Every Womans June 1952, by Ida Thomas. EDITOR'S NOTE: Each month you will and in your copy of Every Woman's a personality sketch of some interesting woman. If you have one to offer, send it to us. She need not be rich or famous but she will be a woman whose character and personality have influenced people she knew. If we find your contribution acceptable we will send you at once a check for $100.

Not in any list of Who's Who will you find the name of Dr. Martha [Ann Baxter] Doty. She was born in the last century just before the advent of the automobile, and few people outside a radius of fifty miles from her home In the southwestern Missouri hills ever heard of her. Few of those who were fortunate enough to have known her, ever called her Doctor, even after she went away to school and came back a full-fledged M.D.

Her mother before her [Martha Jane Malicote] was a midwife and herb woman. She carried her remedies in a pair of huge saddle-bags fastened behind an ancient side saddle on a stout horse and rode along the narrow trails among the hills and valleys to minister to those who called her. At an early age, Martha [Ann] began to ride with her mother to assist at a difficult child-birth or to help nurse a patient that the older woman considered too ill to be trusted to the care of relatives or neighbors. People called her Little Martha, then later they just called her Martha, and when she was old, she became Aunt Martha.

After she had ridden with her mother a few years, people said she was every bit as good, and as the older woman grew feeble with age, they came to depend more and more upon little Martha. At her mother's passing it seemed only natural that she should inherit the practice as well as the saddle-bags and carry on. By that time Martha was married and the mother of two children. In course of time she became the mother of four more. Yet, through the years, despite the cares and responsibilities of her own family she very seldom failed to respond to a call for help from those who had come to depend on her.

No matter if she was clumsy from the weight of an unborn child or was carrying in her arms a baby she felt she could not leave at home, day or night, rain or shine, she rode the trails to serve those who called her. In winter she wore a heavy coat and a wool scarf called a fascinator. It was decorated with a tuft of loops of yarn strung with beads that made sort of a top-knot above her face. Her baby would be wrapped in a blanket. In rainy weather a huge slicker kept them dry, and in rainy weather sunbonnets protected her head and the baby's from the hot sun.

Dr. Martha was not large. She was about five feet three Inches tall her weight ranged from a hundred-twenty pounds to a hundred forty pounds throughout hei life. People who remembered her as a young woman said she had been the prettiest girl in the country. But she was near middle age when I came to know her and the lines that a fine skin acquires from much exposure to the weather were beginning to mar her face. Her hands were red and knotted from hard work. Her hair was still beautiful long and thick, smooth as satin, a soft warm brown with copper hi-lights in the sunshine and only a few threads of gray that you had to look closely to see. She wore it in two braids wound around her head like a coronet. She had the merriest blue eyes and always a smile for everybody.

Her energy seemed to be boundless. Everything she did, she did swiftly. She always spoke so rapidly that unless you stopped whatever you were doing and listened, you were very likely to fail to get all she said. Being well informed on many subjects, she was an interesting talker, quite able to hold the listener's attention. On more than one occasion she turned that fact to account. Out in that country practically everybody had at least a few fruit trees growing around the place-apple, peach, pear, plum and sometimes cherry. But nobody cultivated blackberries because they grew wild along the fence rows and in every abandoned field. There were many of those on the hills. And scattered through the thousands of acres of unfenced forests there were rocky ridges where the timber was thin. Luscious big blue huckleberries grew on them, to be had merely for the picking. It was common practice in summer when the berries were ripe for several families to round up a lot of pails and pans load Into a. farm wagon and go to the hills to pick berries. I have made several such trips when Dr. Martha was along. She was a very fast picker, but she talked just as fast as she picked. Because we were always stopping to listen, we would be chagrined to find, when It came time to go home that she had the most berries.

Dr. Martha liked to excel in all farm activities. She would have the earliest and best garden, raise the most fryers, produce the most milk and butter from her cows.

She did all her own house work, including the laundry that she scrubbed on a washboard and boiled in an iron kettle over an open fire In the back yard. No matter how many clothes she had to wash she always had them on the line early, shining white and clean in the morning sunshine. She did all this in addition to her doctoring. When a call came she would leave everything and go.

When she came back she would take up where she had left off as though there had been no interruption. If she got four or five hours sleep out of each twenty-four that seemed to be all she required.

Many times when she had delivered a baby and finished the two or three hours before daylight, she would take a quilt and pillow and lie down on the floor by the stove or fireplace and fall asleep. As soon as it was light enough to see she would be up and on her way. She said that by sleeping before she went home she was ready to go to work as soon as she got there.

The people whom she served always said that she had a way with sick folks. Long before she ever used anything but the remedies brewed from the roots, bark and herbs she gathered In woods and field, she could stop a summer complaint and bring relief to a teething baby or cool a fever so rapidly that It seemed almost magical.

Because she wanted to give to her work the best of which she was capable she strove to improve by close observation and by reading every work on medicines and diseases that she was able to get. In the course of time she began to administer simple drugs. This aroused a storm of protest from two men who were doctors and had recently moved into adjoining neighborhoods. Their fight against her became so bitter that she decided to go away to medical school. By this time her children were grown and her home duties less exacting. In two years she came back with a license to use drugs in her practice.

We who had known and loved her all our lives were very proud of her. Sometimes we called her Dr. Doty but mostly we just called her "Martha" as we had before she went away to school. She hung her license in the parlor of her home. That was about all the difference we could notice, except that she did now make a small charge for her services when people were able to pay. For the others she still, as before, accepted whatever they wanted to give her. A few chickens or a pig, a sack of potatoes or corn or beans.

Sometimes people asked her why she didn't charge more. Her answer was always the same; that she charged when folks could pay and that it was no use to charge when they couldn't. She always said, "I have prospered. When I married we had forty acres and lived In a log house. Now we have more than two hundred acres and a fine six-room frame house. We have plenty. What more need anybody ask for?" She still wore the same coat and fascinator In winter, and sunbonnet in summer and made her calls on horseback as always. She might have been a better doctor after she received her degree. If so, we never noticed. She had always been a good one. That was taken as a matter of course.

The fact that the potions she brewed were about the worst tasting doses known to man was also taken as a matter of course. When she laughed at us and told us that sugar was no cure for disease and that the worse a medicine tasted the more likely it was to do us good, we believed her and obediently swallowed the dose. Not all of her medicines were bad tasting, particularly what she prepared for children and babies. But by far the most of it was. It somebody came to her and she could find nothing wrong with him, she decided that he was just pretending and was sure to fix him up a vile dose.

I remember being at her home once when a big husky young fellow came in. He looked perfectly well but said he had been ailing for several days and felt so bad that he could hardly stay up. She took his temperature, counted his pulse and asked him a good many questions. Presently she went out and fixed a dose of medicine which she gave him to take immediately. There was a cupful of It and he had a hard time, getting it down. As he handed the cup back to her he said, "My stars! Marthy, you don't reckon that will kill me do you?"

"Your blood can stand a little purifying and your liver needs waking up," she said. "Go on home. You'll feel better by tomorrow.,,

He looked a lot more sick when he left than when he had come in. After he had gone she turned to me. I must have looked disturbed for she began to laugh "Don't look so scared," she said. "I didn't poison him. There was not a thing the matter with him except laziness. They are working the road over on the other side of the township. He has been called out to work and was hunting an excuse to get out of going. What I gave him was a little infusion of dandelion and burdock root, both good blood purifiers but the worst tasting stuff that grows. With them I mixed some strong tea of senna leaves, and that didn't improve the taste any. Senna is a purgative that will act on his liver. He wanted to be sick and he will sure be sick today; but by tomorrow he will be all right. He is shiftless and good for nothing. It seemed drastic treatment, but it must have done him good for after that I never again heard of his being ailing to get out of work.

When folks were really sick Dr. Martha was all kindness and compassion and left nothing undone to bring about their healing.

She was a staunch Baptist and deeply religious. When all her remedies appeared to be doing no good she would pray fervently and long , wrestling mightily for the life of her patient.

Sometimes when a case was very bad at the start, she would call in one or the other of the two neighboring doctors to get their opinion on it. A few times she sent a patient to the hospital. She might have done that oftener but the nearest hospital was eighty miles away. Mostly she trusted in her own ability and had faith in the Lord.

So the years passed. Her children all married and made homes of their own. Her eyesight began to fail and her hair to whiten. Her shoulders became stooped and her face a network of lines and wrinkles. She was an old woman now whom people respectfully called "Aunt Martha." But still she rode the trails on her missions of healing.

At this time of her life she seldom attended any sort of public gathering except the services of her church.

To help bring out the coins, somebody usually baked a cake to be given to the prettiest girl present. This was determined by votes paid for at the rate of one cent each. Four or five girls would be started in the race by someone putting up one or two hundred votes for each of them. Then each girl's friends bought as many votes for her as possible. The girl who got the most votes got the cake.

This was usually carried on by the unmarried members of the congregation. On the night of this particular pie supper, Aunt Martha was present for the first time in several years. Her pies had been sold and the voting for the prettiest girl was In progress. About twenty-six hundred votes had been cast. The voting was almost at a stand still when an old timer sprang to his feet. "The reason you ain't gettin' enough votes," he shouted, "is that you ain't got the right woman put up. I am nominating Dr. Doty and buying five hundred votes to start her."

Aunt Martha was embarrassed and told him he ought to be ashamed to make fun of her. Everybody, she said, knew that she was just an ugly old woman. The tears began to run down her cheeks. But the old man shouted that he wasn't making fun of her. "You may not be pretty to these young sprouts," he said "but to us older folks who have seen you sitting by our loved ones hour after hour to fight down a fever or working so long and hard to help bring our young ones into life, you have got a beauty these kids likely won't ever equal." The crowd began to cheer and in a matter of minutes Aunt Martha received thirty-five hundred votes, which put her far ahead.

A few years later she gave up her medical practice. She said she was no longer able to ride the trails. For two years longer she worked as a nurse and then passed away with pneumonia contracted while nursing a case.

No, Dr. Martha's name will not be found in any popular list of Who's Who but in the hearts of those whose privilege it was to know her, she will always be remembered with great love. and honor.

THE END

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