Is there a Doctor in the House?

One myth that most Woodsdale Kids will remember is that of the tonsils. Dr. Earl Phillips lived cattycorner from my grandfather and was our family doctor. Every kid in the neighborhood believed that Dr. Phillips had a glass case in his living room where he kept all the kids' tonsils that he had removed. One day my curiosity just got the best of me and I decided to go ask to see the tonsils.
Mrs. Phillips, who answered the door, seemed perplexed at my request and said there was no such glass case. Being the sceptic that I am, I asked if I could see their living room and sure enough! NO TONSILS! So I politely asked just what he did with them and was told, "Why, dear, I believe they are thrown away". I was so disappointed...a part of a child just tossed in the bin like so much garbage. Then and there I decided he'd never get mine.
When I was a little older I fell out of a tree and broke my arm. My dad ran every red light getting me to the hospital. When we arrived at the emergency room, I was shocked to see men everywhere covered in blood. There had been a bar fight and some had been cut with bottles, but I assumed that the hospital was responsible for their condition and was determined to leave. Now in the old days, they did not have Xrays, they had a "floroscope" which I held my arm up against and was told, "Yep, it's broken". My father was told I would have to spend the night. I was put in the pediatrics ward where the only other child was a girl that had been in a plane crash.
I was not about to admit how I had really injured my arm after hearing that so told her that I had been stepped on by an elephant....she believed me ..so I felt one up at least.
When my family needed a doctor, Dr. Phillips (who delivered all nine of us!) would come to our house. I never saw any money exchanged for these visits so assumed that doctors were rich men who were kind enough to take care of the sick for free. A few years later I had to take my sister to Dr. Phillip's office to have some warts removed from her hands. When done, the nurse asked me how I was going to pay for the visit. I was SHOCKED....PAY????...I said she had better talk to my mother about that.
We were lucky enough to have five doctors within hollering distance of our house, but Dr. Earl was special. I found out years later that my great uncle Jack had been a doctor. He had been the only doctor on a troop train in France in charge of 500 men during WWI, he had worked at the MAYO clinic, taught obstetrics at OV, and had treated Dr. Earl's son and cured him when there was no hope. So this was why Dr. Earl never charged my family any money. Dr. Earl died of hepatitis when he accidentally injected himself with a contaminated needle. What a great man he was!