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OH 1333
Roberta Pullen
Tape I, side A
Introduction
The following is an interview with Roberta Pullen for the "Medicine, Health Care, and Nursing In
Montana" oral history project for the Montana Historical Society. During the interview Roberta Pullen
will discuss her father, Doctor Fred Taylor, one of the first practicing Osteopaths in Lewistown and
Central Montana and a prominent figure in the development of professional Osteopathy in the United
States; in addition, she describes her nurse's training at John Hopkins University during the 1940s as well
as her later career experiences. The interview was conducted in the living room of her home at 210
West Boulevard in Lewistown, Montana on June 19, 1990 beginning at approximately 10:30 a.m. The
interviewer is John Terreo.
Terreo: Mrs. Pullen can you tell me a little about yourself? When and where were you born?
Pullen: I was born in 1921 at the Bryce Hospital in Lewistown, Montana. It is an apartment house now
on Pine Street. I was born there because I arrived a little early. I was supposed to have been born in
Livingston [Montana]. Mother was to go the next week on the train because there in Livingston was a
doctor who was an M.D. and D.O. [Medical Doctor and Doctor of Osteopathy]. He was the only one I
know of in Montana at that time. He practiced under his M.D. but he also did manipulation and
practiced osteopathy. But that was just part of his medical service to his patients.
Terreo: What was his name?
Pullen: Townsend. I don't remember his first name. He was an old friend of my father. Apparently after
he got his osteopathic degree he decided he could do more if he had a medical degree too. In those days
osteopaths weren't allowed to do surgery although they were trained to. My father in his state boards
[examination] got ninety-eight [per cent] in the surgical part of it. Dad had no interest in surgery. In fact
he was one of those people who couldn't stand blood. He warned me when I went into nurses' training
that the first time I saw surgery I would probably faint.
Terreo: Tell a bit about your parents. Your father was probably the first osteopath in this area of the
state. What was his name?
Pullen: He was Fred Taylor. Lots of people gave him Frederick and it sounded dignified. They even gave
him "S" as a middle initial but his name was Fred Taylor. I guess his folks were kind of surprised that he
arrived. He was twenty-two years younger than his brother. I guess they named him whatever occurred
to them. There is no other Fred in the family. He was an Iowa farm boy. The farm had been in the family
- at that time - he was born in 1882 - at that time the farm had been the family for two generations.
They were pioneers in Iowa coming from Indiana. I never did know what illness he had. There was a
local osteopath who saved his life. Doctor Etter was his name. Dad determined then he would be an
osteopath and no more of this farming stuff. He didn't like husking corn in October and some of the hard
things that farmers had to do. But he loved horses and was very good with them. So he earned his way
to the college of osteopathy by buying mavericks [unbranded or unclaimed horses] from the west in
Omaha [Nebraska] and breaking them to teams. He was very careful about matching the horses. He
broke them to teams for buggies and some for riding. I ran into a woman when I was at the University of
Iowa whose husband had been the stockyard operator in Omaha whom dad had bought his horses from.
It was kind of surprising because I was dying to get away from here where people knew my father,
where I had to behave and get to Iowa were I could be free. I found out that I had cousins in every class
and here was this house mother at this sorority house who knew my father. My mother was also an
Iowan. Her mother and father were also born in Iowa. There were Scottish pioneers by way of Ohio. My
Object Description
| Rating | |
| Title | Pullen, Roberta Interview |
| Description | An interview with Roberta Pullen for the “Medicine, Health Care and Nursing in Montana” oral history project for the Montana Historical Society. During the interview Roberta Pullen will discuss her father, Dr. Fred Taylor, one of the first practicing osteopaths in Lewistown and Central Montana and a prominent figure in the development of professional Osteopathy in the United States; in addition, she describes her nurse’s training at Johns Hopkins University during the 1940’s as well as her later career experiences. The interview was conducted in the living room of her home at 210 W. Boulevard in Lewistown, Montana, on June 19, 1990, beginning at approximately 10:30. The interviewee is John Terreo. |
| Creator | John Terreo. Medicine, Health Care and Nursing in Montana Oral History Project. |
| Genre | documents |
| Type | Text |
| Date Original | 1990-06-19 |
| Subject (keyword) | Nurses; |
| Rights Management | Copyright restrictions may apply. |
| Contributing Institution | Lewistown Public Library, Lewistown, Montana |
| Digital Format | application/pdf |
| Physical format | |
| Digitization Specifications | Canon MX310 300dpi |
| Full text of this item | OH 1333 Roberta Pullen Tape I, side A Introduction The following is an interview with Roberta Pullen for the "Medicine, Health Care, and Nursing In Montana" oral history project for the Montana Historical Society. During the interview Roberta Pullen will discuss her father, Doctor Fred Taylor, one of the first practicing Osteopaths in Lewistown and Central Montana and a prominent figure in the development of professional Osteopathy in the United States; in addition, she describes her nurse's training at John Hopkins University during the 1940s as well as her later career experiences. The interview was conducted in the living room of her home at 210 West Boulevard in Lewistown, Montana on June 19, 1990 beginning at approximately 10:30 a.m. The interviewer is John Terreo. Terreo: Mrs. Pullen can you tell me a little about yourself? When and where were you born? Pullen: I was born in 1921 at the Bryce Hospital in Lewistown, Montana. It is an apartment house now on Pine Street. I was born there because I arrived a little early. I was supposed to have been born in Livingston [Montana]. Mother was to go the next week on the train because there in Livingston was a doctor who was an M.D. and D.O. [Medical Doctor and Doctor of Osteopathy]. He was the only one I know of in Montana at that time. He practiced under his M.D. but he also did manipulation and practiced osteopathy. But that was just part of his medical service to his patients. Terreo: What was his name? Pullen: Townsend. I don't remember his first name. He was an old friend of my father. Apparently after he got his osteopathic degree he decided he could do more if he had a medical degree too. In those days osteopaths weren't allowed to do surgery although they were trained to. My father in his state boards [examination] got ninety-eight [per cent] in the surgical part of it. Dad had no interest in surgery. In fact he was one of those people who couldn't stand blood. He warned me when I went into nurses' training that the first time I saw surgery I would probably faint. Terreo: Tell a bit about your parents. Your father was probably the first osteopath in this area of the state. What was his name? Pullen: He was Fred Taylor. Lots of people gave him Frederick and it sounded dignified. They even gave him "S" as a middle initial but his name was Fred Taylor. I guess his folks were kind of surprised that he arrived. He was twenty-two years younger than his brother. I guess they named him whatever occurred to them. There is no other Fred in the family. He was an Iowa farm boy. The farm had been in the family - at that time - he was born in 1882 - at that time the farm had been the family for two generations. They were pioneers in Iowa coming from Indiana. I never did know what illness he had. There was a local osteopath who saved his life. Doctor Etter was his name. Dad determined then he would be an osteopath and no more of this farming stuff. He didn't like husking corn in October and some of the hard things that farmers had to do. But he loved horses and was very good with them. So he earned his way to the college of osteopathy by buying mavericks [unbranded or unclaimed horses] from the west in Omaha [Nebraska] and breaking them to teams. He was very careful about matching the horses. He broke them to teams for buggies and some for riding. I ran into a woman when I was at the University of Iowa whose husband had been the stockyard operator in Omaha whom dad had bought his horses from. It was kind of surprising because I was dying to get away from here where people knew my father, where I had to behave and get to Iowa were I could be free. I found out that I had cousins in every class and here was this house mother at this sorority house who knew my father. My mother was also an Iowan. Her mother and father were also born in Iowa. There were Scottish pioneers by way of Ohio. My mother was a graduate of Iowa State Teachers College and taught primary school classes in Washington. Iowa and that's where my mother and father met. After my father graduated from the college of Osteopathy in Kirksville (Missouri) in 1913 he practiced for one year in Paris, Missouri. The money wasn't very good. He walked to call on his patients out in the country. It was a rural area. He walked because he couldn't afford a horse. He always planned on Sundays to get to the house with the best food about meal time so he would have one meal a week he could count on as being filling. While he was a student in Kirksville he was to ride the rods on the Milwaukee train up to Washington, Iowa to get home for holidays and weekends. One time he said he lost his umbrella and couldn't decide whether to get off the train and get his umbrella and walk all the rest of the way or stay on the rod and forget his umbrella. He forgot the umbrella. Dad decided that the west was probably the place to establish a practice. He had this brother twenty-two years older than he who had a ranch in Lander, Wyoming and dad thought maybe this would be a good place to practice. He stopped off to see his brother and couldn't believe people could live that way. So, he moved on to Bozeman. In Bozeman he was picking peas for needed cash when he heard how beautiful central Montana was - the Judith Basin. So he decided to give it a look over and he fell in love with it. He heard that Cat Creek was booming and gold mining was it its full work; the cattle and sheep were fat and the grain was higher than the fence; the grasses were thick and he thought this was the most beautiful place he had ever seen and so he hung out his shingle. He still didn't have much money so he slept on his treatment table. His office was next to Doctor Pleasant's. Thanks to Doctor Pleasants, he occasionally had a square meal at the Pleasant's home. Doctor Pleasants granddaughter was Barbara Lehman, my very best friend all through school in my class. Soon mother came out. Dad sent her engagement ring, by way of Charlie Matill to Iowa. Charlie Matill was principal of the Hobson (Montana) High School. He had known mother at teacher's college in Iowa. Charlie took the engagement ring back to Iowa. Mother came out during the Christmas holiday in 1916 to see if she wanted to live here. She stayed at the Bright Hotel. On the way, since it was December she froze her nose on the train. She got off - there was little round fire at the end of the train and her seat was not all that close. She got off to go into the station and froze her nose in Mandan (North Dakota). They sent her to a beauty operator to have her nose thawed out. She (the beauty operator) rubbed it with bear grease. My mother thought that bear grease was such good stuff we had bear grease - the same original bear grease that we put on things that needed TLC (tender loving care). I can still remember the aroma of that bear grease. It was kind of greenish yellow or who made it or what it was really for this jar of bear grease. Terreo: Was the bear grease you've described commercially available in stores at that time? Pullen: It apparently was because this was a professionally jarred substance. It had a label on it. I never paid any attention. I knew it was bear grease. I didn't read it. It was for when I froze my thumbs and that sort of thing. We lived in Judith Place and walking to school sometimes you go chilled going across the mill ditch. The ole ice and steam going up. Then the rest of the way to school - my mother thought it was because she had a scarf around her face that her face got frozen - nipped. So I never had a scarf on. I walked with my ears and nose and chin hanging out in the cold air. I got nipped a few times. I lost my mittens when I was in high school and my mother said you are old enough not to lose your mittens. You can't have any more. So I didn't have any more and I froze my thumbs one time. It was that lovely white cream color that frozen skin gets to be. During the depression I was lucky to have a pair of mittens. If I lost them it was my tough luck. Terreo: Do you know what year your dad came to Lewistown? Pullen: He came in 1914. I have known that always but I have never really known when. I am still not awfully sure. There is a November fourth ad (advertisement) in the Democrat News for 1914 that he was opening his practice and he was open in November of 1914. He was in Polk's Directory. I have no idea what month it was except obViously they hadn't done the harvest yet. So it must have been July or early August that he came. Terreo: What was the attitude of people in the community toward your dad when he first came to Lewistown? Was there any understanding of the function of an osteopath? Were the attitudes of physicians in the area basically favorable or unfavorable toward him? Pullen: Of course in those days M.D.s (Medical Doctors) could not believe that osteopaths were worthwhile. Also, I think they felt threatened by and osteopath. Actually surgery was the only thing they had to offer that an osteopath didn't. Osteopaths were trained in surgery but as I said they couldn't practice surgery in Montana. For years they had a lobbyist in Helena trying to allow them to practice surgery. They do practice in Montana now as M.D.s. They even use M.D. instead of D.O. (Doctor of Osteopathy) if they want to. They're taught the same things M.D.s are only with emphasis on muscular structure. In those days it was pretty tough to beat the skepticism of the M.D.s and the rumors they spread. The people took a dim view of this new idea. An osteopath was sort of the doctor of last resort. After the medical man had decided he couldn't treat them people would come desperately to the osteopath to see if there was something he could do. Dad was one of those really lucky people who was good at diagnosis whether he could treat the patient or not he recognized a lot of conditions that were passed by other physicians. Doctor (William) Osler used to be one of those observers. The whole atmosphere, the carriage of the patient and how they responded to questions told these observers more than the examinations themselves. After a while the medical men in Lewistown got to trusting my father because he didn't try to treat things he couldn't treat. He referred his patients to medical doctors when he thought that was where they (the patients) ought to be treated. He was not against medicine. He went to medical people himself when he had medical problems. He went to an osteopath in Miles City when he had osteopathic problems. He had a lot of friends and a lot of detractors. It's real exciting to me right now to hear, "My son wouldn't be alive if it weren't for your father" or, "My niece used to stop at your father's office every time she came to town to thank him for saving her life." That is really exciting to me and it was to him in his older years to have people acknowledge that he had worked hard to save their lives. Until World War II the medical profession hardly had anything besides aspirin to treat a lot of things with. We only had sulfur drugs during World War Two and then we got penicillin. Then all of a sudden all kinds of medications came out. A lot of tests came out. I think maybe they misdiagnosis now days because there are so many tests with confusing results. And they don't bother to take histories and observe or listen to what their patients are saying. That is just my observation. Some of my father's best friends were M.D.'s. As I said he was finally respected by them. There were one or two who still tried to make it tough for him. But I think they felt threatened. Dad said the very best M.D. in town as far as preparation was concerned was a Dr. Porter who was somewhat an orthopedic man. He did some real delicate things with burns. Skin grafts that were really quite good. Then there was Dr. (Fred) Attix who had Attix Clinic. Most of his experience came from the army. He did a lot of surgery. Doctors (Arter) Deal and (John) Dunn were very early (Babbie and Billie Deal's father) Dr. Dunn came about the same time Doctor Dill did. They were M.D.s. There was a little cottage hospital here in the thirties (1930s) that was run by several osteopaths who were interested in hospitalizing patients and they'd dispense some medications. They did tonsillectomies. I don't know what other kind of surgery because dad didn't have patients there. However, he gave ether a time or two for them. One time dad and Dr. Steven Curren were trying to unlock someone's jaw. It had gotten blocked open. They figured they couldn't do it by manipulation. It just wouldn't move. They decided if they could get the patient to relax they could get this jaw back in place. So they put the patient to sleep. Dad gave the patient the ether. Steve did the manipulation and they did get the jaw closed. That must have been some wide open mouth. Dad had a lot of broken bone patients, especially in the era of no x-ray here in town. The first xray here was at St. Joseph's Hospital and was operated by a Martha Hruska who was an R.N. (Registered Nurse). Dad had this sense of touch that allowed him to set a lot of broken bones without pictures. They have since been x-rayed and found to be very well-knit. Julia Jackson was always getting bucked off she's now Julia Schneider. She's and old time horse woman. She and her sisters used to ride bucking horses and they were always breaking collarbones. My mother bought her canning salt in cloth bags and dad would fill those bags with sand to hold the arms out on those girls. Instead of putting them on some very uncomfortable metal frames you could cast the patient onto which held the arm out so far and especially on these little girls. They weren't so uncomfortable. I sprained my ankle one time and dad wasn't going to have any hypochondriacs in has family. Dora Dykins was our friend, neighbor, and P.E. (Physical Education) teacher. I hopped around the junior high for a couple of days. I was in agony! My foot was just really dangling down there. Dad took me to school and come and got me. But that was the only concession he would make. So finally Dora said, "If you don't cast her ankle, I'll take her to the clinic." So he put a case on it and it was quite a relief! But then since I had the cast on I had to use crutches. As long as I had crutches there was no need for a ride home from school. I could go home on my crutches like everybody else who wore crutches. He wasn't home one time when I cut my thumb. I finally fainted from lack of blood I guess. I didn't want my mother to know I had done it. I was letting it bleed into the wash basin. When she heard the dill "thud" (noise of her unconscious body hitting the floor) he was out making his evening calls. His bills were kind of interesting. He always charged $2.50 for an office calls and $5.00 for house call. He had a whole lot of $5.00 and $2.50 gold pieces in his safe when Roosevelt called in the gold during the bank holiday. At the beginning of World War Two, Roosevelt needed money and he asked for all this gold people had to be turned in - gold jewelry, wedding rings all that stuff. Dad turned all his gold in except for one $5.00 and two $2.50 pieces. When my children were little he gave one of them a $5.00 and one two $2.50 pieces for Christmas one year. Anyway he never changed his fees. They were still $2.50 and $5.00 in 1963. He always made house calls. During the war because he was an osteopath they wouldn't give him extra gas. They gave him an "A" card which entitled him to not very much gas. (Chiming sound can be heard in the background). He walked all over town to make his house calls just as he had when he first came here. His first car was a 1914 air cooled Maxwell touring car. So was the 1914 Franklin with the air-cooled lid that came down and folded back. Dad was always going to send his Maxwell keys to Jack Benny (popular comedian who was always making reference to this make of automobile) but he never did. He couldn't start it and so he had a hard time selling it. It ran alright if you could get it started. Then we got the Model T coupe that was around town for a long time. Every once in a while dad would see it on the street. There was something inside of it in which he could identify it as his old Model T. I took all the kids on the neighborhood for a ride in the Franklin when I was about five I guess. All you had to do was turn on the switch and away you went. Fortunately the Model T was in front of it or I would have wiped out every car in the neighborhood and had us down in Boyd Creek. Dad heard this noise. The Franklin would gallop ahead and run into the Ford and it would bounce back and Ford would bounce back and then the Franklin attacked the Ford again and get bounced back and then the Franklin attacked the Ford again and get bounced back. Dad came out and said children were flying in every direction. End of Tape 1, Side A Tape 1, Side B Terreo: You mean you learned to drive a car when you were five years of age! Pullen: I was six. I sat on my father's lap. I didn't know it then but I was being prepared for chauffeur's job. The Franklin was to be my mother's car and my father would drive the Model T. The Franklin was much too big for her. She wasn't very big. It was a big car. She couldn't stop it. In order to shift gears she had to submerge. To push in the clutch caused her to disappear. So if we were going up a hill she would have to stop the car to shift the gears. Of course the car didn't want to go up the hill. It would die or else have to get pushed. To start with the Franklin was a pretty big car. We had to make an addition to the garage. Dad said at the time we might as well made doors there because your mother will never be able to stop it the first time. So we had this addition in the garage and it had double doors. The double doors were left open and mother would go around the block and down the alley and into the garage. If she didn't get stopped in time instead of breaking down the garage she could just keep on going and go around the block again and see if she could get it stopped in time. She used to drive up on the curb in town because she didn't get it stopped in time. The cowboys would push her back in the street. So anyway I was driving in 1928 by myself. But before that I was driving on my father's lap and learning to back up because he said women couldn't back (up). He said I wasn't going to learn to drive forward until I learned to drive back. So I backed out of the garage. When I got old enough to sit in the car seat myself, I went out on the - they call it Meadow Lark Lane now. It used to be the old highway and then it became lover's lane. Anyway I learned to back up by driving backward on that little loop of road. We'd get out to the highway again and I would turn around and drive backwards again. And so I can back up. In 1928, we bought a new - our very first new car. It was a Model A Ford. Dad had the front seat moved up so that I could drive. He must have been uncomfortable. As soon as I left home he had the seat moved back out. That was almost eighteen years he drove with his knees up on the dashboard so I could touch the brakes. Anyway, I learned to drive. When licensing became a deal in Montana, I was fourteen. My father got me a license that said I was sixteen. Then when I was sixteen I had a license that said I was sixteen. I took my mother places so dad wouldn't worry about her driving any more, she had a license so there would be a licensed person with me. But we didn't think that she could have ever passed the test. She just wasn't made to drive. Back to early medicine in Lewistown there was a "pest house" at the county farm. That's where (people with) contagious diseases were sent if you didn't have a family to take care of you in quarantine. Quarantine! They had signs for everything. They had rounds on me for everything to demonstrate what diseases look like. Young doctors never see contagious diseases unless they interned in a public hospital. We had rounds on measles, chicken pox, and mumps at our house. Anyway the county health officer used to send the county nurse out with the tacks and the signs. You were quarantined for however long. Your doctor would call the county health officer or the neighbors would tell on you if you didn't report your diseases. I remember my father reported "pink eye" that I had. Dr. Wilder was the county health officer for years and years and years. I remember going to get my certificate to reenter school. You had to get a permit to reenter school. I was at his office often getting my nose, ears, eyes, and throat looked at. If you didn't have a family to take care of anyone in quarantine you got sent to the county "pest house". In either 1915 or 1916, a sheepherder arrived in town at the old Hoffman boarding house and he got sick. They called my father and the man had small pox. My father as a country boy never had anything until he grew up. He was exposed to everything and he got small pox from the sheepherder. But the sheepherder first had his time at the "pest house" and they quarantined all the residents of the Hoffman house. Everybody had to stay there for two weeks. Others came down with it who lived there. They had to go to the pest house and take care of themselves. Dad said it was so dirty there when they sent him with his small pox that he had to wash the walls and the blankets and the wash stand, mirror, and bedding. He aired out his mattress, before he could get sick and lie down. He said he'd always been curious about what was inside a pox. So he opened his pox. Every day there would be another scab on it. 50 he opened his pox and he found it was just like a spring. He could take it out and it would be all coiled up. I suppose it was pus. I don't have any idea what's inside a pox myself. But it was wound up. It would lift right out he said. By the time he got through he had opened all the pox he could see. Out of curiosity and thinking that if you could make the scar smaller by removing the scab why couldn't you make a pox mark smaller by removing the scab. So he tried this out on himself and the only pox marks he had were on the back of his neck where he couldn't see. It's really kind of interesting. The only chicken pox marks I had were on my eye lashes and you couldn't take those little scabs off either. Anyway dad said when he got well enough to go out to get some fresh air he thought he would go visit the cows and horses at the big red barn. He said as he approached all the county residents that were down there standing around ran and went in the county poor farm building and closed the door. They were afraid of him and his illness. So he realized he was scaring them to death which made him laugh. He operated with the idea that if you haven't laughed today you haven't lived! Terreo: Can we go back a bit? You were saying when your father first came to Lewistown he spent the night on his treatment table. I assume he didn't have much money when he first arrived. Pullen: I would say not. He probably had what he earned picking peas in Bozeman. That was all. His father was opposed to this career. His father wanted him to have to be the third generation rancher/farmer on this (the family) property. He (the father) would not give him (the son) the time of day financially to go to school or relocate. In a year in Paris, Missouri he didn't even get enough money to buy a horse. So, I'm sure that he was pretty poor. He did some cooking in his sterilizer (laughs) in the Wise Block. I knew in 1917 when the folks were married that they still didn't have very much. They had one of the small apartments at the Boulevard. The only thing mother knew how to cook was carrots. Their skin got orange from eating lots of carrots. My mother (Edna May Rownd) came from a family of girls and each one had a specialty and mothers was entertaining the baby. So she was very good at elementary teaching and entertaining children. But she couldn't cook and she couldn't dust. She didn't know how to keep house. She was pretty good at fancy work. Otherwise my grandmother had had a very difficult time when my mother was four. This was how the jobs parceled out. My grandfather died and I had an uncle who died, my mother had measles and scarlet fever at the same time. During all of this my grandmother was pregnant and running a farm. She didn't have time after grandpa died to teach each one of the girls. She needed each one to be specialized. The oldest one learned how to go to the bank and how to buy groceries and that sort of thing. But she didn't learn what to do with them. The next one learned what to do with the groceries and she was fabulous cook. My mother entertained the baby while grandma did all these other things she needed to do on the farm. Mother had to learn to cook. Her recipe book was the First Presbyterian Recipe Book. Mrs. Bright ofthe Bright Hotel and Johnny Bright her husband were involved in the first power company around here. Anyway Mrs. Bright gave it to her as a wedding present. In it on empty (blank) pages, Mrs. Bright wrote how to cook rice. The recipe book assumed you knew how to do that. How to make hash and how to cook a ham. All those simple things most girls learned how to do. Anyway they ate carrots and turned orange. Mother couldn't afford to experiment on something that might not turn out right. Her first party she went out to the Abel's Meat Market and got a chicken and she roasted it but it wasn't dressed yet. So they had to go to the hotel to eat. She cooked it with its insides in because she didn't know you took them out. They were in there! So anyway f learned to cook young. My mother taught me all these things young. Terreo: You were talking about your father having small pox during the late teens of this century. This area experienced several epidemics. I believe there was a scarlet fever epidemic and a flu epidemic. Did your father ever talk about that? Pullen: He laughed about it really because he worked so hard and was so tired and so was every doctor in the neighborhood. Along with the national 1917-1918 flu epidemic, Lewistown had its own scarlet fever epidemic. Dad would come home for a meal and to change his shirt and would be off again. He stayed up all night with his sickest patients. He always had done that. He itched and he felt terribly, terribly tired but figured he hadn't enough sleep or enough to eat. Why wouldn't he feel tired? Then one day he took off his shirt to change it and all his skin fell off. It was like it was a bag of skin when he opened his shirt. He realized he had a little rash but he hadn't paid any attention to it. He had scarlet fever because he was this ranch boy that had never been exposed to anything and everything that came along he had. He had the idea that he could just about take care of anything I might get. So he exposed me to everything over, over, and over. He thought I would build up an immune system. Actually, I think I probable did. (Tape runs out. Interview continues on next audio cassette tape). End of Tape 1, Side B Tape 2, Side A Terreo: (you were talking) about your father going out into country and being met by someone with a sleigh and that he kept a buffalo coat for those occasions? Pullen: Yes, was so heavy I don't think you could walk very far in it. But it was very warm, and for riding in the sleigh you needed warmth. It had a big collar, and he also had a bearskin hat that had flaps, bearskin flaps that came down. And he used to have the collar up around his ears and the earflaps down and this collar would be up around his nose and mouth too. It stood up and it came over the top of his head. I mean it was taller than his neck and head. Then the rancher would take him back to the car in the morning and since it was a good old Model A it would start and he would get back to town in time for his office hours on Monday. I always thought all men scrubbed the floor on Sunday. I didn't know my father was unusual. He scrubbed the floors on Sunday, the kitchen and the bathroom. But this was to save mother from strenuous labor. And then, on Monday morning he had late office hours -10 o'clock because mother washed on Monday and he carried the clothes up and hung up the first two or three buckets leaving the last bucket for her because she had to scrub the basement floor with the laundry water first and as dad got older these strenuous hours that he had had all these years began to tell on him. He didn't want to get up so early in the morning anymore. He used to take me to high school. I had to be at school at 8 o'clock and that meant that he could have to get up at 7 to get me to school at 8. I used to take the car. We had a coal furnace and a coal water heater and he would get up about midnight or if he went to bed about midnight he would bank the fires and save the coals that shook down and take them out and put them under the car before he went to bed. And then the car was warm in the morning and I could start it by cranking and with the warm there it turned right over. I was great. I took a couple of neighbor kids too. Sometimes they had to push me out of the alley, but we got along fine when we got in the street. Terreo: You were mentioning automobiles. What were road conditions like in Lewistown itself and the surrounding area at that time? Pullen: All the streets - residential streets were gravel and a lot like some - there are some still around here that are still just graveled, and that's the way all the streets were - graveled. I remember when they put the asphalt or whatever it is on our streets. I was in high school at the time. Boulevard was cement and Main Street was cement. First avenue was cement from Highway 191- it now comes in down to Janeaux (street) and may have been cement a little longer. Janeaux was cement and Broadway (street) was partly cement and partly brick cobbled. The hill on Broadway - it's one block really from sixth to seventh, was still brick cobbled when I used to ride my bike to junior high. It was slick as a whistle when it was wet. When the first snow came, there is nothing more slippery than a wet brick. The rest of the things - come to think of it, I think that fifth avenue was concrete too. Terreo: What about once you got outside of Lewistown? I assume roads were- Pullen: Graveled. And most of the roads were by exaggeration a bed. You could call them two-way, but usually it was sort of like three tracks. The one down the middle and the one on the right and the one on the left and when you met a car everybody had to pull out of the middle rut so that there'd be room for the cars to pass. They were really a lot like the road -there's a loop off of 191 that sort of cuts into the road to Denton. I would really think it's a shortcut if you wanted to take it, that's typical of the way it was. Rides pretty hard and it's full of holes and we had an awful lot of washboard roads in those day. But it was graveled from here to Billings untili guess I was in the sixth grade when they straightened it out a little and put the macadam on. I remember that Ford V-8s - that's even later. But I think that was a resurfacing job that they were doing, I remember that the road was blocked and one of the boys in the neighborhood was driving his folks' Ford V-8 and we just went right up on the cut around the blockade to try out the new surface. Terreo: Well, did this affect your father's work if he was called out on an emergency or did he answer emergency calls? Pullen: Yes, he did because of broken bones and that sort of thing and he really felt quite comfortable with setting bones. He always had a car that would get him there (to the emergency scene). It was a Model A and the Franklin and the little Ford Model T were really good bad-road cars. He always said that his Franklin was so light because of the air cooling that if he could find somebody to push him he could make it over any mountain because it just really was light. We kids used to get out and push it when it couldn't quite make the steep road. There were lots and lots of hairpin curves on the hills then that are not there now - the roads have been straightened out. We used to drive to the tops of all the mountains and they were hairpin jobs. They were mostly from mining and prospecting. Dad just loved to see the country from the top of any mountain. We went to the top of the Belts and we went to the top of the Moccasins and we went to the top of the Judith Mountains and there really weren't all that many roads up there but dad didn't need a road anyway. Terreo: Well, were any emergency cases ever brought to the house? Pullen: No, they always went to the office. I remember they came knocking on the door to our house, but dad herded them down to the office because there was just absolutely nothing at our house to treat anyone with. But they came to get him there (at home). Later on he had a theory. Starting in 1827, he had this theory that he promoted all the rest of his life, and I just really felt terrible. They named a spinal lesion for him (Taylor's Lesion) in 1965. He was two years too late to know it. From 1927 until about that time, in the fifties he began to have some college seminars. People in Lewistown never knew that he was as well-known as he was (nationally). He had patients that came from Boston and patients that came from Arkansas. He spoke at conventions and was offered a faculty position in Philadelphia, but he loved Lewistown. I'm sure my mother would have liked to have lived in a city. She really loved opera and concerts and that kind of thing. Terreo: Did your dad ever write articles for medical journals? Pullen: Yes, he did. He wrote a number of articles for the Journal of Osteopathy and he at the time that he had to quit_practicing was writing for Medical Digest. I think it was about three articles a year that he was doing and had been doing. I didn't know he was doing it. "Modern Medicine" was the name of the thing. He had a theory about the spine that argued with the theory that was currently accepted in those days about what was the makeup of intervertebral discs and synOVial fluid and how the spine articulated. He had this theory that was not quickly accepted and it took him until the mid-fifties (1950s) to get this idea accepted by enough people to be invited to do these seminars that he did. Nineteen fifty-three or four (1953 of 1954), about that, he used to go back to Kirksville and have a three-day seminar. In 1967 or 1968, the osteopathic yearbook named the spinal lesion with herniated disc the Taylor Lesion. Dr. McCall in Great Falls wrote a book in the fifties or early sixties on lesions and was the first one to call it the Taylor Lesion at that time. Anyway, he became a specialist of the spine and wasn't all that interested in setting bones and the things that had interested him so much before. He was so absent-minded - dreaming, thinking developing this theory that he - mother could put letters in his hat and he'd put the hat on and wear it to the office and never get the things mailed. He said why don't you put them in the hat band. And she said because you never would notice them. As long as I leave them in the hat they fall out when you take your hat off. Terreo: Tell me a little bit about your father's office. How was it set up? I know from what you said earlier that he had an examining table in there a sterilizer. Can you tell me about some ofthe other equipment that he might have had in there and did it change as time went on? Pullen: I, of course, don't know much about the Wise Block office. And, I'm not when he was in partnership with Nind Striker. But it was a very short. They were best friends from Iowa. They grew up together on adjoining farms and they had gone to Kirksville together, and so when dad finally was established and making a living -I guess he'd forgotten about sleeping on the treatment table, Nind came out to be a partner. They moved their office to the Montana Building. They bought a couple sets of encyclopedia. I haven't the foggiest idea why. But they did. I only bring it up because a couple of years later it was obvious that they couldn't both make a living and Nind went to Sheldon, Iowa. Anyway when they went their separate ways, they divided the books that they had bought. And instead of one of them taking the one encyclopedia and the other one the other, they divided each of them from A to M but took the front part of one set and the back part of the other so that we had this encyclopedia that was two colored. From A to M it was green and from Nto Z it was red. And of course, Nind had one just like it only in reverse colors. There was a waiting room and I am sure that that bookcase was there to impress the clientele and also had their medical library in it. In the waiting room were golden oak settees and two (technical problem at this point causes interruption). Terreo: You were telling about your father's office and bookcases. Pullen: And beside the oak settee and chairs there was an oak table and the usual old magazines Literary Digest, and occasionally there'd be a Police Gazette there, my mother would have a fit because they were risque and she knew I read everything in the place. I learned anatomy from Gray (Gray's Anatomy, a standard reference book on anatomy) in the bookcase by looking at pictures when I was little waiting for my father. Well, on the right hand side opposite the door you entered through was a door into the treatment room. It had dad's treating table which was a golden oak wooden thing that was about half as tall it seems to me as ordinary furniture. It really wasn't but it was short and there was a stool for dad to sit on at the head of the table. He had linen pillowcases on his little pillow in there that were all monogrammed. Some little old lady appreciated his services and had given him six linen pillowcases. They were just gorgeous. Of course mother wasn't to pleased to iron 'em. He had a breaking table, a regular examining table that the bottom fell away from, the one end fell away from the other end from the head end; and there was his case, the steel dressing cabinet for plaster of paris and those supplies; bandages; and the sterilizer was attached to that. There was a little cupboard. There was a connecting door into the dressing groom which also had a door from the waiting room so that you could leave after you got your clothes off and on. I saw somewhere my father's old dressing gown cupboard, I think. I can't think where it was but it was about six, four of five, well let's settle on five feet long and about eight inches deep and it was full of little squares for dressing gowns because the ladies removed their dresses and put on these gowns. My mother made the gowns and there was a place to label the shelf so it'd be your gown during this session. Also there was a dressing table with a mirror, three section mirror, so that ladies could get their hair back together again and then they let themselves out through this other door into the waiting room again. That's about all the equipment he had. As time went on he moved his office to where the Moose Hall is now. It was an old bank building and at that time Vermont Savings and Loan was in there. And dad speaking of barter - we had 160 acres out in the Heath area and there was a coal deposit on it and dad traded coal for the office building for his rent. The farmer who mined the coal- mined it for coal for his house and that coal really paid a lot of bills. Then the Moose (club) bought the building and dad had to move his office to the second floor of the Bank Electric. It was a marvelous for him because as he got older he would sit and watch people going by from one floor up and that was great because that's a real good viewing place. He would wonder why did so-and-so limp and why was so-and-so's shoulder high on one side and all that sort of thing that you do if you're a people watching. I'm always watching people that way. Anyway, in that last office -the office at the Bank was the same as all of 'em with a waiting room and a treatment and a dressing room. Then in the Bank Electric we were down to a waiting room and a treatment room and he wasn't - women weren't having to take off their clothes anymore because he wasn't giving them the kind of osteopathic treatment that most people are accustomed to or that he was taught to do because he was just into backs and necks. The spine was his specialty and that's really all that interested him. I guess he could have given an osteopathic treatment if you had insisted but at that point then he used for leverage with his new idea some leather rolls that were filled towels that had been rolled up wet. I still have those, I was wanting to give these things to someplace or someone who would appreciate how rudimentary, how crude they were compared with hard rubber nowadays or whatever. But, I found an osteopath who might be interested in his things but it turned out that actually what he was interested in was his demonstration spine because they are very hard to come by and extremely expensive. I figured it had to be all or nothing so he got nothing and I still have the articles and the spine and the little round leverage wedges. (Interviewer's Note: Roberta Pullen subsequently donated the leverage wedges and demonstration spine to the Montana Historical Society). I really don't know. I wrote some of his speeches, I learned to type by typing nucleus pulposes and synovial fluid but I didn't know what I was typing. Terreo: Well, I take it that your dad did not have an office receptionist. Pullen: Oh, no. Nobody did in those days. You called up and he answered the phone and made the appointment and he wrote it in his book. When it was time you came and he heard the door open and he either stuck his head out and said it'll be a minute or else he didn't and you waited knowing he must be in there somewhere. He had a safe, too. I've often wondered where that safe went. Left that in the Bank Electric building. Maybe it's in the basement. The only thing the safe was any good for was keeping the silver from getting tarnished (laughs). I don't know, he must have had to break into it sometime because it - it used to be that you turned it to 20 and that would open it. But you could turn it to anything and that would open it later on. He didn't really practice very seriously after about 1960. He thought he was going to retire in 1960 when he came to visit us. (A pause occurs at this point). Terreo: You were saying that you're dad had planned to retire about 19607 Pullen: Yes, he came to Chile to visit us and had put everything in storage and thought he was going to retire and maybe live down there. Well, he was a na"lve little soul because he couldn't speak the language and where we lived there was no place for anyone who was not on contract to live. His beautiful blue eyes got him a lot of places with the maid and he could express - we left him up there for a couple of days because changing altitude as often is pretty hard on an old body. Since he had finally acclimated to the 10,000 feet we didn't take him back down to sea level to do our Christmas shopping. I left him with the maid. And his big blue eyes - she just thought he was fantastic. He kept having tea for breakfast because he didn't know how to say coffee and of course it just cafe. Easy. But she fed him tea cause that's what she had and she fed him but he didn't know what he was going to have. That's a whole different story - his trip down there. It was really quite amazing. Anyway, he came back and reopened his office. And we always thought of it as the club. He didn't practice. He watched out the window and people stopped by to visit and if they happened to have a bad back, he'd fix it. But it really was a place to meet people because he was a very people person. Terreo: Is it true that he had a great concern about the sheepherders and the cowboys and he sort of watched over them when they came into town7 Pullen: Yes, he did. He thought it was a crying shame for sheepherders to have worked all summer long without seeing a soul and end up the first night in town drunk and broke. And so, he occasionally went out and relieved a sheepherder with our band and let him come to town on Sunday so that he wouldn't be so wild to spend his money all in one day at the end of the season. He'd go out early Sunday morning and the herder would have to be back with the car on Sunday evening. But at least town wasn't quite so far removed from him. But dad followed these poor things around - cowboys too - who had been out on the range all summer and when he saw them getting loaded and leaving their wallets around and not picking up their money; he would take it from them instead of letting them get rolled and put it in his safe. In the morning on Monday they would know where to go to get it. Some of them were regular customers. And they appreciated having money left and dad's reputation for honesty was really something else. When he first came here someone told a rancher that he was terribly honest. I don't know how the subject had come up, but dad went to a ranch sale, I suppose some poor homesteader was selling out, I don't know. As he was leaving this strange man come up to him and said you're the new Doc Taylor. And he said yes. Weill understand you're honest. Would you please take this to the County Bank on Monday morning and he gave him an envelope. When he got to the County Bank in the morning he found it had $23,000. He knew that because the bank counted it in front of him. He really was extremely concerned about honor. At one time when his cancer started to really give him a bad time, said he'd thought about suicide but his reputation was the only thing he had to leave his granddaughters and he didn't to ruin it. Dad really admired the industry of the people of the ranchers around here and their hard work. I guess he took the boy out of the country but the country wouldn't leave the boy. He loved to go and harvest and when he was in his seventies he used to go out and pitch hay on Sunday for an invitation to dinner please. And he still was interested in horses. I never did mentione that he earned his way through college by breaking horses into teams the mavericks from the west. He farmed for his father and raised the horses for himself and when he had enough money for college he said to his father what you do with the farm is your affair. I have been farming for you now. Dad was 27 when he got enough money to go to college and for about ten years he had been working to get the money for college and he'd worked those ten years for his father. No salary, so he figured that he had done his duty. There was something about my grandfather the boys didn't like. The girls loved their father and the boys couldn't stand him. The older brother left home when he was 14 and my father couldn't stand it, but he waited until he was 27. Something was amiss; I don't know what it was. Dad just couldn't stand his father. I didn't mention riding on the rods either, but dad occasionally did that. I would imagine -I would be willing to bet that that's how he got from Iowa to Wyoming was riding on the rods and he (tape runs out. Interview continues on Side B of Tape 2). End of Tape 2, Side A Tape 2, Side B Pullen: To have him come for six weeks in Chile was an amazing thing and he did go to California to visit us once and was there for a few days and they lifted the gas rationing and the war got itself over and he couldn't stand it. We pulled some strings to get him on a plane so he could get back to Montana so he get gas in his car and go to his mountains. And they bumped him in Salt Lake but he got bumped there and had to take the bus. Getting a bus ride at that time was pretty difficult too. He did research in 1927. I thought it was a little earlier, I could say sometime between twenty-five (1925) and twenty-seven (1927) in the labs at Kirksville (Missouri). I got the measles and my mother was afraid to have me have the measles and not have him home. She called him and of course by the time a train got from there to here in those days I was on the road to recovery and dad never had enough money after that to go back for more research there. (A clock gonging can be heard in the background). He did some of his research on animals, bovines, sheep, and cattle. An awful lot of the theories about the spine were made through that kind of research rather than human because the human spine bears weight and the bovine spines don't. That was part of his theory that spines didn't operate quite like they thought because most of the early research - the acceptable theories were done on animals and not weight-bearing spines. They came to finally recognize that there was something in what he said and that slipped disks are really not slipped disks but are vertebrae that have slipped that have pushed the disc. The disc didn't go anywhere first. It was the result ofthe sliding vertebrae and that condition is called in the 1968 year book that came out in 1969 is called the Taylor lesion. Now days called a herniated disk or a slipped disk. But his idea was that they stuck together through adhesion and that they were not attached as they had originally thought. They were kept fresh by the constant up and down squashing of the spine on the disks. The theory at the time was that it was the ample blood system that kept them fresh. Well, maybe it's a combination of both, but he proved that it was pumping that - it sounds like it's an enormous movement, but the constant changing of pressure on the vertebrae that keeps them soft and malleable as they ought to be. That created the cohesion not adhesion that keeps them fastened - all three pieces fastened together - the two vertebrae and the pieces in between. I don't think I have much more to say about him. Terreo: Well, let me pursue this line. A doctor's life often is very busy. How did you and your mother feel when something was going on that concerned the family and that he had to be away? Was that just accepted as part of life or was there sometimes a bit of hard feelings. Pullen: I didn't know as a child that I resented it. But as I have grown up I have grown to realize that I did resent dad's not being there for a recital and he wasn't there for my high school graduation and I sort of resented it. In fact, he spent so little time at home except on weekends that I might not see him for a couple of days unless I stopped in at the office. And I went through a period when I thought that he couldn't possibly love either of us if he were gone so much and didn't care what we were doing, but of course that wasn't it. He was so busy trying to make us comfortable to afford to make us comfortable and happy and that was why he wasn't home and no one explained that to me. I don't know whether it was in our family or whether it was the custom of that generation - probably that's what it is, not to consult children in anything that goes on in the family. We (referring to herself and her husband) always talked (with their children) about every time we were transferred. We discussed it with the children and what it would be like to live there and we never gave them any impression that what they thought about it would change our decision any but they always had an opportunity to tell us what they thought about it. Like my finding clothes going down the hall at school that I thought were in the closet and I didn't mind sharing but I didn't like their taking them without asking. I was as though they were afraid I'd say no so they didn't ask me. I loved him but I found him really hard to understand untili got old enough to understand that he was absent-minded and that even when he was there (present physically), he was (mentally) away. Well, I never had an idea that struck me so that I needed to think about it all the time. But he did. He just he lived for mother and his work and after my mother died he just lived for his work. He liked to be sociable. He liked people. He loved fun. But he didn't need them. Terreo: Well, what were holidays like? Say like Christmas and Thanksgiving? Was he usually home for those? Pullen: He was always there for those and he was a very fine host when it was our turn to have the festival dinner, whichever, because we alternated Thanksgiving with the DeKalbs mostly we had Thanksgiving dinner at the Dekalbs because Vera loved to entertain and our house was too small to have more than just another family and us. He loved to party and Christmas was super. He always got the Christmas tree and he got one of his own tops. He had lodge-pole pines on his coal-mine hill and he always climbed up to the top and got the one he thought was fattest at the top and then they would log it the next summer. And it was always big and fat. He put it up and then mother and I decorated it. I would imagine that if mother hadn't been so English and celebrated Christmas with such gusto he might not have thought of it as being so festive. He loved Christmas but only mother enjoyed it. He used to send Christmas trees to my cousins - mother's nieces, in Iowa. One to their school where they taught and one to their home because he remembered not haVing Christmas trees and mother's biggest deal was about the trees they made out of bushes and hung cotton on in Iowa. There were not Christmas trees and so that was Christmas as a family. I have no idea, my cousins are not all that great on Christmas on his side of the family. But, they are over 20 years older than I am and so I probably didn't know them when it would have made a difference. As you get older you get a little less enthused about the fuss and muss. I love Christmas but I don't put up a tree anymore cause you have to take it down. Terreo: You spent quite a bit of time in your father's office when you were a child. Did you ever notice if he dispensed any medicine or anything like that? Pullen: No, he never did. In fact, his big concern about the health of the United States was that people were going to aspirin themselves to death. He had never taken any kind of medication until when he was terminal. I gave him a bottle of aspirin and put it on his bedside table and I said, "Now when you hurt take two aspirin. It's ridiculous, what difference does aspirin at this time in your life make?" I got to noticing that the aspirin went down a little more than I had expected that it would and he was taking an aspirin fairly frequently. I got him a prescription for codeine. He wasn't having any narcotics. No way, he might get addicted. I said, who cares if you're addicted? You're 80 years old and you have terminal cancer. It doesn't matter if you get to depend on it or not. But, he wasn't going to do that. He took codeine when he was going to have company so that he'd be sure and be bright because his painsometimes his answer to pain was to retreat. He closed the door and then he wasn't very bright conversationally with the door closed. If he took 16 milligrams of codeine he would really be all right. And that's what he took -16 milligrams of codeine. Terreo: You were saying that your father was saying that the country was going to aspirin itself to death. What was his philosophy or viewpoints on the increase and different drugs that were appearing? Pullen: He read everything he could find out about them and he was fascinated by antibiotics and the marvelous things they were able to do and the fantastic surgery. He was fascinated by the fact that I specialized the second blue baby. He was one of those people who was always on top of the latest that he could find and if he had had some illness - he did take cobalt treatments - if he'd had an illness that could be treated by an antibiotic he most certainly would have gone to an M.D., and had one prescribed. Probably would have told him which one, but he would have it properly- he wouldn't have sneaked - he got samples that were not in Montana at the time legal for him to dispense, and he didn't dispense them. I made mud pies and used Bromoseltzer for the frosting. It's marvelous! And, it smells good too. He was excited about the way medicine was going and the great discoveries that we had made. It's like transportation - we've gone to the moon. He grew up when there were only horses. He didn't make it quite to the moon, but they were getting the vehicle ready and the monkey had been up. That sort of thing excited him. He was interested in lots of things. Terreo: Let's talk a little bit about your life. Do you think it was your father's work and profession that influenced you to get into nursing? Pullen: I don't know, it's funny I always thought you should never marry a doctor cause he's never home. So I married a mining engineer who was never home. I really was wanting to take medicine and that's what I was doing at the University of Iowa. I was taking pre-med. And then, as I said, my father was absent minded and when mother died I knew that he wouldn't remember to send me any money. He didn't send it to me. He carried it around in his coat pocket for a month. When I went to Iowa and 1they were threatening to evict me from the dormitory and I didn't have any money to eat on and I couldn't pay my fees. The money I had to eat on I had to save in case I got evicted so I could find a room in town. Anyway, I just knew that dad would never send me anymore. That I'd better find something that didn't take so long and so much. And so, I went to Johns Hopkins to take nursing because that was the best place to train - the best hospital. I figured if I wanted to take nurses' training you'd better go to the best hospital to be trained in. There was Hopkins nurse in the state of Montana at the time. She was Miss (Anna) Beckwith in Helena, who was head of nurse examiners. You had to be interviewed. So I had an appointment with her which I had to cancel because my father decided that my grandmother's would be just the place for me and so he sent me to my grandmother. So then I had to get an appointment with a Hopkins nurse in California. And I did with a cute little lady, Miss Vanier. Anyway, I had an interview and I had to send grade transcripts and I was accepted. And so, I went to Baltimore and it was really truly fascinating because I got there just as the war began and we had sulfadiazine and sulfathiazole and pretty soon we had murizene and perizene and a whole lot more. But to begin with we only had diazine and thiazol. And then pretty soon there was penicillin, but we couldn't use it because it was saved for the military. And the military was using part of it on a test on venereal diseases. That was on the fifth floor of Ostler Clinic at Hopkins and that was a no-no, you didn't go to the fifth floor and the stairs were closed between the fourth and fifth floor and the stairs were closed between the fourth and fifth floor and the sixth floor. The elevator stopped there but you couldn't go anywhere when you got off. It was government issue there and so we started growing our own penicillin and so penicillin was available to us. We mixed it with saline solution and found out that glucose solution was a little easier than straight saline on tissues. It didn't hurt so much so we started squirting a little dab in there, but you couldn't use it for (hospital) ward penicillin because you might be giving it to a diabetic. You had to keep track of that. One reason Hopkins was so exciting and the best place to train was that that was the hospital of last resort. Mayo's Clinic and Johns Hopkins Hospital was where you got to see unusual diseases and they might not know how to treat 'em but they knew how to diagnose 'em. Things that you might never ever see again. And, for example, my father came back here and went periodically up to St. Joseph's up here with a colostomy, and there was only one nurse on their staff that could irrigate a colostomy. Who had ever seen one? So it was the experience, that sort of thing. I saw myesthesia gravis, I specialized Mary Ann Robinson who was the second blue baby, Tousq Blaaylock. I scrubbed for Dr. Blaylock. I second scrubbed for Dr. Danny who was the - They called him the grandfather of neurosurgery. He dared to do all kinds of things that - wasn't always too successful but his patients were gonna die anyway. My obstetrical nursing courses were given by Dr. Nicholas Eastman who wrote the textbook then in use by all the medical schools in OB. It was a wonderful place to be. And it was full of tradition. Old Dr. Kelley was still alive, walking the halls with his little black bag and old Dr. Kelley was on one of the famous first four who came when they hired Dr. Osler from Magill. Dr. Osler who made Hopkins famous, of course. He had the obserVing eye and his big challenge was - he challenged himself each time that the patient to see as the patient walked in what he thought he might have. And then after he'd examined him and done whatever rudimentary tests he was going to do to see if his first diagnosis was right, and most of the time it was, just from watching the patient entering. My father enjoyed that kind of observation. He liked watching people. He liked watching animals too. I can sit in an airport for hours and not be at all bored because I like to watch people and their expressions on their faces and the way they walk, what they're wearing. You wonder what they do and that sort of thing. Part of that too was in our training at Hopkins. We were taught to observe and I remember a doctor I worked under in Butte at the Murray Hospital was very upset because I charted my observations. I was taught to chart my observations since I saw the patient all the time and doctors only saw them at rounds. But anyway, this man didn't like my two bits. It turned out I was right. But then after I had trained at Hopkins, I found that it was the only hospital that had reciprocity with all the states. I didn't have to take exams anyplace if I wanted to practice there. Well, I am sure it's changed now. I'm sure maybe others have, but it was great. I went to California and taught pediatrics and I didn't have to take an exam. I was a night supervisor in pediatrics at Hopkins before I went to California. Then I worked at Murray Hospital, general duty and pediatrics and then we went to Chile, and Anaconda. The Red Cross talked to me about setting up a blood bank down there (in Chile). I took some information to read, but when I got there I found that they didn't want an American nurse interfering with them. There was only one American nurse in the whole of Chile who was licensed to practice down there. I later found out why. And it was because their nursing program doesn't follow ours and they have a practicante who is about like a corpsman in the service. Pretty well qualified to do a lot of things that nurses were not in those days qualified to do and then did nursing things too. Then there was, I've forgotten what they called the other one that would be like your LPNs, who were not qualified to do some of the things nurses are qualified to do. We didn't fit in there unless we would take a course in their minor surgery and that sort of thing just as British nurses didn't fit with us unless they took isolation techniques and diet courses. That's just the way it was and so there were 20 of us in the three camps that I lived in who nurses. We had a terrible Asian flu epidemic but we couldn't work. It was too bad. Came back and we went to Colorado and I was a first aid nurse there. I worked in a doctor's office first and that was kind of boring. And he said, hospital nurses never are any good as office nurses because it's boring. I worked for him at the race track. He was supposed to supply the nurses. That was the most fun I ever had in my life and I was there for three years until we moved to Wyoming. By that time getting registered was getting boring. I was registered in Maryland and Montana and California and Colorado and I though gee whiz this is just for the birds. So I retired then. I quit working in '67. I retired in '80. I quit paying my Colorado dues. Hardly any point in staying registered if you haven't worked for 20 years. Terreo: Tell me a little bit about your experiences in Butte at Murray Clinic. How did you get the job there and what were you responsible for (tape runs out. Interview continues on Side A of next tape). End of Tape 2, Side B Tape 3, Side A Terreo: You were saying that you never had any trouble getting a job. Pullen: I just had to say I was a graduate of Johns Hopkins and doors opened, bells rang and even if they didn't have a job, they found one. I went to Murray knowing I needed a job, but knowing also that I wouldn't be working for a year because I was pregnant. Bob (her husband) was at the School of Mines and we needed some money and so I went and applied for any job that they had and they happened to have one in pediatrics and so I was just a regular floor nurse in pediatrics. I had to chuckle to myself almost every day because I worked for the head nurse who was a graduate nurse, not a registered one, because she'd flunked her tests and so she wasn't registered. And she was threatened to pieces I think. She just really made things kind of unpleasant until one day I told her that I would like to work nights if she would let me because I was getting too big to wear my uniforms much longer and she said, "You're pregnant", and I said, "Yes." And you're not working after you're -no, I said I'm not gonna work afterward. And gee she was nice, yes I could work any old shift I wanted to and could do whatever I wanted to. Then I did some specializing after the children were born. It was a lot easier than trying to work night and raise children. I had to work nights, if I worked days then you have to get a baby sitter and then you aren't making any money. Nurses make about as much as baby sitters do. And so, I just specialized. And part of the deal was I specialized for one doctor. His patients had to provide me with a reliable baby sitter. So, well, I got some amazing people who baby sat for me. Wives of some fairly of important people in the Anaconda (Company) baby sat for me, but I wouldn't do it any other way cause when you have an occasional baby sitter they aren't all that dependable until you get them inspected and you never have that luxury if you're called to special a patient. They usually need you right now and not next week after you've checked out a baby sitter. Terreo: Well, who were some if the baby sitters? Pullen: Well, I don't know whether I ought to name them or not. Mrs. Glover was and she was the wife of the gentleman who became the chairman of the board of the Anaconda. They were next door neighbors, too. I specialized Mr. Glover and she baby sat the kids. I specialized Mr. Staples who was head of security at the Anaconda and his sister-in-law, Mrs. McElroy, baby sat for me. She did my ironing, too. She was very good at ironing. I specialized my pediatrician's little kid, too. Our two children had the very first cases of virus flu that his Butte. That was 1947, I would say, and they finally had to take their little kid down to Salt Lake. We managed to keep ours at home, but boy they were sick little kids and sulfa and penicillin had nothing to do with them because of the viruses. It was just a case of trying to keep them hydrated. I can't think of other. But I specialized for Harold Greg, he was a sweet, sweet oldfashioned horse-and-buggy type M.D., who was so well-respected at Rochester that they didn't recheck his original diagnosis. They started testing from there. There was a Dr. MaGill over there too, a woman, who was held in esteem. Dr. MaGill was a real cute little old lady who used to ride her bicycle everywhere. Terreo: What was her first name? Pullen: Can't think of it. I really enjoyed nursing. I don't think I would care for it anymore because there's so much less interaction between the patient and the nurse. You don't spend as much time with your patient nowadays. You're busy checking all the blips and the bleeps and reading all the charts and charting all the charts and it's -I was in the hospital for two day and never did see a nurse. Couldn't believe it! This was in California. The doctor said, well the nurse says - And I said how could she-I haven't seen her yet. And it turned out it was a he, but I still hadn't seen him either. It was the aide that come around and stuck the thermometer in and reported how I was. Terreo: When you were there at Murray Clinic, tell me a little bit about the uniforms that you wore, were those the traditional starched white or were they different by then? Pullen: Mine were still starched white. We had at Johns Hopkins a designated uniform. We wore them anywhere in the United States where we were. Our caps were organdy like cupcakes pushed up. Like a flattened cupcake paper. They had pleats around the edge and darts in the front, gussets so that they stood up like this and then they went down this way (demonstrates with hands) because in the days when they were designed, women wore French rolls and this would cover your French roll back here. And hair isn't supposed to touch your collar. We had removable collars and our hair in hair nets and with these caps down here on them. We wore starched aprons that covered you completely in the front. They had crossed over straps in the back and they went clear around and buttoned with two buttons in the back. No pockets. We kept our adhesive and bandage scissors in between the two buttons in the back. We were allowed either short of long sleeves. They were to be 13 inches from the floor and they were to have six-inch hems. They were made of poplin and inside the uniform itself had stud button holes. I mean, every morning you stuck your button through and put a fastener on the back. All of the buttons were stud buttons and if you had long sleeves you had a cufflink through a big wide cuff just above the elbow. There were about eight stud buttons down the front of your uniform and it lapped over so that at the waist you had two studs like you did in the back. That had a pocket with the bandage scissor loop in it and you could keep your scissors in there but they tended to fall out when you leaned over. If you kept them in the back, they tended to break the buttons. It was kind of a toss-up. Our uniforms were very distinctive and we had a Maltese cross - navy blue - royal blue, with a gold JHH on the front of it our names and the date of graduation engraved on the back. We all automatically became Red Cross nurses when we graduated. We had in Maryland - it was a two-and-a-half year state. There were two-year, two-and-a-half year, and three-year states at that time and we took - we had a specialty at the end of two-and-a-half years to allow Maryland nurses to leave training if they wanted to and be two-and-a-half year nurses. But if you were ever gonna practice anywhere else, you better stay in for three years. And so, we took our specialty the last six months and my specialty was pediatrics. We were taught during that time to be managerial; how to order supplies, and how to make time logs, and how to manage personnel, and that sort of thing - how to institute a different program if you happened to think of one. The job I had in California was really a result of the training at Hopkins. I taught pediatrics, but I was a head nurse also and I got very well acquainted with the superintendent of nurses because I refused to do a few things she asked me to do and when she asked me why I said why it's poor nursing practice. I couldn't be responsible for my patients if I did that. Later on, she said, you're right, absolutely right. I felt confident enough so that I had nerve enough to refuse to do what she told me. I had enough confidence to be able to tell student nurses what to do. That's why I taught pediatrics. I also ran a ward, I had two patients with tracheotomies and they wanted me to take my suction machine over to OB because theirs was broken. It was a cottage type hospital setup and OB was in the next building next to me. We had a space - a garden, between us. I was taught that you never had a tracheotomy without a suction. There ought, preferably, to be one for every patient with a tracheotomy. Now, we had one suction and two tracheotomies and I wouldn't part with it for OB and I suggested they find it someplace else which they did. Anyway, not very long after that we had a child whose tracheotomy inner tube, the cannula, had been left open and the trochar was over here somewhere (points on throat). And it was all dried up inside so that when I cleaned off the trochar but I couldn't get the cannula clean and it almost killed the baby because when I put the suction tube down, it poked all this crud that had collected in the bottom of the tube that I didn't know was there into his lungs and he quit breathing. So, I gave him caffeine and artificial respiration and he began to breathe and no damage was done except that - weill would say it was a learning experience for the students on the floor and it caused the old gal to say you were right not to have a suction meant to not to have a tracheotomy. I called the doctor and got orders to cover my caffeine and artificial after it was over with because you sure don't have to time to call to get an order before. Terreo: What was your reason for specializing in pediatrics. Pullen: Pediatrics? I like kids and they are so sad and pathetic when they're sick. It's so gratifying to see them get well. I just really love kids. I get on real well with them. All but one grandson. Terreo: During the time that you were a nurse and also when your father was practicing did the issue of liability insurance ever come up then as much as it does now? Pullen: I was surprised as I looked back - we were told what to do at Hopkins that long ago and my father knew what not to do. In 1937 I was with him on a trip and we looked down in a canyon, it was somewhere near the Wind River and we saw a Greyhound bus down there as we went by. We didn't stop. I said why didn't we stop, dad. And he said, in the first place I have nothing that I could do anything for anybody with. In the second place, they'll be better off when report this in the next town and they can get a doctor with equipment and an ambulance and a wrecker there. So that's what we did, we stopped at the police department in the next little Village and told them there was a Grey hound bus down there. He had no idea what Wyoming law would allow him legally to do. And he knew what Montana law would prohibit from doing so much as tying a tourniquet and setting a bone would be all he could do and outside of shirts there isn't much to tie tourniquets and they're really not very food rag tourniquets are not very good. So I came to understand that this was really the thing he should have done. Then when I was in my last year in training, the director of nurses had a course called Ethics in Nursing. One of the things we learned in Ethics in Nursing was that we should never respond when there was an announcement asking if there is a doctor on the train or is a doctor or is there a nurse in the place. Don't respond because you can get sued for anything. I suppose if you went as a citizen you'd be much less likely to be sued. But that is one of those things that's gonna come up with the CPR and everybody's being trained to use it. Somebody, someday is going to be sued for misusing it or failing to use it or using it not long enough. They can think of all kinds of things. Terreo: I know we've covered quite a bit today. Is there anything that you would add? Pullen: Well, along that line, I don't really think of anything. I'm pleased that finally osteopaths can practice all ofthe things that they are taught to do and have been allowed to do in some states forever. I am pleased to have enjoyed my work as long as I did it and have had fun with it. I am pleased to be living in Montana again cause I still think it's the greatest! I've had lot of opportunities to select someplace else. End of Interview Transcribed by Diane Keller. Audited and edited by John Terreo, Oral Historian, Montana Historical Society. Additional information about medicine, health care, and nursing in Lewistown can be found in the following interviews: OH 1332 Judith Machler OH 1334 Donald R. Browne OH 1335 Ken and Francis "Scottie" Byerly OH 1337 Eleanor Helmer OH 1337 Earl Eck OH 1333 Roberta Pullen Interview Index Abels' Meat Market, 18 Anaconda Company, 47, 48 Arkansas, 24 Attix Clinic, 8 Attix, (Fred), Dr" 8 Bank Electric (building), 28, 29, 30 bear grease, 5 Beckwith (Anna), Miss, 41 Belt (mountains), 23 Benny, Jack (famous comedian), 11 Billings (Montana), 22 Blaylock, Tousig, Dr" 43 Boston (Massachusetts), 24 Boyd Creek, 12 Bozeman (Montana), 4,17 Bright Hotel, 5, 18 Bryce Hospital, Lewistown, Montana, 1 buffalo coat, 20 California, 41, 44-45, 49, 57 Cat Creek (Montana), 4 Chile, 30, 31, 34, 44 coal,28 collar bones, 10 College of Osteopathy, Kirksville, Missouri, 3 Colorado, 45 cooking, 17 -19 Cottage Hospital, 9 County Bank, 32 CPR (cardiac Pulmonary resuscitation), 54 Curren, Steve, Dr" 9 Deal (Arter), Dr" 9 Dekalb, Vera, 37, 38 Democrat Newspaper, 6 Denton, (Montana), 22 Drivers lessons and licenses, 14 Dunn (John), Dr., 9 Dykins, Dora PE (physical education) teacher, 10 Eastman, Nicholas, Dr., 43 emergency calls, 23, 24 encyclopedia, 26 engagement ring, 4, 5 epidemics, 19 ether, 9 Ethics in Nursing, 33 Etter (?), Dr., 2 farm, 2, 18, 33 fathers' office and equipment, 25-29 First Presbyterian Recipe Book, 18 Glover, (?), Mrs., 47, 48 gold pieces, 11 Gray's Anatomy (standard reference book on anatomy), 27 Great Falls (Montana), 25 Greg, Harold, 48 Greyhound bus, 53 Heath (Montana), 7 Hobson (Montana) High School, 4 Hoffman Boarding House, 15 holidays, 37, 38 holistic medicine, 6 horses, 2, 3, 9, 17, 33 house calls, 11 Hruska, Martha, RN (Registered Nurse), 9 Indiana, 2 Iowa, 2, 4, 5, 34, 38, 41 Iowa State Teachers' College, 3, 5 John Hopkins (University Hospital, Baltimore, Maryland), Journal of Osteopathy, 24 Judith Basin, 4 Judith Mountains, 23 Judith Place (Montana), 5 Kelley, (?), Dr., 43 Kirksville, Missouri, 25, 26, 34 Lander, Wyoming, 4 Lehman, Barbara, 4 Lewistown, (Montana), 1 Lockjaw, 9 LPN (licensed practical nurse), 45 MaGill, (?), Dr., 48 Magill (College or University?), 43 Mandan (North Dakota), 5 Maryland, 45, 50 Mavericks (unbranded or unclaimed horses), 3, 33 Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, 48 Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Monnesota), 42 McCall (7), Dr., 25 McElroy, (?), Mrs., 48 Medical Digest, 24 Medications, 8, 9, 39,40,42,49 Miles City (Montana), 8 Milwaukee Railroad, 3, 4, 34 Milwaukee train, 3 Mittens, 6 Mocassins (Mountains), 23 Montana, 1,7,34,40,41,53,54 Montana, Historical Society, 30 Moose Hall, 28 Murray Clinic, Butte, Montana, 49 Murray Hospital, Butte, Montana, 44, 46 National reknown, 24 observers, 7,43,44 office receptionist, 30 Ohio, 3 Ohmaha, Nevraska, 3 Osler (William), Dr., 7, 43 osteopath, 2, 6-9, 11, 29, 54 osteopathy, 1 Paris, Missouri, 3,17 Pediatric nurse, 51, 52 penicillin, 42 Philadelphia (Pennsylivania), 24 Pleasants (7), Dr, 4 Polk's directory, 6 Porter, (7), Dr., 8 Red Cross, 44, 50 Riding the rods (on the railroad), 3, 4,34 road conditions, 21 -23 Robinson, Mary Ann (second "blue baby treated in United States), 40, 43 Roosevelt (Franklin, President), 11 Rownd, Edna May, 17 Salt Lake City, Utah, 34 Salt Lake City, Utah, 48 San Francisco, California, 34 Schneider, Julie Jackson, 9 School of Mines Butte Montana (Montana college of Mineral Science and technology), 46 Scottish pioneers, 3 sheepherders and cowboys, 31, 32 Sheldon, Iowa, 26 smallpox, 15, 16 St. Josephs' Hospital, Lewistown, Montana, 9, 43 Striker, Nind, 26 Taylor, family, 1-21, 23-25, 27-41, 43,52 Taylor, Fred, 2 Taylor, lesion (spinal lesion) 24, 25,35,36 Townsend, (7) Dr., 1 tracheotomies, 51, 52 uniforms (nurse's), 49, 50 United States, 39, 49 University of Iowa, 3, 41 Vanier, (?), Miss, 41, Vermont Savings and Loan, 28 virus flu, 48 Washington, Iowa, 3, 4 Wilder (?), Dr., (Fergus County, Montana) health doctor, 15 Wind River, 53 World War II, 8, 11 Wyoming, 34, 45, 53 x-ray, 9 |
| Local Identifier | LH 978.629 INTERVIEW |
Description
| Title | Pullen, Roberta Interview 1 |
| Type | Text |
| Digital Format | application/pdf |
| Digitization Specifications | Canon MX310 300dpi |
| Full text of this item | OH 1333 Roberta Pullen Tape I, side A Introduction The following is an interview with Roberta Pullen for the "Medicine, Health Care, and Nursing In Montana" oral history project for the Montana Historical Society. During the interview Roberta Pullen will discuss her father, Doctor Fred Taylor, one of the first practicing Osteopaths in Lewistown and Central Montana and a prominent figure in the development of professional Osteopathy in the United States; in addition, she describes her nurse's training at John Hopkins University during the 1940s as well as her later career experiences. The interview was conducted in the living room of her home at 210 West Boulevard in Lewistown, Montana on June 19, 1990 beginning at approximately 10:30 a.m. The interviewer is John Terreo. Terreo: Mrs. Pullen can you tell me a little about yourself? When and where were you born? Pullen: I was born in 1921 at the Bryce Hospital in Lewistown, Montana. It is an apartment house now on Pine Street. I was born there because I arrived a little early. I was supposed to have been born in Livingston [Montana]. Mother was to go the next week on the train because there in Livingston was a doctor who was an M.D. and D.O. [Medical Doctor and Doctor of Osteopathy]. He was the only one I know of in Montana at that time. He practiced under his M.D. but he also did manipulation and practiced osteopathy. But that was just part of his medical service to his patients. Terreo: What was his name? Pullen: Townsend. I don't remember his first name. He was an old friend of my father. Apparently after he got his osteopathic degree he decided he could do more if he had a medical degree too. In those days osteopaths weren't allowed to do surgery although they were trained to. My father in his state boards [examination] got ninety-eight [per cent] in the surgical part of it. Dad had no interest in surgery. In fact he was one of those people who couldn't stand blood. He warned me when I went into nurses' training that the first time I saw surgery I would probably faint. Terreo: Tell a bit about your parents. Your father was probably the first osteopath in this area of the state. What was his name? Pullen: He was Fred Taylor. Lots of people gave him Frederick and it sounded dignified. They even gave him "S" as a middle initial but his name was Fred Taylor. I guess his folks were kind of surprised that he arrived. He was twenty-two years younger than his brother. I guess they named him whatever occurred to them. There is no other Fred in the family. He was an Iowa farm boy. The farm had been in the family - at that time - he was born in 1882 - at that time the farm had been the family for two generations. They were pioneers in Iowa coming from Indiana. I never did know what illness he had. There was a local osteopath who saved his life. Doctor Etter was his name. Dad determined then he would be an osteopath and no more of this farming stuff. He didn't like husking corn in October and some of the hard things that farmers had to do. But he loved horses and was very good with them. So he earned his way to the college of osteopathy by buying mavericks [unbranded or unclaimed horses] from the west in Omaha [Nebraska] and breaking them to teams. He was very careful about matching the horses. He broke them to teams for buggies and some for riding. I ran into a woman when I was at the University of Iowa whose husband had been the stockyard operator in Omaha whom dad had bought his horses from. It was kind of surprising because I was dying to get away from here where people knew my father, where I had to behave and get to Iowa were I could be free. I found out that I had cousins in every class and here was this house mother at this sorority house who knew my father. My mother was also an Iowan. Her mother and father were also born in Iowa. There were Scottish pioneers by way of Ohio. My |
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