FREE HOME DELIVERY--
The way it was done in '41
Anyone who remembers the days of house calls and personalized care from public hospitals will find a fond look back at a kind of practice we may never see again in Dr. Edwin H. Riedell's Babies by the Dozen. Those too young to recall that time, people who have been brought up in an age of HMOs and thousand-dollar deductibles will find Riedell's brand of low-tech, high-commitment care almost unbelievable.
Babies by the Dozen is Riedell's account of his year as Chief Obstetrical Resident at Los Angeles County Maternity Service, where, in 1941, he delivered babies at home, for free, to dozens of low-income mothers throughout the city-and a more different world it could hardly have been. County Maternity's patients were not Patient #4205 or Claim #30756; they were Helen, Maria, and Rosemary. They were not shunted in one door to drop their loads and hustled out the other; they came for regular prenatal exams, and when their time arrived, Dr. Riedell and his student assistants went to them-arriving not in an ambulance with a team of paramedics and beeping gadgets, but in Riedell's own black CZ8 Chrysler Coupe, with their metal box full of sterile equipment in the trunk and their little black bags in hand. They received no ultrasound or amniocentesis; those things had not been invented. Instead they received the personal and experienced care of a physician dedicated not to his malpractice insurance policy, but to their own health and well-being and to those of their babies.
While the rest of America marched off to war following Pearl Harbor, Dr. Riedell stayed on the home front and practiced his own quiet heroism. Babies by the Dozen is full of the drama of life-and-death and of the human condition in general: a baby who nearly strangles on his umbilical cord; a life-threatening complication with no time to call an ambulance; an abusive father who demands to receive a son-at knifepoint.
But not all is tragedy-in fact, most of these cases end happily. On the contrary, Dr. Riedell's memoir is equally filled with compassion and the personal warmth only a dedicated physician can give: there is the family who prepares a huge feast to celebrate their first born son and thank their doctor; the woman whose life is saved in the nick of time; and the mother who names her child not only after Dr. Riedell, but after his two assistants as well.
Does such warm, humane care still exist today? Of course it does. But as the world of medicine gets more and more complicated, such care is harder and harder to find. Thus obstetricians, expectant mothers, and general readers alike will benefit from knowing how Dr. Riedell delivered his Babies by the Dozen.
About the Author Dr. Edwin H. Riedell, D.O., FACOS, M.D., was born at home in Anamoose, North Dakota in 1912, and moved with his father to California after losing his mother to the flu epidemic of 1918. He graduated in 1939 from the College of Osteopathic Physicians and Surgeons (COPS) as a Doctor of Osteopathy-fully licensed, but then unrecognized by M.D.s. He worked as an intern and resident at Monte Santo Hospital in Los Angeles until he was appointed Chief Obstetrical Resident of Los Angeles County Maternity Service in early 1941. In December 1941 he opened his own office in Whittier, California, where he practiced for the next fifty years, Dr. Riedell served as the first D.O. surgeon on the staff of Murphy Memorial Hospital in Whittier, and in 1946 was appointed Voluntary Obstetrical Surgeon at LA County Hospital, Unit II, where he worked pro bono for twenty years, becoming Senior Surgeon and Chief of the OB department and balancing a thriving private practice with this on-call volunteer treatment. At the same time he served as Professor of Gynecological Surgery at COPS (which later became the University of California at Irvine). In 1958 he received his Fellowship of the American College of Osteopathic Surgeons. In 1962 Riedell received his M.D. degree from the University of Califonia at Irvine.
In addition to his ob/gyn practice, Dr. Riedell was active in the community as Board Member of the Whittier YMCA, serving as its President in his sixth year, and as a member of the Whittier Rotary Club for 50 years, serving as its President in 1962–63.
Dr. Riedell retired from practice in 1993 and moved to San Jose, where he still resides. |
