The last of the great generation: a country doctor who served generations and delivered over 6,000 babies, including me. Rest in peace, Doc. (A grateful thread) porterandsonfd.com/obituary/paul-…
He truly put patient care first. He was also the first to distribute birth control to the women of my county, as a health issue. archives.cnn.com/1999/HEALTH/12…
Here's his story in his own words of how he created an easy credit system for poor people with no health insurance before Medicare, delivering babies for a $60 fee, that's about $560 today. Still it was about 6 weeks of the average income then & there. journals.lww.com/greenjournal/C…
He lived above his clinic so he could always be on call. My mother tells the story of when I was born that she was told he would be right down. She said to the nurse to tell him to hurry if he was going to get there in time to deliver me.
Evidently he just pulled his trousers over his pajamas that morning. How could my mother tell? Doc Maddox he didn't tahe the time to fasten his belt or zip his trousers. Good thing, too. She arrived at 6:40 am and I was born at 6:47.
He turned no woman away. Many of whom in the 1960s had had no prenatal care. By 1963 he was delivering 300-400 babies A YEAR. As the only doctor for miles with no hospital within two hours drive.
He hired a woman to sit with the mothers, basically a doula to help out. She didn't earn much, just $5 a delivery, but it was still about 10% of his fee.
His caesarian rate was 3%. His patients couldn't afford hospital stays and so he worked to deliver babies the old fashioned way in every possible case to keep costs down and improve outcomes.
By the time I was born, Doc Maddox had **46,000 patient visits a year** in addition to a rate of a delivery every day. Doc kept busy.
He said that getting more mothers birth control would let him get a little more sleep. It also, he argued, would raise the per capita income in a poor area. He started out giving birth control to the mothers who came in for deliveries.
CBS in 1967 filmed Doc showing a newborn to his mother:
Mother: "Was it a boy?"
Doc: "Nope. It's a girl. Did you get pregnant while you were using a diaphram or did you just throw it away and get pregnant?"
Mother: "I left it in Ohio"
Doc: "Didn't work that way did it?"
Mother: "Was it a boy?"
Doc: "Nope. It's a girl. Did you get pregnant while you were using a diaphram or did you just throw it away and get pregnant?"
Mother: "I left it in Ohio"
Doc: "Didn't work that way did it?"
That was his humor. He went on to tell her right there, before putting the baby in her arms about the birth control pill. This was 1967 in Applachia. Only 7 years after the introduction of the Pill & 2 years after the Supreme Court made it legal for married couples to use.
A biography of Doc and his wife Pat tell the story of what he faced having conversations about birth control with his patients.amazon.com/Moving-Mountai…
Doc treated my earaches, my sore throats, my fevers, my chickenpox, and that time I got a needle broken off in my foot.
"Too far from your heart to kill ya."
"Too far from your heart to kill ya."
Rest in Peace, Dr. Paul "Doc" Maddox. Thank you for a life well lived so others like me, my family, my community could live a little bit better.
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