Donation to Territorial Prison results in new exhibit
Old medical equipment from doctor who worked at jail now on display
A medical display relating to Yuma’s very own Territorial Prison that had not seen the light of day here since the 1930s has recently become a new addition to the historic museum.
For decades, the equipment had been sitting in the storeroom of Arthur “Art” Nye who came upon the equipment as a family inheritance. His uncle, Henri Apjohn, was a doctor who worked at the Territorial Prison while it was in operation.
“Art showed up at the Yuma Visitor’s Center over at the Colorado River Park and he just went up to the front counter and said, ‘I have some old medical instruments from my uncle who used to be a doctor at the Territorial Prison,” said Tina Clark, historian, curator and archaeologist at the Yuma Territorial Prison. “Right away I got a call and I went right over. I just fell in love with Art. We hit it off and the funny thing is he was checking me out and he said, ‘I trust you and I like you so I am going to bring you all those instruments.’”
The antique medical supplies were then brought over by Nye this past May.
“I met Art at old City Hall and we spread out all of these incredible treasures on the table in the conference room,” Clark said. “It was an unbelievable collection. I had to pinch myself and say this is too good to be true.”
Clark said she assured Nye the equipment would be handled with care. She then went to work on the exhibit straight away so that Nye would be able to see the supplies in a museum. In the future during the summer, Clark said she aims to work on the exhibit and add more descriptions.
“People love it already,” she said. “The most interesting of all the artifacts is a doctor bag full of pills. There are probably 70 (tubes) with corks intact. The medicines are labeled and they haven’t been opened for over a hundred years. It has added to the visitor experience here at the prison and it’s been such a joy to me to be involved and to have met Art and his family.”
“They probably could have sold it on eBay but they certainly wouldn’t be
enjoyed and appreciated where hundreds of people are coming through and that makes me happy,” Clark added.
In total, Clark said there are at least 250 pieces of medical equipment in the display that were owned by Apjohn, who was related to Nye through marriage.
“He was married to my mother’s sister,” Nye said. “His wife Mabel was my mother’s sister. Then, he had a stroke and moved to Jacumba (Calif.) for a while. He was bedridden but still had his practice going. His wife would take care of the office and do things.”
Nye recollected visiting his uncle’s medical office while in California and seeing ailments ranging from leprosy to a leg injury from fire crackers.
“I didn’t know much about him,” Nye said. “He was all business — a big doctor. I know he could speak five languages.”
As a young boy, he said he only had a few encounters with his uncle, as he was a very busy man, but he will always remember the time his grandfather had to sterilize a saw-like apparatus to perform an amputation on a Native American man who was suffering from complications due to diabetes.
He decided that, as he has now reached 93 years of age, it was time to take the supplies out of storage and find a home for them in the area where he spent his adolescence.
“When he and his wife — my mother’s sister — when they had died my family asked, ‘Why what do we do with this stuff?’” Nye recalled. “‘Give it to Art, let him store it,’” they said, so I stored it all these years. Now that I am getting up there in years I said boy, I’d ought to go to Yuma where I really grew up.”
“There are a lot of interesting things in there that some of the doctors today have looked at and said ‘I wonder what they used that for?’” Nye added. “They wondered about some of the (plants) that they used such as extract of rhubarb. It’s very interesting to see and I am so glad to be able to put all those instruments along with the history.”
Nye lived in Yuma until he turned 18 and was drafted into the United States Navy. Following his time in the military, he married and became an engineer. While in Yuma, Nye attended Yuma High School and spent days exploring the area surrounding the prison and floating down the Colorado River on a raft with his friends.
The very first group of seven inmates entered the Territorial Prison in July of 1876. The museum’s website shows that a total of 3,069 prisoners, including 29 women, lived within the walls during the prison’s 33 years of operation.
According to information provided by the Yuma Territorial Prison, Apjohn was a resident of Yuma for 20 years. Born in Montreal, Canada, Apjohn received his education at St. Mary’s Jesuit College. In 1885, he was naturalized in New York and he spent three years in a New York hospital.
He graduated from medicine from the University of Oregon in 1892. Apjohn later arrived in Yuma and set up a private practice in Old Yuma. He then spent many years here making house calls and attending to the inmates at the Territorial Prison.
“He was also considered the horse and buggy doctor,” Clark noted. “He had a medical bag with a horse and buggy. He delivered babies at home and then once the hospitals took off here he then delivered babies — early Yuma residents — in the hospitals.”
After donating Apjohn’s medical equipment, the entirety of the late doctor’s office in fact, Nye made a visit to Yuma on Saturday to view the display at the museum for the first time. He brought along his daughter, Patti Anderson, who is a retired nurse.
“I am thrilled that my dad wants to preserve history for people by donating this,” she said. “I think it’s fascinating to see that some of the instruments still look exactly like instruments today. There are some that I don’t know what they are and I am curious about them but I am really glad that he kept them so nice. They are so well preserved and people can learn from it.”
The Yuma Territorial Prison is located at 220 Prison Hill Road and can be reached by calling (928) 783-4771.