Museum Collection: The Family Doctor Comes Into His Own

Augusta & Simon Hart, Jennie & Henry Grafman

This replica painting is on velvet fabric and has been framed and had small repairs done by our curator, Joel Willems. It originally belonged to the Hart family who had a German history of being doctors, midwifes and care-givers. It most likely made it's way to Milwaukee via Simon Hart who had emigrated to England from Berlin and stayed for a few years before continuing on to America. Future members of the Hart and Chudnow families have also become doctors.

---

From a newspaper article in late 1947 (inset):

It was during the reign of Queen Victoria that a simple forester's cottage near Balmoral castle, north Scotland, became the setting for a human drama that will live forever in this painting, "The Doctor." A favorite servant of the queen lived in this cottage with her husband and their only child. Upon hearing that the child was seriously ill, the queen wired to London for her personal physician, Sir James Clark. Sir James came by special train and remained in constant attendance upon the child until the crisis was past. The child recovered. In 1891, Queen Victoria command Sir Luke Fildes to place the scene on canvas in commemoration of the faithful devotion of the physician.

---

   Belatedly, the family doctor is being formally honored by his professional colleagues. The American Medical association has picked "the family doctor of the year" and bestowed on him a gold medal and a fitting citation.
   It is probably more than a coincidence that the first family doctor to be so honored was also a country doctor, who had ministered to the ill in a sparsely populated, rugged and isolated mountain community in Colorado for 21 years. It is under such circumstances that the family doctor must be at his valiant, untiring, resourceful and unselfish best. It was of such a doctor that Walter B. Pitkin remarked:
   "A country doctor needs more brains to do his work passably than the 50 greatest industrialists in the world require."
   But the family doctor, for all his responsibilities, has gradually been relegated to the position of the Cinderella in his professional family. The specialists, the research men, the teachers and the consultants have become the glamor [sic] boys. They have reaped the lion's share of honors and publicity and the pretty scrolls in Latin and gold seals to decorate their office walls. The specialists have taken the cream of the financial rewards, too.
   The family doctor has been left with the drudgery, the routine, the minimum and uncertain income. The undying loyalty and respect of his patients has been about the highest compensation to which he could aspire.
   Now, once a year at least, a family doctor is to enjoy the professional attention and acclaim for a fleeting moment. A news dispatch says that the American Medical association has instituted this annual reward to help "restore the family doctor to his traditional position in American life."
  The good family doctor, the kind who was pictured in Sir Luke Fildes' famous painting (shown above) and the kind that most of us remember from childhood days, deserves this recognition and much more. With better recognition and much more. With better recognition of its importance, the role of the family doctor - the family friend and mentor - may prove more attractive to the bright and ambitious young graduates of our medical schools.1

Archer Chester Sudan, M.D.

As mentioned in the above newspaper article, the first American Medical Association "Family Doctor of the Year" award was given in late 1947 to Archer Chester Sudan, M.D. of Kremmling, Colorado. For 21 years he was the only doctor in the mountainous county of nearly 2000 square miles. 2

---

1. The top newspaper articlee has been pasted in a Chudnow Family photo album without a date or newspaper reference.
2."Doctoring in Middle Park from 1927 to 1947," http://www.skyhidailynews.com/article/20090119/NEWS/901199972


By Joel Willems,
Curator, Chudnow Museum of Yesteryear