John Parish Interview

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  • Mary Lou Clotfelter
    Mary Lou: This is Mary Lou Clotfelter. Today is February 11th, 1992. I'll be talking with Dr. John Parish in his apartment in Mayflower Home in Grinnell. This interview is for the Friends of Stewart Library Oral History Project about Grinnell during the Depression and World War II, during the 1930s and the 1940s. [Ed. note: Dr. Parish has included medical information of historical interest from several eras. Although it has not all been included in this transcript, it is available on the audio tape.]
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter
    Mary Lou: Dr. Parish, let's begin by talking a little bit about how long your family has lived in the Grinnell area and about your father's history as a physician here in Grinnell.
  • John Parish
    John: Our family's history of being in medicine goes back to the 1900s. My father had graduated from Grinnell College in 1900. From there he went to Rush Medical School in Chicago and spent three years getting his M.D. degree there.
  • John Parish
    John: Then he returned to Grinnell and practiced there for the next forty-three years. When I came along, later, I also went to Grinnell College and graduated in 1927, in 1927, from [with] a liberal arts degree.
  • John Parish
    John: From there I went to medical school and then returned later and took up practice in Grinnell after finishing my internship. I have a notebook used by my father to take notes in while he was in Rush Medical.
  • John Parish
    John: He went to Chicago in 1900, after his graduation from Grinnell. And I have the–one of the notebooks that he used while he was in Rush Medical School.
  • John Parish
    John: I might read a little bit from the notes he took under a professor, I don't have the name off hand. Dr. Gill, Dr. Gill was the professor who taught the class that he was–from which these notes were taken.
  • John Parish
    John: Dr. Gill was talking about the diseases of women. "Women's diseases," he said, "are a special interest because of the types of diseases that affect women, particularly those that are related to their clothing."
  • John Parish
    John: Here's what he says about the way women should dress –I lost, stop it just for a minute. Here's what the professor had to say about the dress that women should wear in order to be healthy.
  • John Parish
    John: He said that women's clothing should be without constriction. And he says that the trouble with women is that they suspend everything from the waist, which is very wrong.
  • John Parish
    John: "Every woman also should wear union suits. They should wear tights over the suit. The waist should be made so it can support the skirt. Empire gowns are the best thing to wear. The skirt and the garments suspended from the waist are too much to allow the diaphragm to work."
  • John Parish
    John: He was apparently worried about the weight of the clothing constricting the abdomen and interfering with breathing. "The heart and lungs are forced up," he says, "and the viscera are pushed down so that backache results and floating kidneys.
  • John Parish
    John: Passive congestion of the uterus and bladder and hemorrhoids may result." He also talks about high heels and other types of things that women wear which he feels are interfering with their good health.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: Apparently the trousers suspended from the waist, though, didn't hurt the men.John: No, [laughter] no. I found another note that he made in his journal of notes that he took while in medical school. I'll read directly from it.
  • John Parish
    John: They were talking about children's diseases, diphtheria and small pox and measles, mumps, all those diseases. Says, we do not know how scarlet fever, measles, and whooping cough are, are carried from one person to another.
  • John Parish
    John: Then he says, mentions, that there should be quarantine for these diseases. In the old days, a placard was put up on the outside of the house, and when one of these infectious diseases was present, to warn people to stay away.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: I remember that from my own childhood. I also remember a pest house where people with communicable diseases were taken.John: Uh-hum. Exactly. This journal of my father's is now in my property and I will probably give it to the museum when I get through with it.
  • John Parish
    John: It has lists, lists all the diseases that are known, were known then and, of course, the same diseases are present now.
  • John Parish
    John: But the interesting thing, there is a complete–the professor in the medical school would give a complete picture of the disease and so the students would take down notes, and they had a very good grasp of the disease.
  • John Parish
    John: When it came to treatment, there was no treatment. And at the–in its description of many of the diseases, the professor discusses the whole thing very adequately. And finally he comes down, but he never admits there's any treatment.
  • John Parish
    John: Of course, there wasn't very much treatment in those days possible. The drugs they used were without much value, laudanum for pain, and quinine for, I don't know for what reason.
  • John Parish
    John: But lots of laxatives. If you couldn't think of anything to do for the disease, you administer a strong laxative hoping whatever is wrong would be eliminated.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: Did you go around with your father as a boy at all on house calls?John: I used to help him drive in the country.
  • John Parish
    John: Of course, the roads were very poor, mostly dirt roads and when it rained, then they became almost impassable and you needed someone to help you get out of the mud.
  • John Parish
    John: I remember my father was skilled in putting a set of chains on. He could put a set of chains on in the middle of a mud puddle. He could put chains on the in the winter in the snow drift. Nowadays, we think we have to jack up the wheels and put the chains on, but he could do it without doing that.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: Where did your father have his office?John: His office was upstairs over the Blare hardware–dry goods store, which is about in the middle of the 900 block on Broad Street, on the second floor.
  • John Parish
    John: In fact, it was a very common practice in those days for the doctors' offices to be upstairs. And so that you had a stress test [laughter] as you made your visit to the doctor. While climbing the stairs the doctor could listen to your heart and give an estimate of how good it was.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: If you were short of breath, he had some information already.John: Yeah. Another interesting thing is that one time there was a clinic of doctors here. I would say in the, probably in the twenties.
  • John Parish
    John: A group of doctors rented some rooms over Cunning–or Talbotts, or Cunningham's Drug Store was. And a collection of them, I think about six, got together and formed a clinic. And patients were seen by the various doctors depending on whose specialty or interest was indicated.
  • John Parish
    John: The clinic didn't succeed because none of the, most of the doctors, none of, I think, none of the doctors were specialists in any one thing.
  • John Parish
    John: Well, why refer to a colleague if you don't think he's any smarter than you are? So the clinic failed. For various reasons it failed anyway. So the Grinnell clinic is no more.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: Were there hospitals at that time?John: The–there were two hospitals in the early days, starting in 1916. One hospital was constructed and then the other one was constructed a year or so later. The two hospitals were rivals.
  • John Parish
    John: And the disadvantage was that all the equipment for the hospitals had to be duplicated. Whatever one hospital got, the other one wanted or would get. And so there was some friction there that was quite unnecessary, most of us thought.
  • John Parish
    John: But that's the way it was, and that persisted until the present new hospital was built, in about 1950. [Ed. note:The two hospitals merged in 1967. A new Grinnell General Hospital building was dedicated in February of 1968.]
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: I've been told that there's a large house on Sixth Avenue and Elm Street that once served as a hospital in Grinnell. Can you tell me anything about that?John: This was a large private residence that was converted to a hospital at the corner of Elm and Sixth.
  • John Parish
    John: This large hospital, this large house had a downstairs living room that was converted to a surgery, and operations such as done in those days were carried out in this room.
  • John Parish
    John: I've heard that the anesthetists after, say, a child has had his tonsils out, the anesthetist would pick up the child, carry it up a long flight of stairs to the second floor and be put to bed in a room up there.
  • John Parish
    John: You can imagine what happened to the child on the way up, it probably didn't breathe all the way from the bottom of the stairs to the top. But that was the hospital back in those days.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: Did that predate the St. Francis and Community Hospital?John: Yes, yes, it did. Along–the Community was built in 1916 or '17. And St. Francis was built shortly thereafter.
  • John Parish
    John: These two hospitals persisted until about 1950 [1967] when the two groups of trustees of the hospitals got together and decided that one hospital would be best. So that's why we now have a very, very nice hospital with facilities unheard of back in those days.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: That's very interesting to get the history of those hospitals. Can you, before we go on to other medical information, can you tell me anything about your mother and other members of your family?John: My mother went to Grinnell College also and later went on to Iowa City. She came from Marshalltown.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: She and your father met, I suppose, in Grinnell?John: And they must have met here. I don't really know the details of that.
  • John Parish
    John: So they settled here in 1903 and, in fact, in my present location. My wife and I are retired, we live underneath that home. I can look over my left shoulder and see a water tower.
  • John Parish
    John: I was born just west of the water tower on Main Street, and you can see the little house that I was born in. So, I've come full circle, I started there, lived there, now I'm back. Back again.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: I suppose that, now I want to ask too, that you have a sister, do you have other siblings? I know Margaret's also being interviewed.John: My brother Charles was younger.
  • John Parish
    John: Also, both of them, Margaret and Charles went to Grinnell College. Charles went into business, and he died in 1967. But he managed the, owned the baseball manufacturing company in Tullahoma, Tennessee. And this company is now run by his son, John.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: So you have a real Grinnell College history with your family, don't you?John: We have a history of four generations going here.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: Yes.John: And then perhaps there will be a fifth. The college has always meant a great deal to our family. And so we have supported it, of course, for many years.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: Did you want to be a doctor as you were growing up? Was that your ambition as you watched your father?John: I imagine that influenced my decision. I liked science, and so when I took the science courses in Grinnell, they seemed to point more and more towards a medical career.
  • John Parish
    John: So that seemed natural to go into medicine. At the time I went to medical school, which was in 1927, back in Boston there were about twenty Grinnell st–Grinnell College graduates in the graduate schools of Harvard.
  • John Parish
    John: In Harvard medical school, where I went, there were five Grinnell students. One of them was John Talbott. John Talbott was the son of the owner of the Talbott Drug Store, now where the Cunningham's now is.
  • John Parish
    John: John Talbott is a brilliant clinician. He finally became professor of medicine in Buffalo University medical school. And later on he became the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
  • John Parish
    John: Quite a prestigious thing. Later on he retired in Florida. But John grew up here and first went to the college, went to the medical school and became quite famous in his day.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: You graduated from medical school when?John: I graduated from Harvard in 1931. At that time in the graduate schools of Harvard, which was Business and Law and Medicine, there were a total of twenty Grinnell College graduates.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: That's really remarkable. Then you went to Johns Hopkins to do your internship, I believe.John: Yes, I did. Then I returned here and practiced with my father until his death, and continued to practice until 1976 in Grinnell.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: When did your father die?John: He died in 1946. We had practiced together for several years, and then I went to the Navy during World War II. And when I returned I took over his practice. He was in failing health, and he died soon thereafter.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: I see. Did you practice out of that office on Fifth Avenue and Broad Street?John: We had purchased a building called the Register Building. It's where the Grinnell Register paper was published by C. K. Needham.
  • John Parish
    John: And we purchased that–and, building and then our offices were there and we officed together until his death. And then I continued to have my offices there until I retired, which was in 1976.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: I see. I think you received an honor from Grinnell College a few years back. You mentioned your connection with Grinnell and didn't you receive an honorary –?John: Yes, I did. The first honor that I received was the–to carry the–
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: The mace, isn't it?John: The mace, or something. I carried that at the head of the procession at graduation ceremonies at the college. And then the next was an honorary doctorate, which came a few years later.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: Can you tell me–?John: –Doctor of sciences.Mary Lou: Doc–yes, that's right. Excuse me for interrupting you. Tell me a little about your time in the service, where you were, and how your career was furthered.
  • John Parish
    John: I was in the Navy, and my first duty was in San Francisco. I remained there for about six weeks, I think. It was interesting that Treasure Island, which lies at the foot of the bay bridge, became a naval facility and an embarkation point for sailors going out to the Pacific.
  • John Parish
    John: And I was in one of the hospitals that took care of the boys that came through there. Since the access from the bay bridge down to Treasure Island was by single little curved road, the Marine guards at the gate had complete control of the place.
  • John Parish
    John: The Treasure Island, as you probably remember, is not too many acres in extent, but lies out in the middle of the San Francisco Bay. When the sailors would be placed aboard ships, some of them were rather reluctant to go, so they would hide out in various places around the island.
  • John Parish
    John: Well, the Marine guard at the gate prevented them from getting over to San Francisco, so they had to stay. They would get in our chow lines, and eat with the, the food that the–for our patients and so they were undetected for a while.
  • John Parish
    John: But every two weeks, the Marine guard would sound a siren, all the police, the Marines, Navy Police would search the whole island. And they would turn up several hundred sailors, reluctant sailors. And of course they would be the first ones to be sent to the Pacific.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: I've never heard that before. That's very interesting. So you were there then in San Francisco for–?John: I had duty there for a while, and then I was sent to Australia and was a surgeon in the base hospital in Sydney, Australia.
  • John Parish
    John: An interesting thing happened there. One day a little Japanese submarine, one-man sub, two-man sub, entered the harbor. Sydney Harbor is a beautiful harbor, but the entrance is only a few hundred yards wide and they had a large chain that they put across the entrance.
  • John Parish
    John: And when a ship needed to come in, they would lower the chain. Well, the little Japanese mini-sub followed one of the ships in before the chain could be raised again and fired a torpedo at the cruiser Chicago.
  • John Parish
    John: And, but at that time, a ferry going across Sydney Harbor was struck by the torpedo and blew up. Well, it frightened the Australians so much that the whole town of Sydney immediately took cover.
  • John Parish
    John: How they did that was, they boarded up every–this is quite a large city even in those days–boarded up every store front. The people in the hills surrounding the harbor all put boards over their windows.
  • John Parish
    John: And of course that was the last action they ever had, so they spent the next four or five years boarded up, and nobody could see out [laughter]. They were so frightened of the Japanese.
  • John Parish
    John: We had a base hospital there and received casualties from the Guadalcanal and other operations that went on in the South Pacific. I made two or three trips to New Guinea to evacuate some casualties.
  • John Parish
    John: Pass–our ship passed behind the Great Barrier Reef. Of course, any ship that got behind the Reef could go for twelve-hundred miles without ever being in danger from submarine attacks, and so the ship's lights would be turned on as soon as we got behind the reef at night and we had no trouble traversing that long distances up to New Guinea.John: I then went to Finch-hafen, New Guinea, and spent some time in a base hospital there. But by that time the war had gone on to Hollandia and the Marianas, and so we didn't have very many casualties coming in there.
  • John Parish
    John: And the place was fairly secure, because, while the Japanese still controlled Rabaul and Truk, the planes didn't attack New Guinea very much after that. So I didn't really see any active combat.
  • John Parish
    John: We had a few scares, but that was all. Then I was, when I came back to San Francisco and worked at a base hospital there as a surgeon and was discharged after about four years in the service, in the Navy. Then I returned to Grinnell and took up medical practice in Grinnell again.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: Were you married while you were in the service?John: Yes.Mary Lou: When did you meet your wife and where?
  • John Parish
    John: Well, I met her in Grinnell, as she was a friend of Kate DeLong's. And I met her one day when Kate had her come over from Independence.
  • John Parish
    John: And we were married before I went into the Navy and she spent some time with me in San Francisco and then again after the–I came back from overseas, we spent some time in San Francisco. Very pleasant area to live.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: What was her maiden name?John: Her name was Elizabeth Cook. And she came from Independence, her father was an attorney over there.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter
    Mary Lou: I see. Can you tell me anything about any experiences, medical experiences during the war that might be of interest to us? When first you had access to antibiotics, for instance, and sulfa drugs and that sort of thing.
  • John Parish
    John: I had used sulfa drugs for a year or two prior to entering the Navy.
  • John Parish
    John: [Ed. note: At this point, the audio tape contains some information about medicine, including drugs such as sulfa and penicillin and ailments such as pernicious anemia. There is also a description of a direct transfusion of blood.]
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter
    Mary Lou: [pause for tape switch]
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: So when you came back then, you did use the antiobiotics a lot in practice. And I guess that really revolutionized medical care didn't it.John: Uh-huh. [Continues about medical advancements that occured during the war and when Parrish was in medical school]
  • John Parish & Mary Lou Clotfelter
    John: My–when I started in practice in 1933, with my father in Grinnell, the Depression was on. I've written down some of the charges made in those days.Mary Lou: I'd like very much to hear those.
  • John Parish
    John: A delivery was fifteen dollars. If you made a, had a, if the delivery took place in the country, you could add a few cents a mile for mileage to get to the case. Office calls were a dollar and a half. Appendectomy was $125.
  • John Parish
    John: When I started in practice, as the newest doctor, I got all the charity cases. And also, at that time, we had a director of relief because times were so hard that people had to have a place, and access to some relief.
  • John Parish
    John: Sam Reagan was the director of relief in those days, and he would authorize me to call on a patient or a patient to come and see me in my office. Same with the other doctors.
  • John Parish
    John: So Sam had control of the medical system for a while. And if he thought you were sick enough, why, he would authorize you to go to the doctor. And so–
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: There must have been a lot of people who found it difficult to pay for medical care during that period.John: Yes, indeed. My income my first years was mainly from taking care of relief cases authorized by Sam Reagan.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: Did deliveries almost always occur at home at the time you came back to practice?John: Well, a large percentage still took place in the home. And I can recall going out to see a woman in labor and finding after driving eight miles over a muddy road, that labor, or delivery was not imminent.
  • John Parish
    John: So that rather than drive back, and also at the woman's insistence that I stay, I would have to stay for several hours, over night or a whole day or so before delivery took place. I recall one instance in which I went out to the country home, and the woman was in labor alright, but not, not imminent delivery.
  • John Parish
    John: It looked like it'd be several hours. Rather than drive back, I decided to stay. Well, this was a small country home. There were other children in the family. I looked in the first bedroom to see if I could find a place to lie down for a while.
  • John Parish
    John: Looked in there, there was the husband and a couple of children. Looked in another room, there were two or three children. Here was a large bed where the woman in labor was lying, and she was having pains, and they would be every five or ten minutes, not very often.
  • John Parish
    John: I laid down beside the lady and she and I slept part of the night in the same bed. In the morning, during the night if she would be having a pain, I could reach over and feel how hard the pain was and decide nothing too much was going on yet.
  • John Parish
    John: But five in morning, which is usual time for babies to arrive anyway, she went into harder labor, and we delivered her baby. So that many, many children were born in country homes in those days.
  • John Parish
    John: And it was, with some reluctance, doctors–that people would go to the hospital, and finally doctors almost insisted. And of course nowadays home delivery is not possible.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: I'd be interested to know, there are so many cesarean sections done today in apparently critical situations during childbirth, do you feel that many women lost, died or lost babies at that time because they didn't have that access to the hospital?John: I think probably they did.
  • John Parish
    John: I don't recall any serious trouble. If you found that after arriving at the country home, and finding the woman in labor and without progress after the opening was completely dilated, often times you would take her to the hospital.
  • John Parish
    John: Or if labor seemed slow or otherwise you would take her, insist on having her go to the hospital so you weren't completely without skilled care in the hospital. You could go from the country home to the hospital. Back in the days before hospitals, there were of course, casualties, baby and mother, because there was no access to care.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: When did house calls stop?John: I'd say they were tapering off at the time I quit practice. In the, probably in the '60s and '70s it became almost impossible to get a doctor to come to the home.
  • John Parish
    John: I can understand, perhaps you can understand, that the doctors' limitations of treatment in the home are such that he didn't feel that it is worth it for the patient to be seen in the home. If he wasn't that ill he could come to the office; if he was really ill, then he might go to the hospital.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: I think we can still get house calls in some cases. When a patient is–John: Yes, there's no doubt places, times when doctors should be called to the home in an emergency case and then transportation to the hospital will follow.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: How, how was your family affected by the Depression? To what degree? Can you give us any instances of how your family coped with the Depression?John: My father was practicing at that time, and he had some remuneration in goods, like chickens and eggs instead of money.
  • John Parish
    John: But there wasn't much of that, that I recall. And when I came along during the Depression, the main relief that people got was in lower fees and, I mentioned, the office calls, a dollar, a dollar and a half.
  • John Parish
    John: But even then, in those days, in the Depression, some people went without care, I suppose, that really should have had it. I don't recall any deaths from that, but perhaps there were. But the Depression was quite a terrible thing and many people suffered from it.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: How did your–how did you feel or your family feel about Franklin Roosevelt and about the New Deal and the measures?John: Younger people felt that the New Deal was necessary.
  • John Parish
    John: My father was rabid about it against the New Deal, as many of the old generation were, and he was not a fan of Roosevelt's. So that I don't know whether he ever saw the necessity of the things that Roosevelt carried out, But we know that at time they were probably necessary.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: Would you have been at Grinnell College at the time that Harry Hopkins was here? I don't have very much idea.John: No, he was, he was ahead of me.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: I would assume so. So that you don't have any particular first-hand information about him?John: No.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: I understand that there were Jamaican immigrants here in Grinnell–I think working with corn detassling or something during the Depression or war period. Do you know anything about that?John: No, I don't.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: You didn't have any medical contact with them?John: No contact. In fact, I don't think we had them here. I remember my kids used to go out and detassle and pollinate.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: Yes, ours too. Do you have any other anecdotes about your medical practice that might be of interest to us, or just any other information of any kind?John: I can recall that the first gas anesthesia machine brought in to Grinnell.
  • John Parish
    John: We didn't have sophisticated machinery in the hospitals those days and so when the machine was brought in it was quite an advance: it was to administer ether and nitrous oxide at the same time.
  • John Parish
    John: I remember the first hospitals we had, they were both similar in design. In the community hospital, the third floor was the operating room suite, which was one room.
  • John Parish
    John: The accident was right next to it, right next to it was the nursery for newborn, right next to that was the X-ray machine. What a jumble! And, so in an emergency case that would be brought in, it would be brought in next to the operating room, and quite often the nurses circulating would be circulating in both places.
  • John Parish
    John: Very bad arrangement. Regional hospitals, for their day, were probably not so bad. And, but the contrast to the present day fine hospital that we have here now is a just, almost beyond belief. I credit Frank Crisbens for bringing the two hospitals together.
  • John Parish
    John: He went out and talked to Sister Stanislaus and they agreed a duplication of equipment was not good, that one hospital would probably be a good thing. And two hospitals got together and finally we have the present fine structure.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: Some of the nuns continued to work in the hospital then, didn't they, afterward?John: Yes, they did, and I don't think I've ever heard of a similar case. Maybe there are, but the nuns did work in the new general hospital.
  • John Parish & Mary Lou Clotfelter
    John: As that order of St. Francis seemed to taper off, why, fewer and fewer nurses were available, so finally none were in the hospital.Mary Lou: Did you or your father ever have any concerns about malpractice?
  • John Parish
    John: My father took out an insurance policy–this would be in 1903 or '04–and the coverage that he had would pay up to fifteen thousand dollars in damages to a patient. The premium was fifteen dollars. Now it's twenty to fifty to a hundred thousand dollars.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: How do you feel about what's happened in the area of malpractice?John: The doctors are quite fearful now of malpractice, so the cost of medical care has, has gone up because of that.
  • John Parish
    John: In other words, the doctor wants to cover himself, to protect himself from liability in case he missed something. So the numberless tests that are ordered, X-rays, CT scans, everything is done to ensure that you haven't overlooked anything.
  • John Parish
    John: How this will be taken care of in the future, I don't know. As medical expenses rise, the day will come when perhaps one cannot have the sophisticated tests that he thinks he deserves. And perhaps a board or a commission will say, well, we don't think this is indicated in your case and you'll just have to go without that.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: That's rather what's happening with health maintenance organizations, isn't it? They keep their costs down by limiting the number of tests that are done.John: Uh-huh. So what the future holds for that, I don't know.
  • John Parish
    John: But I can see the time when perhaps everyone won't be able to get the sophisticated medical care that they really need because it's too expensive.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: When antibiotics first became available here, was there a great overuse of them as there was in some places, using them for minor colds and minor infections?John: Yes, I think probably we are always torn between the desire to cure the patient and preventing him from becoming more ill by giving an antibiotic when probably it wasn't indicated.
  • John Parish
    John: I think probably the doctors are a little more careful nowadays about that. It was such a wonderful thing, that the first thing you'd reach for was an antibiotic in case of some infection. As we became more acquainted with the antibiotics and found their limitations we've come to use them more carefully.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: How did you treat a child who came into you, before the antibiotics, with a severe ear infection?John: The middle ear infection, if you were sure that it developed, was treated- the only thing you could do at that time would be to lance the ear. If the infection- and you hesitated to do that because of the anesthesia problem.
  • John Parish
    John: And violent objection of the child, so that some cases proceded, probably because the lancing wasn't done early, proceded in a mastoid infection. And so that in many cases, the mastoid operation followed an ear infection.
  • John Parish
    John: And, in many cases, of course, even if the ear had been lanced, then mastoid proceded. Mastoid- the mastoid operation, which the cells at the back of the ear, in the bone or sprayed out is almost unheard of these days because of the advent of anibiotics.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: We also have the problems of scarlett fever and endocarditist and a lot of other things that were very serious before that time. Rheumatic fever, I think children were often put to bed for long periods of time and they died.John: Uh-huh. They were.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: Do you think of other things you might tell about diseases that are no longer a problem were handled in the early days before some of the modern medical developments?John: I'll tell how some things were handled in the old days that didn't turn out very well. Back in the 1880s–
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter
    Mary Lou: [pause for tape switch]
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: This appears to be going alright. I guess we can try one more time. Now tell me about going out into the homes and procedures that didn't proceed according to plan.John: Well, I have a sort of a history about Iowa medicine and it has many stories of how medicine and surgery was practiced in the 1860s and up to 1900s.
  • John Parish
    John: This one story– Incident, was quite interesting to me because it showed how things happened in the old days. This is the story of a women who was delivered in her home. Country home. By a midwife.
  • John Parish
    John: And some of the things that happened afterwards. The delivery happened along alright. This was about 1860, the delivery went along alright and the midwife was treating the baby and taking care of the mother in hte usual way. But after the 3rd day, something went wrong.
  • John Parish
    John: The doctor in town got a call to come and see the baby. Something was wrong with the baby. Upon his arrival at the country home, the doctor was ushered in and the mother was in good shape but he looked over at the baby in the crib, he touched the baby and the baby went into a spasm: head thrown back, it's arms stuck out, legs stuck up...
  • John Parish
    John: And went into a spasm of some sort. The doctor examined, finally the convulsions stopped and the doctor examined the baby and found it had a fever. During the course of his examination he took the linen binder that was around the baby's middle, covering the navel.
  • John Parish
    John: And, in the old days, the midwife would iron a linen cloth and wrap it around the around the baby's navel. He then came upon the cord but there was some gray material on the umbilical cord. The stump, and so he asked the midwife "What's this gray material I see on here?"
  • John Parish
    John: And the midwife said "Oh those are cobwebs. The cord was bleeding a little bit so I went out into the back shed and got some cobwebs off the window and brought it back cause I know cobwebs will cause clotting the blood, so I put the cobwebs on the navel."
  • John Parish
    John: And of course that made the diagnosis easy because the baby had gotten lockjaw and when the doctor touched the baby and went into a spasm, it's head thrown back, it was a typical spasm of lockjaw. So what happened, probably a fly had gone from the barn and gone gotten caught in the cobweb. The fly carried the tetanus germ.
  • John Parish & Mary Lou Clotfelter
    John: And so the baby received the tetanus germs via the fly, through the navel, so the baby had lockjaw through the treatment of the cord.Mary Lou: Interesting story.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: Do you have other stories about those days that might be of interest to people.John: In this book that I have, there's several stories of the way patients were treated in those days to the best of the doctor's ability. But often, the results weren't very good.
  • John Parish
    John: Fractures were handled in a rather primitive way. We would, say now, a broken thigh bone was treated by placing the patient in his own bed, putting a pully at the end of the bed, attaching strips of tape along the sides of the leg...
  • John Parish
    John: To a rope that was attached to a pully and was placed on a hook and the leg was extended in that manner. I remember when I was a child, let's say six or eight, one of my friends fell out of a tree and broke his thigh.
  • John Parish
    John: He was taken to his room in his home and placed in this apparatus and everything went fairly well. I don't know whether he had any, I don't think he had even had any deformity or anything following.
  • John Parish
    John: The leg healed up. So in those days the broken bones–I recall that I jumped out of a swing, trying to jump as far as I can, like kids do, and I broke my right arm. So I went home, I was probably ten years old, so I went home.
  • John Parish
    John: My father was called. So he called Dr. Harris, Clint Harris, he was the anesthetist in those days. And Dr. Harris proceeded to administer ether and put me to sleep as I lay on our davenport. And my father manipulated my arm and set it and put it in a splint, and that was the way it was handled.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: That was the way it was taken care of.John: You didn't bother with hospitals.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: What did you do for people with whooping cough?John: I don't recall that we had any cases of whooping cough, perhaps, I don't know when the vaccine first came in. It must have, my father, of course, had many cases of whooping cough, and the steam kettle and–
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: My husband was very ill with whooping cough as a child, as a young boy. As you look back over your career, what medical advances, what things stand out in your mind as producing the greatest change?John: When I was in my first year in medical school, Banting and Best came out with their product for the treatment of diabetes, and it was called insulin.
  • John Parish
    John: Which could be administered by hyperdermic needle and would control the blood sugar in cases of a person having diabetes. This came out just as I was starting into medical school.
  • John Parish
    John: At the same time, about the same time it came out, [Vitamin] B-12 came out for the treatment of pernicious anemia. What other? The antibiotics came next.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: I was wondering what the date was for the insulin. I knew it had to be along in there somewhere.John: Uh-huh. Out here in Iowa, we were farther removed from the great centers, like Chicago, New York and Boston, great medical centers.
  • John Parish
    John: And so some of these things filtered out here a little bit later than they would have otherwise. I recall that giving the intravenous fluids, when I got here, was done by the nurses, of course, making up their own solutions.
  • John Parish
    John: But after we got the solutions then the thing was to give it continuously over a period of time. If you wanted to give it intravenous over a period of time you had to repeat the injections, and putting in the needle.
  • John Parish
    John: So you had a way of using a cannula and putting it in the vein and giving the fluids over a period of two or three days sometimes. That isn't necessary nowadays, because the equipment is such that you can give the fluids without too much discomfort to the patient.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: This must have a big improvement in terms of, you know, childhood mortality because children often became dehydrated, didn't they, and treatment of children is–John: I remember what advance we thought it was when the first oxygen tent came to our hospital.
  • John Parish
    John: The oxygen was released inside the tent. And of course the patient being in the tent would breathe the enriched air with oxygen added. This method made it very hard to care for the patient, because the nurse had to disrupt all this tent apparatus every time she waited on the patient.
  • John Parish
    John: So, while it seemed like quite an advance at the time, administering the oxygen by a nasalcatheter or some other method was much better and the tent went out of fashion, but I can remember what a stir it made in the town when we said we have an oxygen tent in our hospital.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: That was a big piece of news. The ability the ability to administer the medications through the intravenous tubes also is a big advance over the–John: A big advance over the rectal injection of nutrients fluids, which didn't work very well, or the subpectral route, where you give the needle in the side of the chest.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: Yes, and also the ability to give out tranquilizers and pain medications also, is very, very fine.John: I can recall that in Boston, we had a case of a little child who was burned badly, and what a great thing we thought it was.
  • John Parish
    John: Because we could put this intravenous line in and this one stayed open, and was a record, I guess. The intravenous fluids were administered through this one vein for a period of two weeks while the child recovered from its burns.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: Those burns are very difficult things to treat, aren't they?John: They certainly are.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter
    Mary Lou: They certainly are. What attitudes, what changes in attitudes have patients toward their doctors have you seen over the years? Do you, do you think there's been a significant change in the way people regarded their doctor, from the time your father was practicing to the present?
  • John Parish
    John: I think that with the advent of all the new drugs and the new procedures that are possible for people, the doctor is not quite so much on the spot as he was in the early days. I think the early doctors had to have a strong personality because he knew the outcome was going to be unfavorable in many cases.
  • John Parish
    John: And he had to will that patient to keep on going no matter what the odds were and put on a cheerful countenance. And probably the old time doctors were better at this than nowadays. The first thing we do is frown and reach for a drug or a pill of some kind.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: And he didn't have those.John: He didn't have anything, so he had to rely on his personality and ability to encourage the patient to keep fighting.
  • John Parish
    John: And, of course, the doctor knew secretly that he wasn't doing very much, but he would give some drug, nostrum of some sort, to the patient, and say, "Now only take six drops of this"–had to be innocuous liquid of some sort–
  • John Parish & Mary Lou Clotfelter
    John: "Take only six drops over three hours." So the patient would be so busy watching and following orders, that maybe he would get well on his own.Mary Lou: Sort of a magical approach to practice.
  • John Parish
    John: Yeah. Yeah. I have a book written by Dr. Osler who was a famous physician from England, and then he practiced in Baltimore. But his book gives all the tricks of the trade. And he–the treatment wasn't always successful, but he did the best he could, I suppose.
  • John Parish
    John: One thing he, I remember, had a list of cases of appendicitis. Appendicitis was a dread disease, of course, because the outcome was quite often unfavorable and percentages perhaps were a little bit with you, but it was a fatal disease in many, many cases.
  • John Parish
    John: [Ed. note: Further explanation of Osler's study on the tape]
  • John Parish
    John: His conclusion was, the best thing for appendicitis since only about seventy out of the three hundred cases that he had died, he concluded that probably the best treatment was not to operate, to carry the patient along, and outcome would be favorable in most cases.
  • John Parish
    John: Of course, now, since Reginald Fitz of Boston proved that operating early was the treatment, why, Dr. Osler's method of treatment went out of date pretty fast.
  • John Parish
    John: But it's interesting to know that a man with his reputation would conclude that operation was not justified. And it was probably true at that time, because the risks of the operation and anesthesia and everything together, your chances were better to not do anything.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: When, in those days, when an appendix ruptured, I suppose the outlook was pretty grim, wasn't it, for the patient?John: Yes, [Ed. note: Explanation of dangers, then more treatments of such things as hernias]
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: Did any of your daughters ever express any interest in following in your footsteps and studying medicine? Would you have wanted them to?John: My daughter Jane worked for a doctor in Iowa City for a time, and afterward she told me she might have studied medicine and would have been happy at it.
  • John Parish & Mary Lou Clotfelter
    John: I don't know how that would have turned out. She–the doctor that she worked for didn't have a particular pleasing personality. Perhaps that discouraged her from going on. The other two did not express an interest in medicine.Mary Lou: Let's stop for a moment.
  • John Parish
    John: In my father's day, which is early 1900s, transportation was a problem for the doctor because he had to call on the patient. And in order to get to a patient in the country, my father would go across the street from his office and rent a livery, a team and a buggy.
  • John Parish
    John: This livery stable was now where the present Post office is. He would rent this team and buggy and take his little medical bag and head for the country, and after a long trip, would arrive at the scene and do what he could with his, with the few drugs that he had at hand.
  • John Parish
    John: Dr. Sommers, an early Grinnell doctor, had the first car in Grinnell. This was a little two cylinder car, which often we would see as we pass by in later years. It was still stored in a barn in back of the place where we could call now, the college calls the White House. [Ed. note: College administration office building on Park Street]
  • John Parish
    John: But there was a garage back there in which he kept his little car. This little two cylinder car would putt-putt around town and scare all the horses and cause quite a sensation. My father got his first car in about 1906 or '08.
  • John Parish
    John: And as I recall, I wasn't very old, of course, at that time, it had buggy wheels instead of regular wheels and tires, and a small two cylinder motor which cranked under the seat on the side. He progressed into the early cars, which, of course, were open cars.
  • John Parish
    John: There weren't any sedans in the early days. And in bad weather he had to put on side curtains. Side curtains were kept up under the top and in inclement weather they would be buttoned up on the inside of the car and make it somewhat weatherproof.
  • John Parish
    John: I can recall the first enclosed car that my father had. It was a touring car upon which was placed a hard top. This hard top was made out of wood with glass inserts and would be placed on the body of your car and held on with bolts and screws.
  • John Parish
    John: Well, you can imagine, since the roads in those days were gravel or usually dirt, some gravel, but very bumpy, how that thing would rattle as you would go along. So his car was–could hardly talk in the car as he drove along on the country roads.
  • John Parish
    John: Then came the–you can imagine what happened to a person who was in an accident in one of those cars. You'd be impaled by lots of pieces of sharp timber.
  • John Parish
    John: So the hard top, steel top car came along, and that was quite a boon to the doctors of the day, because then they could make their calls in the country enclosed. My first car, when I started in practice in 1933, was a second-hand Ford Model A with a cloth top.
  • John Parish
    John: No, it wasn't enclosed, you had to put on side curtains. It had no heater as I recall. And so some of the first money that I earned, I bought a new car, which was an enclosed steel body, enclosed, and that was the ultimate in luxury, I thought.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: How far afield did you go making house calls? Did you go out of the county here or was it pretty much–?John: My father had a friend in Brooklyn and this friend would often call him down there to see cases.
  • John Parish
    John: And so that my father also acted as a consultant for the two doctors who were in Deep River. And Deep River is a town about fifteen to twenty miles away. And the doctors would call my father down.
  • John Parish
    John: And I can recall, he would pack up his portable operating table, put it in the trunk and take a nurse along and packs of sterilized instruments and gauze and so forth and go down and operate in the home of a case in Deep River.
  • John Parish
    John: Because these doctors for some reason didn't like to come to the hospital. So he would do occasionally an operation in the country.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: So he did a lot of surgery and apparently you did too.John: We did, I'd say, just a small to moderate to small amount of surgery in those days.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: Did you ever consider doing anything other than family practice? Was that–?John: Although I went to school in the East and saw how medicine was practiced in the large city, my obligation was to return–repay my father for his investment in me and medical school and so forth.
  • John Parish
    John: And then, just the fact that to practice with your dad was not too bad. So I didn't consider going to other places, as long as the opportunity was here and the need was here, and so I returned and practiced with him for many years before his death.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: And you felt, you were happy with the way you spent your career, I assume.John: Yes, I was satisfied. Grinnell is a rather unusual place, with the college here. It made a very desirable place to practice and it still is. Is it on now?
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: It's on now. You're ready to go.John: Oh. In my days of practice, we didn't have the CT scan or the Magnetic Resonance Imager.
  • John Parish
    John: So that I didn't have any opportunity to become acquainted with them. One of the most recent things that shows quite great, great promise is the use of ultrasound.
  • John Parish
    John: The ultrasound has the advantage of obtaining a picture of the diseases in a persons body without invasion or injection of fluids or exposure to harmful radiation. So that the use of the ultrasound now is becoming very much increased, which is a good thing, because apparently it's safe.
  • John Parish
    John: And it's quite effective in diagnosing many problems, so it's quite an advance. The hospital here has such apparatus and is increasing it's supply of the machines that are used for diagnosis of various disease.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: It sounds as if you continue to read your medical journals in your retirement, keep up with what's going on. Is that correct?John: Yes, I do.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter
    Mary Lou: How would you feel now about starting, if you were a young man now, young woman just getting ready to start at medical school, how would you view starting a career in medicine now as compared with when you started? What do you see as the advantages now, and what do you see as some of the disadvantages, perhaps?
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter
    Mary Lou: [pause for tape switch]
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter
    Mary Lou: Dr. Parish, for this time, and I want to thank you, Dr. Parish for cooperating with this oral history project. Thank you very much. [tape stops and starts again]
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: It is now the afternoon of February 11th and we're resuming the interview with Dr. Parish.John: I'm going to read from Dr. Osler's book on the treatment of pneumonia back in the days when they had no antibiotics, very little else that we think would do for pneumonia, that the doctor in those days could do for pneumonia.
  • John Parish
    John: But here is what Dr. Osler says about the treatment of pneumonia. [Ed. note: Description directly from book and other mucocele descriptions including tuberculosis treatment. And describes donating blood for brain research]
  • John Parish & Mary Lou Clotfelter
    John: I bought a home.Mary Lou: Yes, well, I was thinking, you told us over on Broad Street, didn't you, 1120 Broad, was where you grew up?
  • John Parish
    John: Yes. As a young boy, I grew on Broad Street just north of Sixth Avenue and I can well recall the day that the paving crew came along. Our previous dirt street all of a sudden was covered with beautiful new pavement and we were up out of the mud.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: That must have been a pleasant improvement.John: I remember, before the street was paved, and some of the cars were just starting to appear on the streets, two ladies that lived down a few houses bought a car.
  • John Parish
    John: And one day they, they weren't too sure of how to drive it. Anyway, my mother was standing out along side of another car parked in front of our house and as she leaned back, the sisters drove too close and knocked her down. And she was knocked unconscious.
  • John Parish
    John: She was brought into our house, taken directly into our house and put to bed were she stayed for two weeks to get over her concussion. Nothing happened, so I guess it wasn't a serious case and it was probably a good thing that the road was not paved because she'd have received a harder blow if it had.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: Yes. If the car had been able to move faster, she might have been worse injured.John: Yeah. When I first came back to practice, my father's office was on Broad Street, on the second floor.
  • John Parish
    John: And I took a little back office, one or two, two rooms and with only one window for the whole works and set up practice there. The patients were few and far between at first. My father gave me a hundred dollars to start up in practice, with which I bought some equipment and so forth.
  • John Parish
    John: And I noticed I still have the check stub from that first check book and I got down to three dollars and a half before any money started to come in. I thought that was getting pretty close. [laughter]
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: That was getting a little close alright.John: Now I also remember that J. P. Ryan, who was a professor at Grinnell College, who taught speech and what else?
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: That's what I know about.John: Anyway, he taught speech. Appeared at my door one day, and so I ushered him in and asked him what his trouble was. He says, well, he had a lump on his back.
  • John Parish
    John: So he proceeded to take off his shirt and I looked at his back and there was a small lump, which was innocuous, It was probably a little lipoma or something innocuous. So, I said that's what it was and so he put his shirt back on, said "Thank you," and went out, and paid the bill.
  • John Parish
    John: I didn't realize until many years afterward that all he was doing was trying to encourage me in my work. He wasn't worried about that little lump at all. All he was doing was giving me a little business and send me on my way. I'm sure that's what happened.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: Isn't that interesting. That's very interesting. Well, if the young doctor in town needed some encouragement.John: Yeah. My father did all his own laboratory work, blood counts and urine analysis.
  • John Parish
    John: And I remember that the centrifuge we used to spin down the urine to examine the sediment was hand-cranked. And I think that I persuaded him that it would probably be better to get a centrifuge run by electricity.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: I have seen a hand-cranked centrifuge, but I've–John: Perhaps, Mrs. Clotfelter wanted me to tell about Dr. Fishbine.
  • John Parish
    John: Dr. Fishbine was an editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, which is the official journal of the AMA, and he was editor for many years. When the new hospital for Grinnell was projected.
  • John Parish
    John: It was thought that it might be a good idea to have Dr. Fishbine to come out and stir up some enthusiasm for the hospital and help people to realize we needed one and help in the fund raising perhaps. So Dr. Fishbine came out to Grinnell.
  • John Parish
    John: This was in the late, this was in about 1950 [Ed. note: probably 1967], I think. Dr. Fishbine appeared, but he came in early, it was practically a whole day. So I proceeded to show him about the town, show him Grinnell.
  • John Parish
    John: In our tour, we went up to Grinnell College and here was the new library, which had just been completed, and beautiful structure with lots of glass. So we went through the library. And then we visited other places.
  • John Parish
    John: But that evening, when he gave his fund raising talk, he said, "In case–I'd like to tell the audience and the doctors here, in case anything happens and I become ill, don't take me out here to the local hospital, but take me to the new library at the college." That made a hit.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: That encouraged people to get their billfolds out, I guess. [laughter]John: So, soon thereafter, funds were raised and the new hospital, the new Grinnell General Hospital was built. Lets see, what else?
  • John Parish
    John: The present-day hospital now has a staff of twenty people. I can remember back in the days when the total number of doctors, the highest number in the early days was probably eight or ten when I was first came back to Grinnell.
  • John Parish
    John: There was one specialist. Dr. Clint Harris for a time was the nose and throat specialist. And, but the rest of the doctors were general practitioners. At the present time, the staff of the hospital has specialists in nearly every type of medicine.
  • John Parish
    John: Let's see. Perhaps I might conclude this interview with a conclusion that I wrote to an essay about practice, medical practice, ninety year overview, that I wrote some time ago.
  • John Parish
    John: This is the final paragraph: "Persons born in this country in 1990 can expect to live an average of 75 years. This is a result of better medical care, safer food and water, sanitary sewers, aseptic surgery, antibiotics, and sophisticated diagnostic equipment.
  • John Parish
    John: The new hazards that mankind faces are overpopulation, contamination of the environment by toxic fumes, radiation, contamination of drinking water by pesticides and herbicides, death or injury by motor vehicles or airplanes, as well as death or injury by drugs and alcohol."
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: Thank you very much. Dr. Parish, just give me a little bit of information on how you regard the Depression when you look back on it now.John: As I recall, my early years of practice, we had very little in the way of resources. Particularly I didn't, because I was just starting out in practice.
  • John Parish
    John: And so everybody worked hard and didn't worry too much about it. The–Sam Reagan took care of you, of course, if you were ill and weren't able to afford a doctor. He would issue you a writ of some kind and you'd present it to the doctor and get treated.
  • John Parish
    John: As I recall everybody got something to eat and had some shelter. Of course, we were lucky in living in Grinnell, we looked after each other here. And so I might have a different view if I lived in a city.
  • John Parish
    John: I don't remember when I was studying in Boston and Baltimore that there were any great amount of troubles there during the Depression.
  • John Parish
    John: There probably were, and we used to in Hopkins Hospital, we used to treat many people in the accident room who apparently weren't able to afford a private doctor. But nobody made too much of it.
  • John Parish
    John: The–out here in Iowa and Grinnell, the Depression, I don't believe has had the impact that the present one does. People have become so used to having everything that when you cut them off it, you don't quite know how to behave. Back in those days, when we didn't have so much, we weren't used to it, perhaps is easier to do without.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: This program that you have mentioned a couple of times, the relief program for people, here at that time, was that a federal program that was administered and what was, do you know what agency that was or –?John: No, I don't know the exact political set up of that. But, Sam Reagan was appointed as the director of relief, so that was the way it was handled.
  • Mary Lou Clotfelter & John Parish
    Mary Lou: That was the way it was handled. Thank you very much, Dr. Parish. We've really enjoyed getting this information from you, and I'm sure it will be beneficial to a lot of people in the future. Thank you very much.John: Thank you for asking me.Mary Lou: You bet.
The son of Dr. O.F. and Laura Parish, John was born September 23, 1904. After graduating from Grinnell College in 1927, he studied medicine at Harvard and interned at Johns Hopkins. He served in the Navy during World War II. He and his wife, Elizabeth, had three daughters.