House Calls

In this age of triple-bypass surgery, organ transplantation, in vitro fertilization, and other high-tech medical miracles, the friendly country doctor who acts as pharmacist, surgeon, ambulance driver, counselor, and priest is a vanishing - if not extinct - breed.

For more than forty years, Dr. Marvin Brown served the medical needs of the inhabitants in and around a small town in central New York State - a rural area encompassing some 400 square miles - armed only with his trusty "black bag" and a generous measure of hope and compassion. Neither rain nor snow nor dead of night could keep Dr. Brown from his appointed rounds - whether the call was a life-threatening childbirth or a twisted finger. To reach his patients, many of whom lived far from paved roads or telephones, he was often forced to resort to such creative modes of transportation as sleighs or snowshoes. In the frequent absence of heat, light, and electricity, his intuition was often the only thing standing between life and death.

Marvin Brown's career as a family practitioner began in 1938 and spanned the decades that saw some of the greatest medical advances in history. In this warm, intimate memoir, he describes how the advent of wonder drugs and vaccines, as well as the development of new, sophisticated equipment and techniques, revolutionized the practice of medicine over the course of his lifetime.

Throughout the challenges, frustrations, rewards, and triumphs of his chosen path, Dr. Brown was blessed with the unfailing love and support of his beloved wife and children.

House Calls is a love story: a deeply moving story of the love felt by a man for his family, his community, his country, and his profession - an inspiring story told with humor, honesty, and compassion.