Dr. Walter Benjamin

Our program on August 30^th was a talk by Dr. Walter Benjamin. He is 92 years of age (he said he was but he didn’t look it or act it), and he talked about his experiences in the depression.

 

Dr. Benjamin was the son of a general practitioner living in Pipestone, Mn., and he talked of the life of a small-town doctor and his family during those years. He described the contents of his dad’s medical bag, and told us that his dad carried almost every processed drug in his case so he could give a starting dose of medicine at the scene of the house call. He talked of going on house calls, and described the effect polio had on his family during the epidemics; he lost one brother to polio, and his other brother was infected but was able to survive the deadly disease.

 

In the depression years, which he called the “Golden Age of Medicine”, the family doctor handled all types of medical cases, as there were no specialists available in a small town. The age ended, he said on September 1, 1939 with the start of WWII.