There were three doctors in the town where I grew up, and the practice of medicine would be almost unrecognizable today.

The doctor our family went to had a big house on the main street, and he had office hours there every afternoon, starting about one o’clock. Patients would walk in through the front door and go into a large room to the left with bench seats on all four sides of the room. The room would be fairly full by one o’clock. There was no receptionist, and there were no appointments. People who needed a doctor would just show up.

At one o’clock, the doctor would enter through a door at the back of the room. It was a double door, with one door opening out and the other opening in, to muffle the sound and maintain patient privacy.

The doctor would look around the room to see who was there and nod to one of the patients to come in. I am not sure how he decided who should go first, but everyone just quietly waited their turn. After the patient was ushered back out through the same door, the doctor would survey the room again, taking special note of any newcomers so that patients would be seen roughly in the order of arrival.

Patients selected to enter would go into another big room, where the doctor would ask what the problem was. If a more extensive examination was required, the patient could be ushered farther back into a third room, where there was a raised bed.

Once the doctor had diagnosed the problem, he would offer advice or prescribe a medication. Most of the time, the patient was not sent to a pharmacy to get the prescription. One wall of the middle room had shelves floor to ceiling filled with bottles of the most common remedies. The doctor would count out the required number of pills and hand them to the patient.

Then the doctor would tell the patient how much was owed. It was cash only. The doctor would pull a massive wad of money out of his pants pocket and add the payment to the wad, making change as necessary. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that poorer patients would be charged less than wealthier patients. There was no medicare, and no government was not involved. There was no bureaucracy such as exists today.

I assume the doctor kept limited records of some kind, but he knew all of his patients personally and stored a lot of the information in his memory.

The doctor offered a wide range of services, including setting and casting broken bones. Some of his treatments were innovative. He treated one woman’s depression by removing a mole from her face.

The afternoon office hours would extend until all patients were seen. In the mornings and evenings, the doctor would make house calls to very sick patients or visit them in the hospital in the next town.

Medical care in those days was quite limited. There were far fewer medical imaging machines and diagnostic tools. There were no cures for many ailments. But the treatment was immediate and personal. There was good patient care because the doctor cared about his patients, who were his friends and neighbors. Medical care has greatly advanced in some ways since that time but certainly declined in others.