Chapter 04: R. Lee Clark, Fundraising, and Recollections of Attitudes about Cancer

Chapter 04: R. Lee Clark, Fundraising, and Recollections of Attitudes about Cancer

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Description

Mrs. Hermes begins with chapter by recalling that MD Anderson’s first permanent hospital location opened in 1952. In her recollection, it was built only with private funds (no government funding) which she attributes to Texan’s hostility to government funding of any projects. She explains that R. Lee Clark was a skilled fundraiser and that many organizations contributed –e.g. the Women’s Auxilliary and the MD Anderson Foundation—with the intention that MD Anderson be a Texas operation with Texas money that anyone in the state could come to.

Next, Mrs. Hermes talks about the attitudes about cancer in the 1950s. She mentions the radical surgeries (the Halstead approach) and limited diagnostic tools at the time, however by the 1960s, attitudes were already changing. People could be fearful and despairing because of a lack of treatment options, but by the 60s and into the 70s, they were more assertive and might even go to Mexico for unauthorized treatments.

Identifier

HermesKL_01_20180122_C04

Publication Date

1-22-2018

City

Houston, Texas

Topics Covered

Overview; Overview; MD Anderson History; MD Anderson Snapshot; Research; The Business of MD Anderson; The Institution and Finances; Donations, Gifts, Contributions; Portraits; Understanding Cancer, the History of Science, Cancer Research; The History of Health Care, Patient Care; On Texas and Texans; Cultural/Social Influences

Transcript

Kay Hermes, BS:

In 1952, I think the MD Anderson Hospital, the big pink marble building, was built in 1952. Now, Dr. Clark, that building was built without any government funds, because at that time, there was locally, a hostility toward government funding of anything, because that followed that the government would then have control of it and nobody wanted that. So anyway, Dr. Clark, I believe went to all 254 counties and raised the money through the women’s auxiliary of each of the medical societies in those counties, was a major source of the money to build MD Anderson. And of course, the MD Anderson Foundation contributed a great deal of money to it, and other private foundations. I don’t remember them, but I know the MD Anderson Foundation contributed heavily to the hospital. Later on, of course, there were government grants and so on, but to begin with, it was a Texas operation with Texas money. Part of the vision, I think, was to provide a facility that everyone in Texas could come to, because particularly going from Houston, say out to Midland and West Texas, into southeast Texas and so on, and probably not so much in north Texas, but there really weren’t hospitals for treating cancer. So, initially, there were patients from many different counties, and that was one of the important things, that was registered in the patient’s records, is where they came from, what country. T.A. Rosolowski, PhD Now, what do you remember from that time, about what the attitude toward cancer was, you know publicly?

Kay Hermes, BS:

Publicly, I think the attitude toward people… I’m trying to just see if I can think of anything specific. I think people were questionable, questioning, whether there really was anything you could do about cancer. I think cancer was one of those words that even at that time, there probably were many families who would not have said the word cancer or would not have told anyone that their family. Now that was very true when Eleanor was doing her work in Connecticut. She went around to Connecticut, and she did radio programs. I have them at home actually, I think, all the programs she did in all these little towns in Connecticut. She did radio broadcasts about cancer, because at that time, you just didn’t say the word cancer. T.A. Rosolowski, PhD Now why not? Why wouldn’t you even say the word?

Kay Hermes, BS:

Well, it was—the only thing I can compare it to is tuberculosis. When I was growing up, nobody wanted to say that anybody in their family had gone to say, the Dunseith Tuberculosis Hospital. I had even friends of mine who would not—they were good friends of mine, a young brother and sister, the name of Donnie Hanson and something else, and Mrs. Hanson was a single mother and she had been treated at the Tuberculosis Hospital in Dunseith, North Dakota. Okay, just as an example, there were many parents who would not allow their children to play with Donnie and his sister, because the mother had had tuberculosis. She was cured of course.

T.A. Rosolowski, PhD :

So was the fear that they would contract the disease?

Kay Hermes, BS:

Oh, this would be like in like in nineteen forty… probably ’46, ’45, probably about 1945 maybe. T.A. Rosolowski, PhD So they were, the parents were—

Kay Hermes, BS:

But cancer, the reason I said that example, I think cancer was just coming out of that. I think the general attitude of when you would meet someone and tell them that you were working at the MD Anderson Cancer Hospital, they didn’t really know what that was. I think the general public was not terrifically aware even, well in Houston they probably were, but I don’t think the general practitioners throughout the state were ready to refer patients there. T.A. Rosolowski, PhD Interesting.

Kay Hermes, BS:

Not those early years.

T.A. Rosolowski, PhD :

I have just one more question about this whole attitude toward cancer, because really, it’s hard for me to get my head around exactly what people—if it was fear, where people, if you had someone with cancer in your family, were you ashamed to say? Was it shame, was it fear of being perceived that someone could catch it from you?

Kay Hermes, BS:

I think it was sadness. I think it was like—well, I think maybe a comparable example would be many people are very reluctant to talk about death, or they will say even today, that someone passed on, they’ll never say so and so died. T.A. Rosolowski, PhD Right, yeah.

Kay Hermes, BS:

I think maybe the attitude toward cancer, prior to 1960, was somewhat like that. I think it was more associated with sadness, I would say. I think probably that someone fear contributed to that feeling of sadness. T.A. Rosolowski, PhD Because there was so little you could do?

Kay Hermes, BS:

Right. There was very little you could do, very little. Well, there’s some people—well, let’s see, head and neck cancer was fairly curable with—and of course the whole treatment of cancer and the approach to treating cancer changed over the years. In 1952, I think a surgeon, one of the surgeons in charge, was a doctor… I can’t think of his name now. Let’s see, he believed that if you could remove something, no matter how bit or how spread out, you should do it. So, in the early years of treating cancer, the surgeon was much more radical, and of course that all changed over time. Also, you see when you think of the technology, what did you have? An X-ray, that was it. Well, people are always saying they had blood tests, but that didn’t work. I don’t remember what year CT scans… I was working for Dr. Mountain [Clifton F. Mountain, MD] then, but there were no CT scans. The only diagnostic tool you had was chest X-ray or endoscopy, or colonoscopy, but you had no way of diagnosing pancreatic cancer. I think there were—I think the diagnosis of uterine cancer came on the heels of the Pap smear. I think by about 1960 maybe, probably by 1960, that attitude had changed quite a bit and people were very anxious, I think, to learn more about the treatment of cancer, about where they could be treated. There were a spate of years later, maybe even up to the 1970s, where people just fled to Mexico, to unauthorized treatments, where they believed they were going to be helped of course, but they were very unauthorized treatment. People did seek out, I think, in those early years, they did seek out other kinds of treatment that would hardly be beneficial.

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Chapter 04: R. Lee Clark, Fundraising, and Recollections of Attitudes about Cancer

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