THE HOSPITAL STEWARD

About the Book

The Story……. When the next generation of doctors arrived in the early 30s, they spent a few years getting settled in—getting to know the patients, the hospital, the other doctors, and spent time demonstrating their abilities and reliability. Then the polio epidemic was upon them. Fortunately the two lady doctors had volunteered in the Dallas Polio Center with emphasis on the breathing room where polio victims could not maintain their breathing because of paralyzed intercostal and diaphragm muscles. To the rescue, ‘The Iron Lung.’ The time spent explaining what polio was and what it did to the human body was enlightening. More than that, explaining how the ‘iron lung’ worked was revealing for this was a miracle treatment of an otherwise fatal and inhumane disease—no one should die of suffocation. The remainder of the story deals with differing methods the hospital administrators devised to guarantee the hospital’s survival. That included being certified as a regional medical center, adding several new diagnostic and therapeutic modalities, and becoming an official medical school outlying training center. In summary, the way medicine evolved and dealt with an incredible epidemic was in itself rewarding. However, how the characters changed throughout the fifty years is well presented to make this story ‘a keeper.’

About the Author

The author is a retired medical physician who, with his wife of 50+ years, spend their summers in Vermont and their winters in the Texas Rio Grande Valley. Early in his retirement before 2016, he enjoyed his lifelong hobby of guns and shooting. He participated in the shooting sports to include Cowboy Action Shooting, long range black powder, USPSA, trap, and sporting clays. At the same time he wrote a book on shooting a big bore handgun, a desk reference on volume reloading, and two fictions on the cowboy shooting sports. Since 2016 he has become a prolific writer of western fiction circa 1870-1900—the Cowboy Era. It was during the Covid pandemic, in a selfimposed quarantine, that he wrote a dozen books. A 250 newly adopted writing genre covered three phases: a bounty hunter’s life as a Paladin with his unique style of bringing outlaws to justice, a romantic encounter that changed his life, and the building of a lifelong enterprise that would support the couple’s future when they hanged up their guns—as each enterprise is different from book to book. Although three of his books have a sequel, the others are all a standalone publication. With a dozen books ready for publication in 2023, and to keep the subject matter varied, this author elects to publish them out of sequence. I hope you enjoy reading my books, and if you do, please leave a comment on the seller’s web site. Richard M Beloin MD