Volume 60, Number 3 - Summer 2009

 

By Cynthia Melody, MNA

Our family’s tradition of posting Christmas wish lists on the refrigerator after Thanksgiving dinner continues even as my children move into their mid-twenties. Through the years the lists have documented their changing interests and priorities and have become increasingly more well-defined to ensure a greater probability of getting exactly what they want, often going so far as to identify where Santa can find one thing or another. 

This past holiday my son, a medical student at Touro University, posted a list that included, among other wishes, a vintage doctor’s bag, along with a helpful reference to ebay. After venturing into online auctions for the first time, I quickly gave up, thinking there just had to be another way to find a vintage doctor’s bag. Maybe I could ask around. If I asked physicians who knew me, maybe one would like to give me their old doctor’s bag. So I placed a classified ad in SCMA News Briefs, our monthly newsletter, under the heading “Wanted: Vintage Doctor’s Bag.”

Within a few days I received a call from Dr. L. Reed Walker, who had been given a doctor’s bag by the family of another physician who had recently passed away. He was sure the old family doctor would want to pass his bag along to someone continuing the tradition of doctoring. He brought the bag to my office the next day. 

At first I was simply delighted to have a vintage doctor’s bag for my son. We admired the bag, its well-used appearance, and its fine old smell of medicine and vitamins. Then we reminisced about the old doctor. The more I learned about the bag and its former owner, the more I came to appreciate the essence of the family physician and the era in which he practiced medicine. 

The name of the bag’s previous owner was Dr. Robert Mollenhauer, who practiced family medicine in Sonoma County from 1952 until he retired in 1997, often making house calls with his leather doctor’s bag, a fine specimen of old-time medicine. Made by Schell Emdee, it’s a supple brown leather bag, flat-bottomed with rounded sides and slightly elongated. Two large handles connect to metal rings on the bag and come together over the top for easy carrying. It has a working lock with the original key. Inside are two large divided compartments with snap-lock covers, one on each side. 

I created a flier about the good doctor with a picture of him and the bag, and gave it to my son to keep with the bag. Since then I’ve been contacted by several other physicians wanting to donate their old bag to a medical student—each surprised that a young physician in the making would want the bag but nonetheless honored that their bag would stay in the medical community. 

Every bag has a story, so I’ve created a “Doctor’s Bag Biography” for each one and have given them away to other medical students who were as honored as my son to carry on the tradition of the doctor’s bag.

In the not too distant past, the doctor’s bag was a standard item when doctors visited patients scattered throughout the countryside. Away from the gleaming technology that has transformed medicine, the bag carried hope for those who needed the help of a doctor. The humble doctor’s bag has come to represent, in many ways, the altruistic nature of those called to the medical profession. 

I need to make more space in my office for the growing collection of these magnificent old doctor’s bags. In the meantime, perhaps some of our readers would care to respond to the ad below. 

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