sparsely-settled area such as that served by the Pitkin County Hospital.” He organized a walking blood bank of locals willing to have their blood type identified and to volunteer for transfusions. His goal was 400 willing locals.

Insulin has been a major topic lately – but not a lack of it, just the exorbitant price. The first use of insulin was in 1922, first in Canada then in the same year in America. Eli Lilly began making commercial insulin in 1927. The first mention of insulin in Aspen’s papers was in 1927 announcing that WWI veterans with diabetes could get insulin from any veterans hospital.

As mentioned in the beginning, “Grey’s Anatomy” and “New Amsterdam” show scenes that seem common, including infant respirators. The first mention of an “iron lung” in Aspen papers was in 1940. It reported that visitors to the Colorado State Fair could “have their first opportunity to see an iron lung.” The company exhibiting was the Columbia Steel Tank Company that specialized in agricultural products. Some thought their iron lungs were chick incubators. The first iron lung in our area was in 1941 when the Garfield County Commissioners bought one for $550 ($9,000 in today’s dollars) to be used by infants.

We live in the best of times.

Tim Willoughby’s family story parallels Aspen’s. He began sharing folklore while teaching at Aspen Country Day School and Colorado Mountain College. Now a tourist in his native town, he views it with historical perspective. Reach him at redmtn2@comcast.net.