Dr. D. W. Davis Interview

PIONEERS IN TEXAS OILTOPIC : A doctor's experiences in post-boom Beaumont, sanitary conditions,morals, and in Sour Lake, Texas. NAME: Dr. D. W. Davis INTERVIEWER: W. A. OwensTAPE NO: 112 DATE: July 18, 1953 RESTRICTIONS: None

Owens - This is an interview with Dr. Davis at the home of Lindsey Walker in Beaumont, Texas. The sound of frogs is really the sound of frogs if you happen to hear it. What is your full name?

Davis - Daniel Walter Davis.

O.- Where were you born?

D.- Searcy, Arkansas.

O.-When?

D.- 1878.

O.- How long did you live in Searcy?

D.- Well, I was, I don't know just exactly but I was taken back to Southern Illinois, Marion, Williamson County, before I was two years old.

O.- How did you happen to go back there?

D.- Wall, my mother and father moved from Marion down to Arkansas with ray father to make his fortune. They knew, everybody was moving down there then in those days. Thought it was going to be a great state. But he didn't make a go of it. He moved back, went back to southern Illinois.

O.- Yes. Then you had your education in southern Illinois.

D.- In Marion, Illinois.

O.- In Marion, Illinois, yes. How much did you have there?

D.- High school.

O.- You finished high school. D.- Yes. O.- And then what was the next step in your career?

D.- Well, I, next step was when I went and joined the Spanish-American, Fourth Illinois Volunteer Infantry in the Spanish War, Spanish-American War.

O.- Yes. Well, tell us about that experience.

D.- It's been a long time ago. They, John A. Logan's son, I think it was John A, Logan, Jr., I believe it was. John A. Logan was a well-known Civil War officer. In fact, he raised an army in, a company, in southern Illinois and started south with them and changed his mind and came back and raised another company and joined the Northern Army. His son organized a company to go into the Spanish-American War, a calvary company all made up of officers around Marion but he didn't get his com-mission and we were very disappointed. So my brother and I wanted to go to Carbondale and join the militia. My brother went but my mother wouldn't let me go. I threatened to run away from home and finally she agreed to it and my brother sent for me and wired for me to come to Springfield, Illinois, and join them, which I did. We had our training in Springfield, Illinois, and started for Cuba. We reached Kara (?), Illinois, and, as I said, our officers received sealed orders not to be opened until they got to Jacksonville, Florida. In Jacksonville, Florida, they opened them and they were told to encamp there, so we were camped down between two railroads in a palmetto swamp. And our first night we didn't have time to dig out the palmetto roots. Some of them was eighteen, twenty, or thirty feet long, and we used them for pillows and everything else to sleep on. Before we could get our

tents up we had four foot of water in between those railroads; just got out, that's all. Then we had typhoid fever and malaria fever and one time there was only six men able to, for duty outside the ones that were on guard. O.- Yes. D.- We were finally moved over to Augusta, Savannah, Georgia. They were on provost duty there for quite a while and then were sent from there to Cuba. That was after the war. O. - Yes. D. - So all we did was fight the mosquitoes over in Cuba. We didn't see any enemies.

O. - No. Well, after the war was over where did you go?

D.- I went back home. I hadn't been there but just a little while until we were ordered over to the militia which I still belonged to that I joined before I went to the, with the, went to Cuba, were ordered to Cartervllle, Illinois, to put down a strike or to prevent trouble. And I was over there for about sixty days and I left there to go study osteopathy. O.- Yes. D.- But back in Williamson County, I started to tell you about that a while ago. O.- Oh, yes. D.- You remember what, Williamson County was very well known. Called "Bloody Williamson."

O.- Why?

D.- Fact there was a book, history of Williamson County giving the his-tory of a bloody vendetta over there after the Civil War. The price of a man, to get a man killed, was thirty dollars. One man carried a gun

all the way from Marion to Carterville, nine miles. He carried a board over his gun to keep the rain off of it. Got over there and waited for the wind-, curtain blew back. He saw the man sitting there and shot him with a shot gun. They finally hung him, sent two more to the penitentiary and a bunch of the rest of them left town, got the vendetta.

O.- Yes. Did you have any violence on the strike duty?

D.- Well, we had quite a little violence there. Before we went in they, they shot into a train of Negroes that were brought in to break the strike at Carterville. There were twelve men, strikebreakers, killed, and that's when we were sent over. O.- Yes. D.- We had a few skirmishes there but nobody got hurt with us. We had plenty of, they threatened us plenty. In fact of the matter, I was told if I ever come back there, why, it'd be too bad for me, but I did go back.

O.- Yes? No trouble?

D.- Yes. No, they forgot about it. I studied osteopathy then and after--

O.- Where did you study it?

D.- Kirksville, Missouri.

O.- Would you describe the course that you took along.

D. Well, at that time Dr. Still, Andrew Taylor Still, the founder of osteopathy, was still living and active to a certain degree. In other words, he come before the class frequently and would lecture to us. Dr. William Smith, one of the outstanding anatomists of the world at that time, and one of the highest educated medical men in the United States, considered authority on the spleen, delivered a lecture before the medical society at the time he was teaching in Kirksville in

St. Louis, Missouri, during the exposition there on the spleen as an authority. He at that time had dissected more living, more female bodies than any other man living. He was teaching anatomy when I went there. There was another man teaching descriptive anatomy. Then we had several other men who were medical doctors, the "Three Biblitons"(?). We called them "Maxim, Meatus, and Ninimus." (?) They were from London and they held a medal from the London, Royal Medical Society as having written the most exhaustive physiology at that date, and that was the physiology that I studied when I was in school. We had a man teaching physiology, name of Basset, that left our school and went to Harvard and taught. After he left there he taught physiology in Harvard Medical School. We had wonderful instructors. We studied everything then with the exception, that the medical profession was studying in all colleges, with the exception of materia medica. We did not study materia medica at that time. O.- Yes. D.- Instead, we studied theory and practice of osteopathy.

O.- Yes. How many years in training?

D. - It was a two year course then, ten months each, four year, four terms at five months each. At that time, most all schools, medical schools, were teaching six months at four years each. O.- Yes. D.-So there was about four months difference. But we put in many more hours, so I understand, studying. O.- Yes. D.- Which equaled that.

O.- When did you first come to Beaumont, Doctor?

D.- I arrived here on May the second, 1902.

O.- How did you happen to come here?

D. - Well, I had a classmate. His father had a job here with the Kirby Lumber Company, and he and I were very close friends together. The fact of the matter was we had a Sunday School class, both of us did, in the Christian Church in Kirksville. And we were both quite devout church members at that time and he was very anxious for me to come to Texas. He came down here, he graduated before I did because I skipped a term and went to Illinois. I took the Illinois State Board of Examination under the medical board in my junior year just before I finished, and they wanted someone there to take the sick man's practice in Lincoln, Illinois. They didn't have a graduate so they asked me to take it. I went up there at a hundred dollars a month, which was big money in those days. I practiced there for them until the following term. September I went back to school and while I was in Lincoln I married one of my classmates. We, wait a minute, I got to come in there. I finished, that is, the reason they wanted me to do that was because, to play foot-ball. That'd give me another term to play football. That made me, give me three years there at college, you see, on the team. And we had really a good football team, and then, believe it or not, that team that I played on that last year beat the Texas University sixty-five to nothing the first half.

O.- That's quite a record.

D.- We played one minute of the next half and the two coaches got together and called the game off. That is a record that you'll find in the Texas University. Si Gordon (?) was in the University at the time and when I landed in Beaumont he thought I was the greatest thing In the world, because I was on that football team that beat Texas.

O.- Well, you came down here to get into practice. What was the

arrangement for your practice?

D.- Well, I went in partners with a young doctor, a classmate of mine, with Dr. Bruce Lynn, but I wasn't with him but just a short time. Things didn't work out just right. I went out, I got sick with malaria and was down for three weeks, didn't have any money. And a wonderful woman by the name of Mrs. Edgars, Mrs. Max Patt's mother, took us in and credited me, trusted me for it during the three weeks and I came out, managed to get some money to pay her. Found me another office. I got me an office with a medical doctor. Paid him the last money I had for half of his furniture. One day he called up and asked me, he said, "Davis," he says, "tell you what we can do. Get a covered wagon, get a team of mules here, get a covered wagon and beat it west." I said, "What am I going to buy them with? I haven't got any money." He says, "We'll take care of that alright." Well, we talked It a while and the proposition was he made to me that he could get the team and beat it out of town without paying for it and when one of the horse went dead, why, just drop it, or went bad on us, just drop it off in the field and pick up somebody else's horse. Well, that scared me to death. I beat it to the sheriff, Ralph Landry. I knew Ralph real well. Close friend to me. Fact of the matter, I was treating his wife at the time, and I told Ralph about it, and the next morning I went down and this man and his wife was gone. I decided to look for the furniture and thought, "Well, I've got the furniture, alright." It was still in there and the man that owned the building said, "Doctor maybe the furniture wasn't paid for." I called up the furniture store and sure enough it wasn't, so I didn't have any furniture. I was left high and dry without anything. I finally found me an office. No money to get it, to buy anything with. I got a telephone in and I had a

partition put in. I had to rent two rooms and pay forty dollars for the rooms and I didn't need them. Didn't even need one for that matter, at that time, but I wouldn't let anybody in. I had my name put on the door but I kept the door locked. People come knock on the door I wouldn't answer. If any phoned me, why, they'd tell me they wanted to come to the office and I'd tell them, "Well, I was just coming out your way In just a little while and I won't charge any extra for the call. I'll be glad to come and treat you at the house." And then I got in to treating some patients up at Village Mill. I rode horseback up to Village Mill. How far is that up there? Unidentified Voice- Forty miles.

D.- About forty miles. Treated my patients up there for three dollars a treatment. Sometimes I didn't get over two patients but, boy, I eat [sic] on it. O.- Well--D.- Then I began to get into the old families in town and I opened my door and began to spread out from that time on. Inside of sixty days I was making a good living.

O. - What was the actual date of your coming here?

D. - May the second, 1902.

O.- 1902. Well, was the boom getting over at that time?

D.- Yes, the boom was over then. There was quite a number of people here yet, but things were not crowded. They, you could get room and board, plenty of room and board. People were not crowded. I think when I came here there was about twenty-one or twenty-two thousand people here. O.- Yes. D.- And it dropped down to about eighteen thousand after that. And

then gradually began to come up, very slow.

O.- Would you describe Beaumont as it looked when you first saw it.

D.- What it looked like?

O.- Yes.

D.- Oh, boy! Well, we didn't have any street cars. All the walks were board walks. The main part of town covered about, well, I'll say nob more than two blocks any one direction. The old part of town over on the river was still over there. The Kirby still had those buildings, KIrby Lumber Company had those buildings over on Main Street, which were old wooden buildings. It wasn't a short time, though, till they were all moved away and other buildings built there. The town gradual-ly moved on over and down Pearl Street, mostly north, and then gradually started going south and later part of years it's gone south all the time down there and they've moved over to Orleans. Orleans Is the main street. But when I first came here the mud during the winter was so deep that I saw at one time a team of mules suffocated at the corner of Calder (?) and Magnolia. They got tangled up in their harness and the mud was so deep they got their heads down there and before they could get them loose and get them out, the mules had literally suffocated. Other places, I saw on Laurel, right by the Southern Pacific, by the express office there, wagons sat there all winter with mud clear up to the bed. No wagon or anything passed It during that time. We had no drainage and we had rain, I mean a rain. We don't know what a rain is now to what we had in those days. One right after the other. Flood run flood right after the other. Pearl Street had become flooded. I saw a boat, skiff rather, come up Pearl Street and run it right into this, First Federal Bank now on Pearl and Liberty. One time out on Garter Avenue at Eleventh, where Eleventh Street is now, they were

driving their horse in the small ditch on the side of the road and where it went across there the horse was swimming to get across. By that time they begin [sic] to get a few shell roads. Better wait now and start some other, I'm about to wind up--

O.- Doctor, could you tell me about the sanitary facilities in Beaumont at that time?

D.- Well, the first thing, our water was cistern water. Everybody had a cistern and we had to put a strainer on to strain the wiggle-tails off, and we couldn't always do that. We had a great deal of dysentery, great deal of typhoid fever, as well as other diseases. Malaria was very prominent. The children, at that time they were losing a great number of children with what we called cholera infantum. And I worked almost night and day with those children. Some of them I'd take when they were a living skeleton, almost. And I didn't know much about drugs or anything of the kind at the time because I'd, all I'd gotten about medicine really and truly at that time was what I had studied in the medical books and I hadn't had time to do a great deal of that. But I learned how to save these patients, simply castor oil, one big dose and then after that I give them ten drops of castor oil every two hours and worked their bowels out and give them osteopathic treatment and some of the most prominent men in Beaumont today owe their life to that treatment.

O.- Fine.

D.- A world of the children that I treated. The, most all houses had outdoor toilets. There were only a few houses that had the sanitary connections.

O.- Yes, You didn't have--

D.- Water, water was worth more than oil. You could buy water here, they bought water here and at first they would find that, but their containers would get contaminated, you know. It was hard to keep them clean, keep them sterile. Couldn't find the water, fine water was up at the, what they called the Steadman farm there, Fletcher farm there. They had an artesian well and it was wonderful water, but the trouble was keeping their tanks that they carried it here and their bottle sterile. So they, then they got water from mineral wells. That was too strong. The, most people boiled their water, but that was, they just simply didn't like it and they would drink the other water. We drank cistern water here all the time for years and finally we began to get away from it. O.- Yes. D.- Our own city water was expensive, you see, and finally got city water here and sanitary connections.

O. - Do you remember when you got city water?

D.- When we got city water? Well, I don't remember just exactly what date it was. It was, let's see, I couldn't tell you. I don't remember it now. It's kind of vague but we had electricity here, you know. They had a regular power house here at the time and all. Had two telephone systems. O.- Yes. D.- But that was a nuisance too, but they finally got rid of that.

O.- Well, what about the sanitary conditions in the food stores, the butcher shops and so on?

D.- Well, they were pretty wide open. Food was sitting out on the curb. They didn't have any screens. The main market was just inside of a,

called French Market down on Pearl Street at the time I came here. Put in a board shack and the food was just placed out. Meat, of course, was kept in the ice box but it also hung out where you could see it. The meat was laid out on a block, stay out there. They had screens in some of the places but the groceries and vegetables and most things were not under screens, but meat was under, they had screens for meat. O.- Yes. D.- But it was pretty bad. The rats and mice was awful bad in all the stores. Terrible. Used to sit up at night, the boys did, with their guns, B-B's, and twenty-two rifles and shoot rats all night long in the stores trying to keep them down. They did everything in the world to try and keep it down. And we had a great deal of sickness at that time due to that unsanitary condition. O.- Yes . D.- But it improved rapidly after that. O.- Yes. D.- After a very few years it began to improve very rapidly and Beaumont really became a town and they had, began to have sanitary inspection and all. O.- Yes. D.- They cleaned that up.

O.- Well, did you have any patients among the roughnecks?

D.- Well, I don't know. I know what you'd call a roughneck. Ralph Lander always, the sheriff at the time he was here, sheriff for many years, he always called himself a roughneck. Ralph wanted them to think he was a roughneck. He always said that. O.- Yes

D.- And while Ralph himself, I don't believe, was my patient, but his children and his wife were. O.- Yes. D.- And I had quite a number of cowboys that you might call roughnecks. The old timers were cowboys and I wouldn't call them roughnecks by any means, I wouldn't way that.

O.- Did you go out to the--

D.- They, Evairs (Herberts) and the Wisers (Wiesses) and the Carrolls and, all those fellows, they were not much roughnecks, but they were old timers, though. They were cattle men, lumber and cattle men.

O.- Yes. Did you go out to Spindletop to see patients or not? Did you go to Spindletop to see patients?

D.- Yes, I went to Spindletop.

O.- What kind of patients--

D.- I, well, the gas, they'd get gas in their eyes at the time, you know, and they'd have the awful lest [sic] inflamed eyes from that in the world. They, when I, whenever this medical doctor down there, he fixed up a solution that would clear up the eyes and give them relief right away. And he swore to me that it didn't have cocaine. In those days you didn't have to have a narcotics prescription for cocaine, and you could buy all the cocaine you wanted. He mixed up this solution. He gave it to me and told me to go out to the hill and treat these boys with it and I was treating some of them and he gave me that and all of a sudden I heard one of them say, "If a man was to put cocaine in my eyes I believe I'd kill him." I got to thinking and I thought to my-self, "Maybe I'd better find out whether this is cocaine or not," so I went down to a druggist and he and I decided it was cocaine. Now

that's the guy that I had, really tried to get me to run away with him when I came down and told the sheriff what had happened. He must have been in trouble when he came here and the sheriff, he didn't want the sheriff to know about it and check on him at the time.

O. - Well, do, was there a great deal of the use of narcotics among the oil field people?

D. - Well, not so much among the oil field people. Quite a good deal of narcotics, though, used in Beaumont at that time. Quite frequently you find, had morphine. O.- Yes. D.- And cocaine. But not oil field workers, no. I wouldn't say that. Oil people must have came [sic] from all over the country here. Young men from every part of the United States. Some of them stayed here. Some of them turned out to be some of our leading citizens. O.- Yes. D.- I don't think any of them are with the Magnolia now, but a good many of them were with the Magnolia until they retired. O.- Yes. D.- Came here during the boom days, but otherwise I wouldn't say that they were, no.

O.- How much trouble did the sheriff have keeping order?

D.- Well, he had plenty.

O. - Can you tell me some of the problems that he had?

D. -Well, I hadn't been here but a little while and my wife and I were walking down Pearl Street one day and Ralph Lander, the sheriff, had just gotten out of bed with typhoid fever, and I saw him. At that time my office was, and residence both, was right across from City Hall,

present City Hall, now. It was a park then. I saw Ralph standing over there, had his gun out and this fellow kind of standing up in a buggy and Ralph was talking to him. I said to my wife, said, "I believe Ralph's in trouble over there. I believe I'll go over and see what happened." She tried to get me not to go. I went over there and I said, "Ralph, what's the trouble?" He said, "I'm sick." I said, "I know you been sick. You just--" I said, "What happened?" "Well," he says, "this man says that he's going to get out of that buggy and beat hell out of me and I said that he had to go to jail." And I said, "Well," I said, "you want any help?" He says, "Can you help me?" I said, "Well, I'll do my best." He says, "Alright, I said for him to come out of that buggy." I said, "Alright, come down boy." He jumped out of that buggy right now. He was going to tear me to pieces. "I'll come down there and show you." Well, when he made a pass for me I just caught hold of his arm, threw my hand behind his elbow and stuck my foot under his foot and threw him down on the side-walk. Ralph wanted me to take him up Pearl Street to the city jail, and I said, "Oh, no, Ralph, nothing doing. I'm not going up Pearl Street with him." I said, "I'll go back on Main Street over here" old dusty road. "I'll take him back on Main Street," and I said, "I'll take him up there." City jail then was right at the foot of Crockett Street just a block off of Main, and when I got over on Main Street I looked up and there was about five or six policemen standing up on the railroad track up there watching me bring him up. Every time he got to cutting up I'd flip him over on his face again. Believe me, boy, that gave me a reputation I never deserved in this town. Many, many years it haunted me. "Lay off of him," and it was all, nothing in the

world but a little trick I had there to throw him down. But they really thought I was some tough hombre because I did that.

O.-Well, at that time -

D.- One time there was quite a great deal of shooting here. The, some of the saloons where the men were killed, dances, some of the police-men got in, some of the deputy sheriffs got in, shooting at each other and those things. That was quite common, quite frequent those days. They had a whole lot of killings here and it was pretty though for two or three years after I came here. Ralph was a good sheriff. He did, he kept things, kept order pretty well, exceptionally well, I think, under the circumstances. He had some good men with him. Occasionally they'd get into some man that wasn't any good. The same thing on the police force. Occasionally they'd get somebody that would go haywire and give them a lot of trouble. But ordinarily they, one time after a little while before Ralph got out of the, started out to arrest a Negro and they got out on the edge of town. Negro laid the gun down on them and made them all get up on their horses and he got in a, come in here to a bread truck. He got up in the seat there and made the fellow drive there and held his Winchester rifle on the other fellow, on his head, and they brought him back to town. And they'd stop, come by a saloon and they'd stop and go in and get a drink. Nigger, they would try to get the drop on the nigger, but they never did. And they got up right on Pearl Street, First National Bank, just this, between Crockett and Liberty, and they went in, started to go in and get a drink and Ralph decided he was going to get the Negro and he pulled his gun and fired and the nigger threw his Winchester down and the bullet went in the Winchester barrel and plugged it. That's why he didn't hit--.

The nigger jumped off of his horse and started running, somebody heard the shooting about a half a block down below there and grabbed the gun and threw it around the corner of the building and whenever the nigger came by there he shot him dead. Quite an excitement. And they had several things like that, similar to that here at the time. O.- Yes. D.- But that was later, in later years. I imagine they had more killings here.

O. - Yes, Was there much Negro-white trouble here when you came? Much trouble between the Negro and whites when you first came?

D.- No, no. No, we had no trouble with the Negro and whites. The niggers at that time here were just as, the old southern way. In other words, they considered theirselves [sic], to go to the back door. They didn't come to the front door and they didn't give any trouble. O.- Yes. D.- Later years they, occasionally they'd go in, whites would go in and burn some of the Negro houses and those things. At that time there wasn't much trouble here with them. O.- Yes. D. - When I first came here.

O.- Well, how many saloons do you suppose were here when you first came?

D.- Well, they were very, very numerous. On Pearl Street in two blocks there, there was one, two, and around the corner was two more. A block down below was another one and across on the Sunset Court was two saloons. One on Orleans and one in between there. And outside of town all the grocery stores sold beer and wine without a license and there was saloons

scattered, oh, well, all over town. All the suburbs had saloons in them.

O.- Yes. Were they in general well ordered or not?

D.- No, some of them were not well ordered and the Sunday propositions here, they were selling whiskey on Sunday and there was quite a bit of trouble about that. In face one man was killed on account of it on Sunset Court.

O.- Can you tell that story?

D.- Well, I don't remember just, I didn't see it and I heard it. And I know that, the only thing that I know of Is the man was walking on Sunset Court and there was, I think it was a bartender, I believe, stepped out of the back door of the saloon and killed him as he passed coming up there, I believe. That's about the only definite one I know of that happened directly in a saloon, with a saloon.

O.- Yes. Well, what about the red light district. Tell me about that.

D.- The red light district was open and was, covered quite a territory at that time. They had, when I first came here they had much better houses than they did later on. I think that was because the out of town money that was here, you understand. O.- Yes. D.- During the boom a great many of them, Some nice houses were built, but they later either burned down or else they, those nice two story houses were finally either taken over for something else or burned down. O.- Yes. D.- And then they were segregated into a smaller district and they kept them pretty well in the district. If they got out and moved around at all they'd arrest them, take them back and put them in. They kept them

pretty well confined to the district for many, many years.

O.- What was the attitude of Beaumont people toward that problem?

D.-Well, the attitude was that, just about like most any community would be. They were bitter against it but they tolerated it, and it was understood that it was practically, you might say, legalized in that as long as they stayed in the district they didn't bother them. But if they got out of the district well, they did. They had, the ministers and church people tried to close it time and time and time and again and they finally succeeded in closing it completely, and they scattered out then all over Beaumont. Took up their residence In apartments, especially downtown apartments. They kept that closed for many years. I know, I suppose, I think it's supposed to be closed now, I don't know.

O.- Yes. Well, what was the incidence of venereal disease during the boom time? Do you have any idea?

D.- Oh, yes, it was awful. It was really terrible. Both men and women.

O.- Well, what kind of treatment did they have for it?

D.- They didn't have much treatment at that time. They used common old potassium permanganate, different forms of different solutions and had preparatory remedies of all kinds. Advertised it all over the country and all the downtown restrooms and toilets all over the country, all over every place had big signs up there printed, you know, for venereal disease, medicine for venereal diseases. Some of them were no good at all, of course. They were just out to get their money. O.- Yes. D.- But the main thing at that time was irrigation with the potassium permanganate and certain drugs they gave internally.

O. - Yes. D.- They helped some, but they had no antibodies at that time. They couldn't, and some cases resisted treatment absolutely. Didn't do it, and when it was a female it was just too bad in those days for the female. They practically were ruined for life when they once contracted the disease. O.- Yes. D.- They, we could handle it very well, got rid of the acute condition alright, but there's nearly always some chronic condition left there. O.- Yes. D.- On over a year of time. Of course men and women suffer in later years from the cause of it.

O.- Yes. Well, was the public pretty well informed on the problem or not?

D.- No.

O. - I'd like for you to talk more about that.

D.- The public were not, public were not, the public in those days were not well informed. The young men thought it was smart to contract the venereal disease. They thought it was smart to contract venereal disease. They'd brag about it. They didn't know what it meant in the future. They thought that they were cured you understand. And even the same thing with syphilis. They didn't know. They didn't know what was coming later. They'd go and take treatment and get over the acute attack and their tertiary symptoms come later, you understand - O.- Yes. D.- --and consequently they have all kind of disease and die young, you understand.

O.- Yes. D.- From the result of that, which comes on in about forty years of age. They, in other words, those days, until they got out what they called "six-o-six" which was an arsenic preparation, and it was very, very severe, but they began then with the first thing we ever did to try to begin to control or to do anything for syphilis. And from that time on why they made gradual progress and they began, then they got into business and the two together, they claimed, some of them did, that they could cure it, but the majority of the cases in my opinion, the ones I had experience with, they didn't cure. Later on they did show that they had trouble and it could be contributed to a [inaudible]--condition. O.- Yes. D.- It was pitiful the way some of them, there was many and many a, in those days, a lot of patients of mine that never knew how or where they ever contracted the "looies" [?]. Young me, some of them paralyzed be-fore they knew that they'd ever had it, before they ever knew they'd been exposed to it. Some very prominent men didn't know that they'd ever been exposed to it, and it was hard for them to believe when the diagnosis was finally made that they had contracted the disease. That's not only here in Beaumont but that was all over the world at the time.

O.- Yes. I wanted to ask you if you thought the incidence was higher here than in other cities of the same size?

D.- Well, I don't know. Back when I was a young man in my home town In Marion, Illinois, there was plenty of it there. O.- Yes. D.- I remember hearing my father and mother talk about different boys

there about them, and they called it the "pock." O.- Yes. D.- And they'd say and tell, you know, about that. I remember that. It was very, and I know in the army it was very, well, it just wasn't at all uncommon to find cases of syphilis that we didn't, in other words, we wouldn't know about all of them, but the majority of them we would. There were so many, many men in my own company that contracted the disease while they were in the army, young boys that were innocent, didn't know.

O.- Well, do you think the incidence was higher among the colored population in here?

D.- Colored population, yes, without a doubt. Very much bigger, very much. There isn't a doubt about that.

O.- How do you account for that?

D.- Well, I think it was because, one reason why, the didn't take treat-ment. Their sanitary conditions were less, they didn't take precautions that others take, practically no precautions whatever, and they didn't go to doctors for treatment. They just carry it along. The acute stage would last longer and consequently there'd be more becoming infected. That's the only way I can account for it. There's no doubt about that, the colored people being, more prominent among them than it was among the--

O.- Well, were there a great number of colored prostitutes in the district?

D. - Well, I don't know about that because I never was called to treat any of those or anything of the kind at all. The white prostitutes, why, I used to treat those, quite a number of them, and all doctors did,

did for that matter, and, but I never treated a colored prostitute. I think there were many of them for that matter. I don't know if there was a colored prostitute district. Don't believe there was. I don't know. That's one question I couldn't answer on that.

O.- Yes. Alright, I'd like to turn to a lighter side for a while. What did you do for entertainment, yourself, when you first came here?

D.- Oh, boy, that's easy.

O.- Alright.

D.- Hunt and fish.

O.- No sports or anything else?

D.- Oh, that was a paradise, and I tell you, for a man that never had had any hunting and fishing. They could go out here, we could come back in with geese and ducks and quail, jacksnipe and dove, prairie chicken, all on one hunt.

O.- And fishing was just as good?

D.- Fishing was good. They could go out most any stream here and catch bass, perch of any kind.

O.- Well, earlier you mentioned football.

D.- Well, yes. I was quite, you might say I had football-itus, you might say. I was crazy about football. I really, my whole life at that time just wrapped up around football and when I first came here the first thing I thought about was get a football team. I finally found a few boys that had played, four or five that had played football In other places, but they never had been anybody, never had been a game played in Beaumont and never a team in Beaumont. I got together a bunch of fellows under a streetlight and coached them, give them the signals, and we practiced, oh, I guess for several weeks, and we finally got a

game at Lake Charles. Lake Charles came over and the first game we had was in an old ball park out in the, where the old Ogden home is. They called it Ogden, it was Ogden Park, and while we were playing out there we made so much noise some of the ladies saw and looked in to see what was going on and they thought there was something terrible happening and they called the sheriff. Was going to stop us from disturbing the peace and hurting each other. Thought there was a fight going on, and before the sheriff got away he was hollering, "Go it, Beaumont!"

O.- What year was that?

D.- That was in the fall of 1902. O.- Yes. D.- And they had a return game in Lake Charles and we had eleven men to go, and we got on the train at, the depot there was at Crockett, on Crockett and Pearl there on the Sunset Park. We only had ten men and Attorney Reeves, later an attorney, he was assistant superintendent of the Beaumont High School at the time, or, I believe it was, he may have been principal, but anyway, we saw him standing on the corner and we, on the street, and we kidnapped him and put him on the train and we took him to Lake Charles to play the game. That's the only game they had until the following year. The following year we organized the first Beaumont High School team,

O.- You've had football ever since.

D. - I was crazy about football for twenty-five or thirty years. I took care of the football boys in Beaumont, furnished all the tape and all the linaments, all the drugs, everything for them, for over twenty-five years and never charged them a nickel. And it was always said, "Well, if you get a treatment, if you want a treatment from

Dr. Davis, you want to catch him when there's no, when the football boys don't need him." And that was almost true, but it was a wonderful thing for me and I enjoyed it very much. I knew every man, woman, and child in town and they all knew me and they had confidence in me taking care of their boys and it was a great feeling to me to know that I knew and felt toward the people as I did on account of that. They appreciated my taking care of their boys. And after about twenty-five years, why then I had too much to do, it was too much for me. They brought the South Park boys in on me and they began to bring some of the boys down from the University to me and football boys from all over the country, and baseball boys, and it was just more than I could take. I just had to cut it out, so I began to lay down on it.

O.- Well, how about the organization, organization of militia here?

D.- Well, the, Sol Gordon (?), and I, and, I forgot the doctor's name that I was telling you about that ran off on us, we got together and organized a militia and we had no trouble at all. We got a company together in just a very short time, and on our second meeting we had an organization, I think we had twenty-seven men in the company, and we elected officers. Sol Gordon was, I was first lieutenant, Sol Gordon second lieutenant, and this doctor, I can't think of his name, I didn't ever want to remember his name after the experience I had with him. Scared me to death. He was made captain. Well, I drilled the team, I drilled the company I think two nights out on Main Street, and then began to get ready to go to encampment, and of course, we had to have uniforms and I didn't have any and I didn't have any money. In fact of the matter, is, I had nothing at that time. I didn't have but one suit and it was just about worn out. So I resigned and I had no more

to do with militia after that. I never did get, never did get back into the camp. From that time on they've always had a militia here and a very good one.

O.- Well, I'd like to ask you about some of the oil characters you knew that first year you were here. Did you know Governor Hogg by any chance?

D.- Only by just the sight, that's all. I knew him when I saw him but--

O.- You never had him as a patient?

D.- No, I never had Governor Hogg as a patient.

O.- Did you hear any stories about him?

D.- Oh, well, we heard lots of stories about him and Ima Hogg and Ura Hogg. That was one of the main things, you know, his two daughters.

O.- Yes.

D.- And he was quite active out at Spindletop in the old Hogg-Swayne Syndicate out there.

O.- Yes.

D.- But I was too new here then and didn't have any experience to be really associated with those fellows at the time. The, I knew a number of drillers but they've got away from me, they left here. A number of the men that was here at the time, most of them all left here. They didn't stay here.

O.- Most of them were boomers, you think?

D.- What was that? O.- Most of them were boomers?

D.- Yes. Well, things died down and they left. Most of them moved to Houston. O.- Yes.

D.- Fact of the matter is, I had a four thousand dollar practice move out of town over one night. The Gulf Oil Company left here and my practice in that was running four thousand dollars a year. They wanted me to go to Houston with them and I didn't go, and I had to build, re-build that four thousand dollar practice back right in the very part of my, that is, in the very best part, you might say, of my career. It was tough, I'll tell you. A long time it was hard picking after they left here.

O.- Yes, Why did so many of the companies and the people move out of Beaumont?

D.- Well, the business dropped down, oil business wasn't, wasn't good here and they just gradually drifted away. The drilling wasn't, there wasn't any drilling around here and Beaumont dropped down for a while, you see, instead of building up, it dropped down in population. O.- Yes. D.- The business just wasn't here. The rice business in those days wasn't good. O.- Yes. D.- They lost money so much in the rice there. The water would ruin them. Either they had drouth or water, too much water, one. They just didn't make it, that's all. Too many of them went broke. and the lumber business was dying down. They were shutting down the big mills here. They had big mills here at the time at first and they began to shut down here and move out. The fact, the business just wasn't here and they just left. And especially most of them that was here tried to get into the oil business; they went to different new fields, Goose Creek and Sour Lake, and most of them moved to Houston. They got into the oil business over there

O.- Yes. D.- Some, now then, when Ft. Worth hit, why, when they hit up in west Texas up there, they, a world of them left here then. Went up there.

O.- Did you get over to Sour Lake much during the boom.

D.- Oh, yes, I was over at Sour Lake a great deal. I had patients over there all the time. O.- Yes. D.- I was making trips over there almost once or twice a week going over there. The, the Sour Lake, the hotel over there at that time burned down in a short time after I came here but it was very popular when I first came. The first year or two I was here they, people would go over there and take their baths and go over there and stay weeks at a time in the summer. Wealthy people would. There and down to High Island. That was a great resort, those two places. O.- Yes. D.- And--

O.- How would you compare the effect of the boom on Sour Lake and Beaumont?

D.- The boom?

O.- Yes. How were conditions in Sour Lake during their boom?

D.- Oh, well, that was just a little old country town. At the time there they just couldn't, few people lived there and a few old shacks and things but there wasn't, there wasn't any real buildings there. Not anything at all, and the fact of the matter is, there was practically nothing there but the hotel when they first started. Then they built some frame buildings along the street there but there was no brick buildings there at all. There was no real streets there at that

time, the first two or three years, O.- Yes. D.- They lived in, well, I call it, they lived in shacks, most of the workers did.

O.- Yes, Conditions pretty bad there too.

D.- Yes, they were bad there, yes. But there wasn't a big population in Sour Lake, O.- Yes. D.- They lived, the operators all lived out of Sour Lake. They didn't stay there. They lived here in Beaumont or Houston or some of the other places, Liberty and some of those places,

O.- How did you manage the sanitary conditions for patients out in towns like that in the oil fields? What did you do for them?

D.- The only thing we could do was just boil water and do the best we could. Sterilize our hands, try to get the sterilizer; I tell you what I did. I boiled water with a teaspoonful of salt to a quart of water and I would irrigate any would they had. I'd irrigate it until I knew I had it perfectly sterile, and of course, I'd hang the bag just as high as I could hang it and I'd use just as much force as I could shoot into it, and I'd run that through there until I had it perfectly cleaned, sterile. Then if I had to sew it up I'd sew it up and I never had any soreness or any trouble or no infection or anything else. The most wonderful thing in the world, that's what I depended on together more than any other one thing, the salt water wherever I was, out on a camping trip or anything of the kind that way. Anybody got hurt, I'd take boiling water and put a teaspoon full of salt In it and I'd force irrigation with that. And I run a gallon through a good sized wound.

O.- Well, what would you do in the case of a bullet wound?

D.- A what? O.- A bullet wound. What would you do then? A wound from a bullet?

D.- Birt?

O.- Bullet. A shotgun or a--D.- Oh, I--

O. - You didn't have anything like that? D.- I never was caught with one of those. Never did have but two snake bites in all of my fifty years, fifty-one years of practice. I never had but two snake bites and they were both ground rattler. And one was Saturday night at seven o'clock and I left them the next, Monday morning at eight o'clock. The only two I ever had. The first one was a boy who was bit on Village Creek and they kept hollering for me and calling me and I finally got down there, and I said, "What's the matter?" Said, "A boy over there snake bit." I went over and I said, "Oh, he's not snake bit." I said, "He got stuck on one of those burnt stobs around there." "No, it was snake." I said, "How long was it?" He put his hand out about a foot long and I said, "Oh, oh, If it wasn't any bigger than that it must have been a snake." I looked at him and his foot begin to turn black. His foot began to turn black. Well, I didn't have a thing in the world with me but a pocket knife. I had, I had my hypodermic syringe with me and I had morphine and strychnine. That's all I had. I took him over to the club house and I got over there and I said, "Well, I don't know what I'll do." I took my pocket knife out and I got me a bunch of salt and laid it on the table and poured water on it and I took the knife and I scrubbed the knife through there and I scrubbed it until it was bright as a dollar. I turned around and I

cut the boy's foot open and mashed it out good and took a handful of salt, wet it, put it on there, and tied it up. Put him in on a cot and waited a while and I said, "Well, we'll take him to town." I said, "I believe he's going to get alright." I was watching his heart all the time. And I said, "Son, we'll go and get in the car now and I'll take you to town." We got up and started and he fainted on me. I give him a shot of strychnine and let him rest a little while and took him to the car and brought him to town and put him to bed and went out there at twelve o'clock and he was sleeping like a baby. And next morning he went down town. The following Monday morning they called at my office and a fellow was out in my back yard and had his hand in a bucket of coal oil and over in the neighbor's yard he was unloading a load of wood and a ground rattler was in the wood on the wagon bed and bit him on the knuckle. I cut that open and filled It with permanganate crystals. That man liked to lost his arm. His arm swelled up till he busted his, he couldn't wear a sleeve on it or his shirts or anything. It was too big to get in his shirt. But he got alright. He didn't die. He had been bit by a big rattler before when he was a boy,

O.- Those sound like pretty rugged times.

D.- They, in those days when I was taught that if you carried strychnine with you and watched the heart, there was hardly a snake in the United States that would kill a person, but I don't believe that. When I was a boy I saw quite a number of people bit by Iowa moccasins and they were awful sick, but none of them died. But I've known a number here that was bit by snakes and none of them died, except, I believe, a boy was bit one time here about twenty years ago by a coral snake and died. He chewed his leg, but most, an ordinary snake bite, it takes so

long for them to fill up their poison sack and If they strike you and empty that sack, then they strike again, you're not going to get the full dose of the poison. It depends altogether on how much poison you get as to whether it's going to do it or not. It takes so long, you understand. If it strikes you right away after striking before and empties the sack, then you don't get it to amount to anything. One bit me; I was only bit once. One bit me through the shoe and he was a moccasin and I didn't even get sore, but he wrapped himself around me and I had on overalls and he struck himself and hit against there two or three times and I know he spent his poison before he ever got me. That bubonic plague we had here was in 19--, oh, that was in 1929. The Hammond boys were with me in 19--, came to me in 1928 when we formed a partnership, and we went out to the city golf course out there and saw those bubonic plague cases. Now it was after it in 1928 they had that, had that, it wasn't a real epidemic. We didn't have many cases here. Now that's the only time that we had the bubonic plague here. We had a number of cases there and I went out and saw those people myself.

O.- Yes. You had no yellow fever here either.

D.- None, not since I've been here, no. O.- Yes . D.- That's right.

O.- How about cholera? D.- No cholera epidemic. Plenty of smallpox. Used to have a lot of smallpox here.

O.- There's not much any more.

D.- Oh, no, No, I haven't seen a case of smallpox or heard of one over one or two or three cases in fifteen or twenty years. I hear of one every once in a while. Smallpox is about whipped. Diptheria is pretty well on the outs. O.- Yes. D.- I hope they get polio. I believe they will.

[End of Tape]