Doc: Then and Now with a Montana Physician

DOC is an engaging memoir from Ron Losee, a Yale Medical School graduate who, in 1949, headed west with his wife, Olive, and their two-year-old daughter to find a place to settle down and practice medicine. The four hundred townspeople of Ennis, Montana, needed a doctor, and Ronald E. Losee, M.D., became "Doc." Losee's patients are a broad panoply of characters. Townspeople, cattle ranchers and migrant workers, miners and fly fishermen, new mothers and old folks--each, in his or her own way, preserving an American way of life that is rapidly vanishing. With them, Losee learns from his failures and rejoices in his triumphs. He stays up all night before each delivery, worrying through every possibility of diaster; performs appendectomies on a rickety operating-room table; repairs fractured tibiae; and even amputates a leg with a common hacksaw. Eventually, his yearning for knowledge propels him into a two-year stint at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal for an orthopaedic residency. He returns to Montana a specialist, and so begins the orthopaedic work that gains him, in his middle years, international recognition as a pioneer and important contributor to the understanding of the "trick" knee, and developer of an early operative procedure to remedy this, the "Losee Operation." His voice is all his own--real, earthy, outspoken, robust. Ron Losee has written a moving account of his doctoring years, evoking the feel of small-town life, the pioneering spirit of the West, the myriad moral dilemmas a rural doctor faces, and the courage and commitment that are the heart of his way of medicine.

Review :
"A giant of a story by and of a giant of a man. I enjoyed it immensely." --John A. Feagin, Jr. M.D., Duke University Medical Center "These memoirs . . . combine compassion with pragmatism, humor and captivating storytelling." --Publishers Weekly ""Doc "is a great book; it brings back the good old times when doctor-patient relationships were close . . . The many patient histories and anecdotes make lively reading. The value of the book is in its recording of the way medicine was traditionally practiced." --Hans Kraus, M.D. ""Doc is a witty, moving, insightful memoir--filled with the great gusto of Ron's personality and animated by his passion for medicine; it is as much about the excitement of scientific discovery as it is about the joys of country doctoring. I couldn't put it down." --Gordon G. Brittan, Jr., Regents Professor of Philosophy, Montana State University "Doc Losee gives the reader vivid images of people, places, and incidents, and threaded carefully through each are glimpses of the human qualities that enable the reader to see both the awesome and the everyday in his career as a country doctor. The stories are told by a storyteller with passion, humor, and honesty." --Linda Shadiow, Professor, Northern Arizona University "Dr. Losee's graphic descriptions of his varied cases makes for exciting reading, and his obvious concern for his patients is heart-warming. The operation he devised is used everywhere today by orthopaedic surgeons. But even more important, his book is a light in the darkness from which everyone can derive inspiration and guidance. "Doc is a gem." --Dr. Benjamin Sherman