A Sunday afternoon joyride with Dr. Charles Fitch

I've written several times about Dr. Charles Fitch (1825-1889), among Chariton's earliest physicians. After arriving in 1852, fresh from the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, Cleveland, he developed a multi-county practice that he served until death. Here's a link to his 1889 obituary, and a quote from it:

"Dr. Fitch was the only doctor for this new and wild territory, but nature and education had fitted him for it. He was robust in constitution and intrepid in character and possessed of a skill in medicine and surgery equal to the best. He has long been known as heroic in his treatment of patients, and he was certainly heroic in his exposures and fatiguing journeys to reach them. In those early days, the nights were never so dark, the storm never so severe, the bridgeless streams never so swollen, that he would not at once get astride his horse and start across trackless prairies and through deepest woods to get to the bedside of a sick patient."

And, "Up until a very few years ago, he was in his buggy almost continually going from bedside to bedside and riding in sunshine and in rain, under July suns and in January blizzards, in the heat of the day and the darkness of night."

Dr. Fitch apparently was a practical joker, too --- and one of his "jokes" was to introduce unsuspecting newcomers to the Lucas County territory by inviting them to accompany him on one of his marathon house-call journeys --- without warning them the trip was going to be a marathon.

Here's an account from The Chariton Leader of Aug. 17, 1878, of how a Sunday afternoon joyride went for L. E. Mayr, who had recently established a jewelry business on the square.

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On Sunday afternoon, Dr. Fitch, the most irrepressible practical joker in Iowa, drove along through the square with his nice rig till he espied our young friend, L.E. Mayr, the jeweler, lounging comfortably in the shade. "Take a little ride Mayr," says Doc. "Where you going Doc?" was the reply. "Oh, out in the country a little ways --- get in, it will do you good," was Doc's genial answer. The bait was tempting, and as he had never rode with Old Doc before, he climbed in.

Monday afternoon, L.E. Mayr climbed slowly and solemnly out of Doc.'s buggy in front of Storie's drug store, looking pale, thin, hungry and careworn, as though time had held its hands heavily upon his shoulders.

"Where've you been," said we anxiously a few minutes afterwards. "Taking a little ride with Doc. Fitch into the country," said he with a ghastly smile that caused the cold chills to run over us. "Been riding all night and all day and part of yesterday, about eighteen hours, over the roughest hills, brakes, brush and infernalist country on this continent with nothing to keep me from freezing but this thin coat," said he. We smiled sadly and remarked that Doc. Fitch often took men out riding with him into the country. Mayr don't want to go any more.