05/27/1950
Personal history, dear to the hearts of many Southwesterners, is being revived as attention is focused on the razing of one end of historic Hotel Dieu in preparation for the new $2,650,000 addition.
The names of many Southwestern pioneers are carried in a faded Hotel Dieu registry book for the 1895-1901 period and point up the personal vicissitudes of the men and women who built the Southwest.
A patient in 1901 was Solomon C. Schutz, El Paso’s third mayor, who served at his post in the hectic days of 1881 when four of his marshals were killed in line of duty. Schutz was the man who, calling a spade a spade, dubbed the city, “Hell Paso.”
Capt. John R. Hughes, famous Texas Ranger, was in the hospital on April 25, 1901 and remained for two days for treatment of a “gunshot wound.”
Many of the personages listed in the Hotel Dieu records are recalled by Dr. Paul Gallagher, El Paso County Medical Society member, whose family came here in 1891. Dr. Gallagher’s father brought the first microscope and X-Ray machine here for use in treating the hospital’s patients. Dr. Walter N. Vilas, assisted by the elder Dr. Gallagher, performed the first appendectomy in the Southwest in 1894 in Hotel Dieu.
The operation is well remembered by Mrs. H.E.. Stevenson, widow of Dr. H.E. Stevenson who for many years served on the Hotel Dieu staff. Mrs. Stevenson was the daughter of Dr. Vila and today at the age of 76 lives at 514 North Oregon Street.
FIRST APENDETOMY
Mrs. Stevenson recalled that the subject for the first appendectomy was one of their servants. At time of the operation, surgeons expected the patient might live for six months. Actually, Mrs. Stevenson says, the servant lived to a ripe old age.
It was in one of the rooms now being torn down, Mrs. Stevenson said, that her mother died. Her daughter, Mrs. Helen Stevenson, still carries on the family’s tradition in Hotel Dieu and is in charge of the central service.
Mrs. A.D. Norcop’s name appears on the registry in November, 1898, when her son, Patrick, was born. Patrick Norcop is now instructor of military science for the U.S. Air Force at the University of Southern California.
Another of her sons, A.W. Norcop, prominent local attorney, was 11 years old at the time of Patrick’s birth and tended the family’s ranch at Separ, N.M., while his parents were in El Paso for the blessed event. Mr. Norcop recalls that a blinding snowstorm struck the area during his brief term of ranch management.
FIRST WOMAN DOCTOR
Another of the patients in 1901 was Dr. Alice Merchant, the first woman doctor in the area.
Dr. Gallagher, who in 1920 became chief of the Hotel Dieu staff and chief of the surgical services, recalled that in 1900 here was no electricity and that lighting was done by gas. Heat was provided by wood fires, burning mesquite roots principally.
Chloroform was the anesthetic, which gave the surgeon in those days “a narrow margin of safety,” Dr. Gallagher said.
Many of the patients on the register were charity cases. An interesting sidelight on the times was the length of time required for convalescence after surgery in contrast to the short period needed today.
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