The most ambitious undertaking in the medical history of Calhoun County came when a “Tonsil Clinic” was held at Hampton School. This was a weeklong affair, for the purpose of removing the tonsils and adenoids of the children in the county. In the 1920s the Public Health Officials decided that removing the tonsils and adenoids was a good way to improve the welfare of the American children. The reasoning was that the tonsils were an entry point for infection and removing them was a good preventive treatment. Tonsillectomies were believed to prevent future infection and improve the overall health of the child and very few children made it through childhood with tonsils intact. A campaign to educate the public started with articles in newspapers explaining the benefits of having children’s tonsils and adenoids removed.
Clinics were frequently set up at public schools where groups of children would come over a period of time and part with their tonsils. It was an accepted, and often welcomed, practice encouraged by parents around the country. Calhoun County was no exception.
It seems that all the doctors in the county participated, and two specialists from El Dorado, Dr. Howard and Dr. Mitchell, came to help. They worked in alternate shifts and the surgeon the child got depended on the day the child showed up. The Army usually helped with these clinics by sending cots, blankets, and often nurses, and they sent cots and blankets to Hampton, which were set up in the halls of the school. It is unknown if nurses were sent. Some families who preferred to use their own cots brought them from home.
The patients were anesthetized and one of the husky Whitehead boys acted as attendant to lift the patient from the table to his cot after the surgery was over. Some of the children stayed overnight at the school, attended to by a parent. It was probably too great a risk, if an emergency arose, to go home and get that far from the doctor. Some of the children stayed with friends or relatives so they would be near the doctor if he were needed. Apparently, there were no serious problems. It is recorded that a couple of children had excessive bleeding, and had to be hospitalized in ElDorado, and that one girl was left with a nervous “tic” that required a very expensive medication for a time thereafter.
Willma Humphreys-Newton reports that the disposal of the remains was gruesome. The removed tonsils and adenoids were tossed into buckets and tubs for carry-out boys to take to a big hole on the back of the lot to dump when they were full. Neighbors who lived nearby report that the buzzards had a good time for a few days.
Modern standards were unknown and the procedures for testing blood were primitive by today's standards. There was only the most limited sanitation but everyone in Calhoun County apparently survived, including the carry out boys.
Source: One Hundred Twenty-Five Years of Medicine and Medical Men in Calhoun County, Arkansas 1850-1975 by Willma Humphreys Newton; ‘Milestones of the Past Fifteen Years in Public Health Nursing” by Dorothy Deming RN, FAPHA; The Sylva Herald and Ruralite, Oct. 20, 2021, “A Public Health Strategy and a Forgotten Public Panic”
