The One-Eyed Surgeon with Only One Thumb

Harry C. Barber, MD was born on a farm on the bluffs overlooking the Missouri River near Orrick, Missouri. He attended one room school until he learned everything they had to teach before attending High School in Richmond, Missouri. Living on a farm, he was not permitted to attend school until after the crops were harvested and then only until it was time to plow and plant in the spring. His father let him attend school the whole school year his senior year so he could take algebra to qualify for graduation. Harry always read every textbook from cover to cover so missing school did not diminish his learning. After high school he attended a teachers college for the summer to obtain a teaching certificate that allowed him to teach in a one room school near Richmond. He lived at home to save his money for college. He had an uncle who was a physician who inspired him to try to become a doctor. About the time he graduated from high school, he had a hunting accident. He loved to walk the banks of the Missouri River to hunt ducks and geese. As he set his shotgun against a fence so he could climb the fence, the gun discharged, blasting away his left thumb and damaging his left eye. Since there were no antibiotics then, he lost the eye to infection. This did not diminish his desire to become a physician. He overcame poverty and many other difficulties to graduate from the University of Missouri with B.A. and B.S. degrees and enroll in the Missouri University two-year Medical School. He finished his medical school at Washington University Medical School at the start of the great depression and went on to do a rotating internship at Missouri Baptist Hospital. He was paid twenty-five dollars a month plus room and board. The house officers all stole soap and toothpaste from the wards to same money. Harry took a job with a general practitioner in Normal, Illinois and did well. His boss, Ferdinand McCormick decided that Harry could become a good surgeon, in spite of his lost thumb and theoretical loss of depth perception from the loss of his left eye, if he had some surgical residency training. Dr. McCormick sent Harry and Edith to Philadelphia for six months of surgery residency and covered their expenses. Three months after they returned, Dr. McCormick died suddenly, so Harry took over the practice and continued to do surgery. Harry drew a croud when he did the first blood transfusion in Normal that used citrated blood rather that the older push-pull method with the patients side by side on gurneys. He developed the use of Vaseline to dissolve the tar from tar burns without injuring the burned skin. When a boy was so badly burned from gasoline in a truck full of migrant workers that they could not find a vein, he used a Terkle needle to give him a blood transfusion into his sternum. Harry loved to work with good tools. He had machinists make stainless steel parts to replace the wood in drills and screwdrivers so he could use them in the operating room and sterilize them with steam. When World War II broke out, he enlisted for “non-overseas” duty as a medical officer, but spent two years above the Arctic Circle in Greenland, repairing war injuries from the battles in Europe. After his extended stay in Greenland he was transferred to Ashford General Hospital where he reconstructed wounded soldiers until his discharge. Harry did some of his most creative work patching up wounded soldiers in Greenland. He told many stories about his work there which are included in the book. Work there was either feast or famine, depending on the battles in Europe. He also took care of the Eskimos and was rewarded with gifts of model kayaks made with bones and seal skin, dolls made of leather and fur, ivory carvings, and native mukluks (shoes). While in the arctic he became friends with Captain Bob Bartlett, the sea captain who took Robert Perry to the North Pole in 1907. He spent many hours swapping stories with Captain Bartlett on board his wooden Newfoundland Schooner, the Ellie M. Morrissey that was used as a supply ship. The Germans had mined the coast of Greenland, so wooden ships that did not set off the magnetic mines were used for supply ships. Harry became an avid reader of books on arctic exploration, especially those written by Bartlett. Along the way he made many contributions to the care of soldiers and civilians. He returned to Normal to become a leader in the medical community and treat many unusual cases. He was the general practitioner and surgeon who did surgery in the morning, saw patients in the office all afternoon and made house calls after dinner every night. He lived three blocks from the Hospital, so he was often called for emergencies, even when he was not the doctor on call. He would pull his trousers on over his pajamas and head for the hospital where the nurses were waiting to let him in the back door. Harry rode troop trains as the doctor during the war, taking him through most of the passes through the Rocky Mountains. He loved to travel. Much of his travel during his practice years was to medical meetings in the U. S. and foreign countries. After he retired Harry and his wife, Edith, traveled the world, but he always said that there was “no place like the good old U.S.A.” When Harry was fifty-nine, he had a gall bladder attack which he described as excruciating pain. He immediately had one of the other surgeons remove his gall bladder. During his three week recuperation, his patients would not leave him alone. They would not see the doctor who was covering Harry’s practice, but came by the house and called the house constantly. Edith packed their bags and they headed to the Ozarks. They fell in love with the Ozarks and bought a vacation house there. A year later, Edith convinced Harry to retire to Bull Shoals, Arkansas to hunt and fish. Harry spent many hours hunting quail and fishing for walleye pike and rainbow trout. He and his friends would pick wild barriers and plums to make jams and jellies. He smoked rainbow trout, tended his boathouse, mowed the lawn and played shuffleboard on his court in the back yard. He led a very active life. He had coronary artery bypass surgery when he was seventy but continued to be very active. After fourteen years in Arkansas, they moved to Phoenix, Arizona for a less active retirement. When it was too hot in Phoenix in the summers, they went back to Illinois where Harry raised tomatoes or to Gunnison Colorado where he fished the tributaries of the Gunnison River. Edith was discovered to have endometrial cancer in about 1980. A year later she developed leukemia. She had some improvement with chemotherapy, but died in December of 1983, leaving Harry by himself in the house they had just purchased in Mesa, Arizona. Harry’s oldest son Bruce developed ulcerative colitis when he was sixteen and fought it the rest of his life. Harry relied on other physicians to treat Bruce and never believed that stress is a major factor in this disease. When Bruce contracted a strange lung disease at age forty-five and then Cholangiocarcinoma (cancer of the bile ducts in the liver) just before his fiftieth birthday, Harry could not convince him to change doctors because of the bad advice Bruce received from his physicians. Harry found this disappointing and frustrating. Harry battled prostate cancer for about ten years with hormone therapy and TURs (transurethral resections) until it finally caused his death at age 83.