Health conditions in Burlington, North Carolina, during the Great Depression
Lupton discusses the general health of the working community in Burlington, North Carolina, during the 1930s. According to Lupton, most health problems at the time were resultant of poor nutrition, which he understood as a byproduct of the economic crisis generated by the Great Depression. At the time, Lupton was especially concerned about the healthcare of pregnant women and he explains his own policy of encouraging pregnant women to seek medical care throughout the duration of their pregnancy, rather than following local customs of waiting until the time of labor.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Carroll Lupton, April 2, 1980. Interview H-0028. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- MARY MURPHY:
-
Well, were the people generally healthy? Were there any problems that
were very
- CARROLL LUPTON:
-
We had some nutritional problems. But I don't think it . . . pertained to
one particular area, but it was more or less to the economic condition
of the people. Like when we went there. Every year, when I first went
there, one or two little children died with diptheria, because they
hadn't been vaccinated. And they called the doctor when the kid, they
thought it had what they called "croup." You know what
croup is? That's when they can't breathe.
[gasps in imitation]
After about twenty-four, forty-eight hours of that, they'd call
the doctor, and says, "The baby's had croup." Or the
child. And you look in their throat. Walk in the room, and you smell the
stuff. (Some of us could, and some couldn't. I don't know, some people's
noses are better than the others.) And you walk in, and you find the kid
is dying when you see it.
I used to, lots of times, take them in my car; I'd go get them to the
Duke Hospital, from down in that area, in about thirty-five, forty
minutes. That's about as good as you can do today. When we used to take
off with the mother and the kid, we weren't fooling, because I knew they
had to be somewhere they could get expert attention. Once in a while,
we'd get one that lived; about half of them would be gone, twenty-four,
forty-eight hours.
We used to get some nutritional diseases, like anemias, and pellagra. I
would see some pellagra every year. And they'd come out of that area,
and areas like that. Now, there were other
villages around Burlington who had these textile peoples, and we had
tenant farmers out in the country. Although they had gardens, some of
them were not too industrious about their gardens, and the diets. They
were eating fat pork and cornbread and And they'd get pellagra. Now we
don't see that anymore. Most everybody has a decent diet. A vitamin
deficiency, in the United States, for a person who's eating a regular
diet, is almost unheard of; contrary to the fact that they sell millions
of dollars worth of vitamins every year. People get them whether they
need them or not, and think it helps.
It wasn't customary, too much, when I started, for women to go for
prenatal care. I used to fuss at them about that. Most of the time,
they'd wait till they got in labor, and then call the doctor, if they
could find him. I used to insist on it, and fuss at them something
terrible if they waited until the last minute. I wanted them as soon as
they thought that they were pregnant, to come and see. Come in at
regular intervals: weight blood pressure, and see about whether they
were anemic, and get the things that the women ought to have for that. I
think that's pretty common, all over the country, in the last twenty,
twenty-five years, now, for pre-natal care.
But that was not the case in those days, and those people, when we (1244)
first started, they wanted to know what in they world you want to get up
there for so early. They want to wait and call you at the last minute. I
said, "Well, we might want to go fishing, or take a vacation
trip, or something, and we want to know who's expecting, who isn't; and
if we've got to get somebody to substitute for us-another
doctor-while we're gone, we want to be able to alert him as to
what might happen." And to tell the lady, have
the nurses get word to her: that I might not be there, and
in case I wasn't, who was going to be covering.