The enduring legacy of a doctor for the ages
A patient arrived on the medical service at Vanderbilt Hospital in fall 1965 with the diagnosis of a rare fungal pneumonia. His family physician, Dr. Claude Collins, who practiced in the small town of Monterey, Tennessee, referred his patient along with office notes. Physicians at the hospital were amazed at the accuracy of the diagnosis, made by a physician from this small town with limited access to diagnostic tools.
Three days into the hospitalization, Collins visited his patient’s bedside. Attired in a dark suit with vest, he had the bearing of a pastor. Concluding his visit, he thanked the ward team for looking after his patient. Unfortunately, his patient succumbed to his complex illness.
The economic depression, which affected the South years before the rest of the country, limited job opportunities for physicians when Collins completed his medical training in Memphis in the mid-1920s. He signed a contract to open a practice in the coal-mining town of Davidson, Tennessee. Losing everything in a house fire, he and his wife and their infant son relocated to nearby Wilder, population 2,000, in 1929. A second son arrived in 1932. Throughout his career, patients and townspeople simply called Claude Collins “Doctor.”
The mining company owned the town. Unpainted frame houses had a single light fixture dangling from the ceiling of a front room, no indoor plumbing or refrigeration except for the mine owner, and the nearest potable water came from a well
five miles away.
Doctor treated patients six days each week in his three-room office, which was a short distance from his company-owned house. He had a stethoscope and blood pressure cuff. He dispensed the few available medications from his office. Sulfonamides, the first antibiotic, became available in the late 1930s. He cared for miners hurt in frequent mine accidents. An explosion at the mine severely burned several miners whom Doctor treated until an ambulance could arrive to transport them to a hospital. Calls for help came from the front porch on many evenings. The company gave Doctor a cow each year and a monthly stipend of $125 for salary and supplies. Patients often paid by barter: a chicken or dozen eggs or dressed game.
Several times a week, Doctor was summoned into the countryside to deliver babies or tend to patients too sick to travel. Occasionally, he took one of his two sons with him on these journeys. Robert helped with the driving from age 11 onward. If a road became impassable or simply ended in a trail, a house call was completed on horseback.
His sons thought that Doctor needed company or a driver on these visits into the countryside so that he could obtain much-needed sleep.
On one maternity visit to a remote cabin, labor progressed slowly. Doctor fell asleep at the bedside, keeping one hand atop the pregnant abdomen. When contractions became frequent, he awakened to deliver the baby.
In 1932, wages at the mine fell sharply. A violent strike that would last for a year began in Wilder. Replacement workers were recruited by the mine owner. Union representatives arrived, and fights broke out. Doctor received threats from each side. When bullets struck his house and office, Doctor convened a meeting between the factions. He would treat anyone, striker or replacement. If he or his family were endangered again, he would leave. At night, an armed guard patrolled in front of Doctor’s house and nearby office. For a time, a guard rode shotgun when Mrs. Collins drove to nearby towns.
One night, a union organizer was fatally shot in front of Doctor’s house. The ensuing investigation gained statewide attention. Doctor and Mrs. Collins provided meals to reporters from Nashville who visited Wilder. This led to additional threats. An inquest concluded the victim had been shot by a mine guard in self-defense, despite multiple bullet wounds, four of which were in the victim’s back.
Discovering that the town’s primary-school teacher was barely educated, Doctor and his wife sent their two sons to a nearby military-style, boarding school.
As Wilder’s economy folded, Doctor moved his family to Monterey in 1944. He carried with him the same traditions of care regardless of the hour or personal inconvenience. Long hours, many office and home visits and home deliveries characterized his practice in the town.
Doctor retired in 1975. He died in 1980.
Doctor’s older son, Robert, became a distinguished pathologist, teacher and researcher into lymphoma at Vanderbilt School of Medicine. He died in 2013.
Doctor’s younger son, John, who died recently, was an esteemed gastroenterologist in Chattanooga.
Medical knowledge and accompanying specialization have mushroomed since Doctor’s time. His enduring lessons to health-care providers of our day are devotion, diligence, courage and compassion.