Lawrence has changed in many ways since the time it was founded as a modest settlement on the prairie in 1854, and one thing that has changed along with it is the kind of health care available to its residents.

No doubt, the state of medicine in the city’s early years — and on into the opening decades of the 20th century — would appear primitive compared with the high-tech treatments and medicines enjoyed by Lawrence residents today.

While there’s no one alive today who can testify firsthand to what it was like to be a patient or a doctor here 100 or 150 years ago, there are some in Lawrence who can recall what health care was like in the city going back half a century.

And judging by their memories, it’s safe to say things were very different then.

Gloria Pringle, who serves as secretary to Gene Meyer, president and chief executive officer of Lawrence Memorial Hospital, started work at that institution in 1953.

The hospital itself had only been in existence slightly more than 30 years — it was established Jan. 17, 1921 — when Pringle began work there.

Pringle, who lives outside Baldwin with her husband, Robert, was 19 when she began her job at LMH. She worked from 1953 to 1960, had a four-year break in service, then returned to work in 1964. She has been there ever since, celebrating 40 years of continuous service this year.

“I came into the business office in 1953. You went into the office and you did everything. You stood up and answered the old switchboard that had the plug-ins; you would run it with one hand and write with the other,” Pringle recalls.

“We admitted and dismissed patients; we scheduled surgeries. The staff wasn’t that big back then, and we didn’t have that many physicians or beds at the time. The emergency room wasn’t staffed; there was a bell to ring for service. When that bell was rung, whoever was available would run down and answer it and see what had come in. Then you would get a nurse to come down and call the family doctor (of the patient), or the doctor on call.”

Simpler times

LMH gave Pringle her first job.

“I had attended KU for a year and had started my sophomore year, but then I quit, came out here and interviewed for a job. They told me to come to work the next day,” says the Satanta native.

“You didn’t have a job description back then. If we weren’t busy in the office, we’d go to medical records and help them. You went wherever you could help. There was a lot of closeness, and everyone knew everyone in the hospital. We even had a girls basketball team, just whoever wanted to play from nursing, or the lab.”

One of the differences between health care available to Lawrence residents then and now stands out starkly in Pringle’s mind.

“I can tell you when I started in 1953, we still had to ask, when the doctors called in (to admit someone to the hospital), if the patient was white or black,” she says.

The process for keeping track of charges and billing patients was vastly simpler.

“When they figured the bills, they used to bring the charts down and the ladies in accounting, the bookkeepers, would read the charts in order to see what the doctor ordered. Then they would go back and check to see if the tests were actually done, and then charge for them,” Pringle says.

“Nurses would put down little marks next to pills (listed on the charts) as they gave them out. The accounting people would count them, and they would be charged accordingly. They would turn around to their little typewriters and type the bill.”

The costs of health care were much lower, years ago.

“I did look back on one of my old records from 1960, and the (hospital) room rate was $15 a day. Rooms are now $645. And insurance accepted things; they didn’t rule the world back then,” Pringle says.

‘Explosive’ changes

Dr. Phillip Godwin, a retired Lawrence physician, has also witnessed how health care has changed over the years in the city.

Godwin, 76, was concurrently an anesthesiologist for 38 years and ran a family practice for 43 years.

He established the anesthesia department at LMH and served as chief of anesthesia, established the hospital’s respiratory care unit and, along with Dr. Monte Belot, set up the coronary care unit there. Godwin was on staff at LMH for 43 years.

He graduated from Kansas University in 1951 and from KU’s medical school in 1955.

How were things different, as a physician, when he first started practicing medicine here?

“It depended more on (the doctor’s) clinical skills, and there was a more personal relationship with your patients. They were responsible for paying for their own health care, rather than third parties. The only health insurance was Blue Shield, which paid for surgery but not very much for other medical things,” he says.

“To do any testing, like an upper GI (gastrointestinal) or X-ray procedures, you had to admit a patient to the hospital, because they were not paid for as an outpatient.”

Medical technology has, of course, changed greatly across the decades.

“In anesthesia, we used explosive agents like ether and cyclopropane, and now we don’t use any explosive agents. That allows the use of cautery (using heat to close incisions), and we don’t have the expenses of keeping everything static-free,” Godwin said.

When he came on staff at LMH, there was no way to continually monitor the heart while a patient was under anesthesia, except to feel his or her pulse at the wrist. Godwin introduced continually running electrocardiograms (EKGs), which are used all the time during surgeries today.

The way surgery is performed has changed tremendously during the course of his long career.

“The introduction of endoscopic surgery has converted a gall bladder removal from a major operation that required maybe a week of hospitalization and six weeks of recuperation to something that’s little more than an outpatient procedure,” Godwin recalls.

Reducing stigma

Mental health care for Lawrence residents is also far different today than it used to be years ago.

In the city’s earlier days, mental illness was misunderstood and those who were ill were banished to institutions, or else led lives at the edges of society.

“I think there was really a difference between if you were poor and if you had money,” says Pat Roach, chief operations officer of Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center, 200 Maine. “Poor people were either in asylums or homeless folks, very isolated from society. If you had some money you were able to spend some time in a hospital, or your family took care of you.”

Bert Nash, an outpatient mental health center, was established in 1950 in memory of Dr. Bert Allen Nash, an educational psychologist at KU. Nash, who died in 1947, was a longtime advocate of the need to provide mental health services to patients in their own community.

Bert Nash provides a wide array of services to adults with chronic and persistent mental illness and children with severe emotional disturbance.

One of the biggest obstacles for people living with mental illness used to be the sense of stigma, a belief that such suffering indicated a moral or character flaw within the person.

“At that time (in the city’s earlier days), I don’t think people talked about mental health disorders. People I meet today will share with me their issues with mental health, the medications that have helped them or their family members. Mental illness still carries a stigma that’s different than it is for physical disorders. It’s better, but we’re not there yet,” Roach says.

The situation for people living with mental illness is much improved today, in Lawrence and elsewhere, she says.

“If you had a disorder at the turn of the (20th) century, you would probably be living in an institution. Now, you’d be receiving services in the community, you’d probably have a job or you’d be in school. It is a huge difference.”