Looking Back: Part 1

Doctor revolt at Western Maryland Home, Infirmary

James Rada

Editor's note: This is Part 1 of a two-part column.

In 1893, Dr. G.L. Carder, surgeon-in-chief for the Western Maryland Hospital, needed to operate on a patient, but he couldn't find a doctor in town who would administer the chloroform to the patient. On another case of Carder's, when a woman died after a particularly difficult surgery, other doctors started rumors that Carder had been guilty of malpractice. So prevalent were the rumors that the body had to be exhumed to clear Carder's name.

It wasn't that Carder was a bad surgeon. Far from it. He had graduated from Baltimore Medical College in 1892 at the top of his class. He had come to the forerunner of the Western Maryland Health System with glowing recommendations.

"He was a young man on the threshold of life, who had the highest recommendations, and the board would not be justified in taking him by the neck and heels and throwing him out in the street without good grounds," said George Pearre, hospital superintendent, in the Cumberland Evening Times.

The problem was Carder had come here. He wasn't from Cumberland and he didn't live in Cumberland or Allegany County once he did come here.

And for that sin of birth, the doctors in town had banded together to force Carder out of the top medical slot of the hospital.

The Western Maryland Hospital had been around since 1888, when the Maryland legislature passed an act that established the Western Maryland Home and Infirmary for the Aged.

"The facilities were initially located in private homes. The need was realized for a larger facility that would provide hospital care for the large number of railroad accident victims," wrote Al Feldstein in "Postcard Views of Allegany County, Maryland."

A new building on Baltimore Avenue was opened in 1892 and the name eventually became Western Maryland Hospital. It would become Memorial Hospital in 1929 and the Western Maryland Health System in 1996.

In January 1894, a group of doctors traveled to Annapolis to meet with Gov. Frank Brown and members of the legislature.

According to a report in the Cumberland Evening Times, Dr. M.A.F. Carr told the governor, "Send a joint committee to Cumberland and investigate the institution. Then we will convince you that the men and women who control its management should be turned out of office. We will show you things that you little dream of!"

The other doctors in the group were G.H. Carpenter, Spear, Porter, Hodgson, Craigen, Doemer, Dukes, Wiley, Greenweil and Fogtmann, and they were all dissatisfied with the management of the hospital, in particular, with Carder. However, the governor had the power to appoint the majority of the board of directors to the hospital, and the legislature had the ability to cut off the primary source of hospital funding.

The Western Maryland Home and Infirmary had received two payments from the state - $5,000 in 1890 and $10,000 in 1894. For change to happen, Brown and the legislature would have to be convinced.

"I wouldn't send a patient of mine there to be at the mercy of an inexperienced surgeon, and then not be allowed to enter the institution myself," Carr reportedly told the governor in the Cumberland Evening Times article.

"Would you be refused admission?" the governor asked.

"They have said that once a patient enters there he is beyond outside control."

"Has any doctor ever applied for admission?"

The newspaper reported that Carr admitted "that no such application had been made, and no self-respecting physician could afford to make it under the circumstances."

This left Brown with a choice to make: Should he reorganize the Western Maryland Home and Infirmary Board of Directors in order to have one physician dismissed or should he allow the directors to make the decision they were ap-pointed by him to make?