German
Lutherans are often characterized (sometimes in humor by Garrison Keillor) as
people who just want to fit in. Samuel J. Crumbine’s German Lutheran
parents emigrated to Pennsylvania, where he was born in Emlenton in 1862. As a young man he worked in Cincinnati as a
prescripton clerk and then moved to Spearville, KS, operating a drug store
(It’s a tiny town next to Dodge City but in 1870s Dodge was the tiny town
compared to Spearville.) He returned to
Cincinnati and graduated from College of Medicine and Surgery in 1888. He practiced in Dodge City and married Katherine
Zuercher in 1890. Does this sound fit-in
ordinary? But life in Dodge City in the
1880s was rough-and-tumble with trail drives.
And Dodge had an epidemic of tuberculosis. Crumbine knew this was caused by germs that
spread by hands and house flies. Flies
flocked around outhouses and the tuberculosis infested dung, then spread it to
food and dishes. It was spread also by use of a common water dipper and bucket
for drinking and common towels. Doc
began a newspaper crusade to raise awareness, printed fliers and talked to
saloon owners. His articles tried to get people to install screens and shut up
homes to keep out flies. Nationwide,
150,000 people died of TB every year.
But Sam’s articles didn’t change the non-hygenic lifestyles much. The legendary lawmen of Dodge City—Wyatt
Earp, Bat Masterson, Luke Short and Bill Tilghman, were Doc Sam’s
contemporaries. On one occasion, he helped Tilghman through pneumonia. The
legendary lawman, later a US Marshall in Oklahoma, became one of the few to
live to an old age (killed, serving in Cromwell).
Crumbine’s campaign against TB did
not go unnoticed. He was appointed to
the State Board of Health in 1899 and became part-time secretary and executive
officer of the board in 1904. Then in 1905 something interesting happened. He got a visit from a Cub Scout leader who
had fashioned a piece of screen to a yardstick.
It was dubbed the Fly Bat by the scouts and they had fun killing flies
with it. Still thinking about this
invention, Crumbine attended a baseball game.
The game was a pitcher’s duel.
When one of the home team’s players got on 3rd base the fans
began to cheer for a sacrifice fly ball to the outfield. Some guy behind Sam yelled, “Swat one!” Doc
had a eureka moment. He would promote
the fly bats as “fly swatters” and he wrote another article entitled “Swat The
Fly”. It was a clean hit. Evidently, people decided that killing flies
was more effective than trying to keep insects at bay. New tuberculosis cases fell by 80% in one
year in the Dodge City area. Two years later, Crumbine quit his private
practice to further his campaign. He got
brick factories in Coffeyville and Peru to print “Don’t Spit On Sidewalk” on
their pavers sold to cities all over the country. Posters showing Doc Sam’s mustachioed
benevolent face with the slogan, “Ban the public drinking cup, out with the
common roller towel, and swat the fly” gave him an international
reputation. Crumbine also warned against misleading labels on food and drugs. He
authored Frontier Doctor:
The Autobiography of a Pioneer on the Frontier of Public Health,
which described his medical practice on the Kansas frontier in Dodge City.
In
1911, during his tenure on the State Board of Health, Crumbine was appointed
dean of the University of Kansas Medical School. He left Kansas in 1923 and
moved to New York where he served as executive director of the American Child
Health Association. After retirement in 1936 Crumbine moved to Long Island, New
York, but returned to Kansas for speaking engagements on several occasions
before his death, July 12, 1954. The Crumbine Award was established in 1955 in
his memory and is awarded each year by the food and drug industry to encourage
public health.
But
most of the general public today wouldn’t have know him, except that a certain
TV Western, “Gunsmoke” used Crumbine’s life story and mustache to create a
character known as Doc Adams played by Milburn Stone.
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