Doc: True Tales of Mishaps, Emergencies, and Miracles from a Montana Physician

The four hundred townspeople of Ennis, Montana needed a doctor and Ronald E. Losee, MD, became "Doc." Learning from his failures and rejoicing in his triumphs, he performed appendectomies on a rickety operating-room table, repaired fractured tibiae, and even amputated a leg with a hacksaw. After a two year stint at t he Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, Losee returned to Montana to begin the pioneering work that gained him an international reputation. This moving account of his time there evokes both the feel of small-town life and the pioneering spirit of the West.

"A reviewer of Doc once said that we should get Doc Losee to a biochemist and clone him. The medical profession needs many more doctors like him. And surely they do. Against the immense tangled often self-serving machinery and beauocracy that charactertise the current medical world--often money-grubbing, in thrall of the pharmaceutical companies and complexity of insurance practices and the god Mammon, the very human doctor in Doc is all a doctor should be. He is absolutely committed to the profession of doctoring to those who need medical help. Losee is that rare bird who just loved the unending challenges of being a small-town doctor (in his case, for Ennis, Montana), and dealing with every imaginable medical need, from delivering babies fro repairing broken limbs. He deals with hundreds of emergencies, makeshift amputations (some without the benefit of anesthesia, requiring ice or liquor) snakebites, kidney stones, bone boils and smashed bones--the stunning variety of medical problems in a down with limited facilities and often only one doctor to handle everything. And he is always so eager to learn more that in his thirties he went back to college to study more orthopedics and developed a significant advance in the treatment for the trick knee. You cannot help but love the way Doc Losee brings love and immense dedication to his huge number of different challenges--and he lives, without a moment's complaint, a life of doctoring far removed from the immensely complex insurance issues and aggressive lawyers that are so common to many modern doctors' lives. Losee wants to heal; he wants to alleviate pain' he wants to learn; he has no interest in performing an unneeded operation to finance a trip to Caracas. What a healing thing, to read this remarkable book, to know that such a man has worked in the medical professor, that a more dedicated medicine is possible than the one most of us experience. I just love this man, and this exciting, revealing, earthy, and human book." --Nick Lyons, author of Spring Creek and editor of Hemingway on Fishing "A reviewer of Doc once said that we should get Doc Losee to a biochemist and clone him. The medical profession needs many more doctors like him. And surely they do. Against the immense tangled often self-serving machinery and beauocracy that charactertise the current medical world--often money-grubbing, in thrall of the pharmaceutical companies and complexity of insurance practices and the god Mammon, the very human doctor in Doc is all a doctor should be. He is absolutely committed to the profession of doctoring to those who need medical help. Losee is that rare bird who just loved the unending challenges of being a small-town doctor (in his case, for Ennis, Montana), and dealing with every imaginable medical need, from delivering babies fro repairing broken limbs. He deals with hundreds of emergencies, makeshift amputations (some without the benefit of anesthesia, requiring ice or liquor) snakebites, kidney stones, bone boils and smashed bones--the stunning variety of medical problems in a down with limited facilities and often only one doctor to handle everything. And he is always so eager to learn more that in his thirties he went back to college to study more orthopedics and developed a significant advance in the treatment for the trick knee. You cannot help but love the way Doc Losee brings love and immense dedication to his huge number of different challenges--and he lives, without a moment's complaint, a life of doctoring far removed from the immensely complex insurance issues and aggressive lawyers that are so common to many modern doctors' lives. Losee wants to heal; he wants to alleviate pain' he wants to learn; he has no interest in performing an unneeded operation to finance a trip to Caracas. What a healing thing, to read this remarkable book, to know that such a man has worked in the medical professor, that a more dedicated medicine is possible than the one most of us experience. I just love this man, and this exciting, revealing, earthy, and human book." --Nick Lyons, author of Spring Creek and editor of Hemingway on Fishing