My aunt, Bertha Devore, graduated from Oakland College of Medicine and Surgery in Oakland, CA in the early 1900’s. She set up her first office on the edges of Chinatown in San Francisco.
Late one night, there was a knock at the door. A man needed a doctor to go with him deep into the opium dens in Chinatown to rescue a friend who was smoking opium. He told her that she was the last hope as no male doctor would accompany him so she went. They got him out and she treated him as best she could.
She told me that she had heard that word had gotten around that this female doctor was not afraid to go into Chinatown alone after dark. She also told me that she was never afraid even though this was a time of tong wars.
When she died, I found her doctor’s bag in the stuff sent to my mother’s place in Gridley and kept it. I came across the bag when I was getting read to move from Marysville to Magalia. I buffed up the bag with neat’s foot oil and sent it to my grandnephew, Dr. Craig Ramsdell, who is an anesthesiologist in Detroit. I had emptied out all the bottles of laudanum and other medicines used at the time. I really wish I had kept them to go with the bag.
My aunt was never called, by the family, anything but Dr. Bertha or once in a while, Dr B. I remember that when she came for a visit, she would check all our blood pressures and ask about symptoms. I remember her putting a mustard plaster on my chest for a cold.
She had been a doctor in Oregon for 40 years in Drain living with my grandmother Devore. During World War II, she was one of the few doctors in the area as all the young men doctors had been taken into the services. Later on, she was a doctor for 10 years in San Jose, CA. She was well known in the Oregon area. A college history professor wrote a book, which I have, called “Victorian Women Travelers” which was dedicated to her since she had delivered the author, a woman, I believe, teaching at the University of Oregon.
She died in 1971 and was buried in a family plot in Yoncalla, Oregon.
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