Recollection of the Clinic

1940 snow fall?

Late '40s or early '50s?

My brother Bruce sent me the following memories of the old Sugar Land Clinic:

I was looking at these two pictures (see above). The first may have been taken during a famous snowfall in the 1940s, and the second in the late '40s or early '50s, judging from the cars.

In the earlier pic, the building is called the "Carlos A. Slaughter Clinic", and in the latter "Medical and Surgical Clinic”. I think the building may have been designed for Dr. Slaughter.  I don’t know who paid for it, whether he or Imperial, or why it changed names.  I am pretty sure the latter picture was taken before they remodeled it in the mid- to late '50s.

It brought back a few memories.  I still remember the old configuration and where the original exam rooms were.

Remember as a pre-schooler, Mom and Dad thought I was ignoring them when the spoke to me until they finally decided to take me to the doctor to get my ears cleaned out?  They took me in an exam room along the southwest, front side of the building. Dorothy Gandy was the nurse for Dr. Kuykendall.  They came at me with an emesis basin full of water and a large syringe.  They started squirting water in my left ear.  I kept thinking they were running water completely through my skull and it would exit my right ear. Mom had to hold me down.  I pitched a fit, yelling and screaming.

I remember a second time being seen in one of those exam rooms for a body rash.  I didn’t like that either.  They kept trying to pull my pants down so they could see the rash, and that didn’t sit well with me.

The Ebola scare reminded me of something.  Do you remember the special foot-pedaled sinks in each exam room?  I wonder how many old-timers remember details like this about the clinic.  As I think about it, that was pretty opulent for a small town clinic in the '40s and '50s.  You don’t see anything approximating that in doctors’ offices today.

Bruce