Dr. J. Robert Curtis of Portage – 1957

Dr. John Robert Curtis of Portage – WVMA President 1957

John "Bob" Curtis, DVM 

Photo: Courtesy of Mrs. Kathryn Curtis, wife of late 

Dr. John Robert Curtis

  

      At the time I was president of the state association in the late 50’s, brucellosis eradication was very big.  Strain 19 vaccine had been in for a while, and Wisconsin was fast approaching certification.  Hog cholera was being eradicated about the same time.   We controlled distemper in dogs [with Canine Distemper Vaccine from Fromm Labs.]

       As WVMA President, it was an interesting time as I recall.  We were having a problem at the time with the secretary of the Association.  Dr. Beach had been the secretary for years and years, and us young Turks had decided that we needed a change, that we had to get modernized.  We were trying to effect a change of some sort including the board of directors.  Dr. Frank Gentile was chairman of the board when I was president. That was one of the first times that the association went through reorganization.    When the WVMA’s new board of directors was started, we did it by having a representative from [each of the] local associations.  This gradually evolved into the districts that the WVMA still has.   Dr. O’Rourke became secretary, replacing Dr Beach.

Personal information

     This is indeed a pleasure to talk to you and record some history because I'm a history buff and it's real good that the Association is sponsoring this type of thing. I'm John Robert Curtis and listed as John R. Curtis, but Robert has been my name for all my life and I live in Portage, Wisconsin. I graduated from Ohio State in 1938 and came back to Portage to practice with my father. He graduated in 1910 from the Grand Rapids, Michigan Veterinary School and came to Portage in early 1912. He practiced here all of his life until he couldn't practice any more.

      We had a general practice. We took care of everything, every animal that there was to take care of, including a few birds. He was the first graduate veterinarian to practice in this part of Columbia County. There was one older man to the east, but I wanted to practice veterinary medicine and came back to Portage when I graduated.

His father's involvement in organized veterinary medicine

       I started going to veterinary meetings with my father and mother when I was just a youngster and had the privilege of knowing many of Wisconsin veterinarians and many of the ones in the nation, because Dad was a very conscientious convention-goer. He attended the national meetings. He was a vice-president of the AVMA for a number of years, when they use to have territorial vice-presidents. He represented this central area for a number of years.

       I remember the AVMA meeting, I believe in 1925, in Detroit, the Yankees were playing and we were in the Book Cadillac Hotel. We found out what floor Babe Ruth was on, and my friend Jack and I went up there. They had a gal at a desk on each floor, more or less like they do in the hospital now where they have somebody on every floor in charge. She said, "Oh, he hasn't gotten up yet. But he'll be out, you just wait." And Jack got tired of waiting after about an hour but I stuck it out. I shook hands with Babe Ruth! He was glad to see me and I regret now that I wasn't smart enough to ask for his autograph. I was ten or eleven. That was a thrill of a lifetime.

       When I joined the practice, we had the habit that my father would go to the AVMA meetings, and I went to the United States Livestock Sanitary meetings which became the Animal Health Group in later years. I recall sitting in Chicago where they were always held at the same time as the livestock show and sitting next to Dr. Healy, who was Wisconsin's federal veterinarian. He introduced me to many of the men there that wrote the textbooks we used. These were men from the Bureau and from the other veterinary schools, I think I still have some textbooks that some of them wrote.

       My father said back when he started to practice there were two associations or two different groups, and he was kind of torn with which one to go with. Herb Lothe from Waukesha was president of the Wisconsin State Veterinary Medical Association that year. Dr. Lothe was a real charming individual. He had a lot of charisma. He was a cattle practitioner. Of course, Waukesha at that time had more Guernsey cattle than there were people in the county and so he was a dairy practitioner, primarily, and he was a good speaker. He was president of the association in 1917. By that time there was one association. There had been so many groups going and I think sometimes that people start something just to satisfy their own personal ego when they all should be under one banner where they could really be a force. The present state association evolved back there in the teens.

First years as a veterinarian

       I would have gone to Iowa State, but Ohio State Veterinary School did not have out-of- state tuition. And so, including everything, the last year I was at Ohio State, I had kept fairly close records of what it cost me to go to school. And I think it cost me $800 to go to veterinary school the last year I was there, and I had a car.

       At the time I graduated in 1938, there were only four practicing veterinarians in Madison, Wisconsin, Dr. Deadman, two Dr. Wests, and the small animal doctor out by the stadium. There were two or three in the surrounding areas: one in Waunakee, Sun Prairie, Morrisonville, Stoughton and Edgerton. But the point was that they all, except one man in Madison, were general practitioners. There was a depression, or we were just getting out of the depression, and we were all involved in disease control. These men, like my father, had been through the selling of tuberculosis testing to Wisconsin farmers, and were deeply embroiled in the brucellosis eradication.

       They were assigned various territories, counties, townships to work 

and all had a common effort. At the time I graduated there was the state veterinarian and that was it, as far as state control was concerned. They had to work with the local practitioners to carry out the programs. It was up to the local vets. Consequently, at our local area meetings, which the Southeastern had every month, we always had the state veterinarian or a representative of that office at our meetings, and that was the first thing on the program. They gave a report on what was going on and answered the questions. There was this involvement, this friendship, working together as a group that was so important in disease eradication in Wisconsin.

       Tuberculosis and brucellosis, hog cholera, would not have been eliminated had it not been for that type of effort. When I got out of school, I immediately came back to Portage to practice with my father, and we walked right into the sleeping sickness and the horse encephalomyelitis epidemic. That consumed a great deal of our time. It marked the end of the horse as a work unit on Wisconsin farms.

       Tractors had been gradually taking over, but there wasn't a farm when I graduated that didn't have at least one team of horses. The next two or three years was about the end of the horses. Horses were an important part of practice for Wisconsin veterinarians.

Local associations

       We met at the district organization, our state meetings, and compared notes and complained and the whole bit. We had a marvelous way of life and we got to know people from all over the state and know them quite well.

       One of the interesting things about the local associations, the Rock Valley people, along with their neighbors in northern Illinois was starting the Rock Valley Association about the time I got out of school. That's when we formed the Southeastern Veterinary Association. We had someone talk to us about practice insurance and liability and that sort of thing. That became one of the efforts that the Southeastern Veterinary Association started. I became secretary of that group shortly after I graduated and went after the insurance bit. This was the forerunner of the WVMA's and the AVMA's Insurance.

During my presidency

        At the time I was president of the state association in the late 50s, brucellosis eradication was very big. Strain 19 vaccine had been in for awhile, and Wisconsin was fast approaching certification. Hog cholera was being eradicated about that time.

        We controlled distemper in dogs. I remember driving over to the Fromm Laboratories at Grafton and picking up 15 doses of their vaccine and driving back to Portage. It had to be given within two or three hours, and at that time we were practicing out of my father's basement. I had contacted 15 people that would like to have their dogs vaccinated and they were sitting around our back yard with their dogs. One of the dogs died of distemper. But the other 14 dogs lived through distemper outbreaks. You wouldn't believe that when I started in practice, distemper was probably the principle problem with dogs.

       Getting back to the WVMA, I was president in 1957. That was kind of an interesting time as I recall. We were having a problem at the time with the secretary of the association. Dr. Beach had been the secretary for years and years, and us young Turks had decided that we needed a change that we had to get modernized. We were trying to affect a change of some sort including the board of directors. Dr. Gentile was chairman of the board when I was president. That was one of the first times that the association went through reorganization.

        When the WVMA's new board of directors was started, we did it by having a representative from each of the local associations. The board had Dr. Houser from Menominee; Dane County was Dr. Tetzlaf from Morrisonville; Milwaukee was Dr. Gentile (chairman of the executive board); Quint Metzig from the northeastern; Dr. Welsh from Rock Valley; Dr. Lyle from the southeastern (Dr. Clyde Lyle who was eventually state veterinarian); Dr. Kuntzer from the southwest; and Dr. Good from Wisconsin Valley. This gradually evolved into the districts that the WVMA still has. Dr. O'Rourke became secretary, replacing Dr. Beach.

         It was just kind of traumatic because most of us had known and liked Dr. Beach and it was just that he had outlived his usefulness to the association. At least that's the feeling there was. And we were getting involved in this insurance business and other things that were becoming a bigger deal, and we needed someone that could really take hold better.

        There were two or three of us who wrote new bylaws for the association some time in the early 50s. Probably Quint Metzig was one. There were a few of us that thought that we ought to change the rules and I think that's when we got the board of directors started.

        We still had to excuse Dr. Beach and his method of operating. Previous to that time, the old guard, Dr. Beach and Dr. Richards and my father, there had been only a half dozen on the board. They changed the president every year and elected a new president, but there were four or five of them that were more or less the board. They operated the association with a part-time secretary or part-time office girl, a woman in Madison, a very nice person that did the books and this sort of thing. So we were in the stage of trying to get a new secretary.

        Dr. William O'Rourke left his practice and was living in Madison. He was an ideal person to take that role, and we were trying to get him in as secretary of the organization. It wasn't easy. Dr. Beach was extremely well liked. He was a competent individual. Of course, he had been at the University in the Department of Veterinary Medicine all his life, a little short roly-poly gentleman and it was difficult to replace him. He, like some of us, kind of liked the job, and was a little hard to move. That's what was going on as far as the association when I was president, but I can't recall the exact year that Bill took over.

Annual meeting and other continuing education meetings

        Some of us were a little discontented with some of the programs we had been having at our annual meeting. It was always in Milwaukee in the coldest week of the winter. It had been for many years at the Schroeder Hotel and, for some reason I don't recall, we were kind of disenchanted with the Schroeder, and so I insisted that we move to the Pfister. This was the old Pfister, the old hotel, and all its grandeur. It didn’t have room for everybody, the exhibit space was very crowded, and yet we had a successful meeting.

        One of the problems then was getting started on time. You have a speaker suppose to start at 8:30 and by 9:00 the chairman of the meeting is getting it underway. I decided, as program chairman, we would start every session with a film. For example, the meeting was suppose to start at 9:00, so at 8:30 we had a color sound film, Tendon Graft on the Racehorse, and in the afternoon we had another one with the film at I: 15 and the meeting with a speaker was 1:45 . This was a way of getting the meeting started on time. I don't know how happy the commercial people with us, but we had a tremendous program. Dr. Armisted was a Dean at Michigan and he was the president of the AVMA that year, and so he was on the program.

       Summer meetings were very interesting. My first wife died of cancer in 1959, and then I remarried in 1961. The first summer veterinary meeting that year in 1961 was at Wausau and Kathryn got the woman's prize, when they had the door prizes. That's the only thing she'd ever won or has ever won since. She still uses it. We had one memorable meeting at Chula Vista, Wisconsin Dells. My father was in charge of that one. They took the boat tide to the Indian ceremony for the entertainment. That was a two-day meeting. I remember going as a little boy to all these meetings. I was an only child and so they took me as soon as I was big enough and there were two other youngsters my age. Dr. Swan was the veterinarian at Stevens Point at that time. They only had one veterinarian in Stevens Point. Dr. Larzalear was a federal veterinarian, and he had his son, and the three of us played together at these summer meetings.

        The district meetings were held around the state. The local practitioner was more or less strong-armed and, “Well it's your turn now. You've got to set up a meeting of the local group.” Portage was about the northern-most and, but we invited the people from Fond du Lac and Oshkosh and they came with us before they started their own organization. We met at Waupun quite often, in Oshkosh once or twice, in Plymouth, Waukesha, Columbus and Beaver Dam a number of times. Rock County pretty much stuck to the Beloit, Janesville, Rockford area. Eventually Milwaukee started their own group. But people used to come from Racine and Kenosha occasionally. We had a fairly wide area to cover, but we had some great meetings, and I think the important thing was a lot of the state and federal policies evolved out of these local meetings. There was a lot of give and take.

Changes between my father's graduation (1910) and my graduation (1938)

       My father actually started in Portage in 1912 because he went to Fort Atkinson for a year to a year and a half to practice with someone there first. His practice was primarily with the horses. The cattle practice wasn't so important; cattle were worth a couple dollars on the hoof in those years, so he didn't get as many calls for cattle. It was a horse practice; it was castrating horses, and a lot of equine dentistry and taking care of their feet, their hooves, that sort of thing. And, of course, the ever-present colic. My father was quick to catch on as soon as he was aware of it, but he didn't know what to do about it. The internal parasites of horses, the bots, in particular, killed a lot of horses, and the strongyles that produced the colics, the aneurysms, and those sorts of things were common in the horse practice.

        He had a team of horses until I got about old enough that I could have driven them myself. He kept a team of horses for winter driving so he could get out in the country. He was a very good mechanic and had three Model Ts: one of them was the one he was driving, one he had up on blocks and the third one was the one he kept for good.

        When I started in, we immediately got into this equine encephalomyelitis thing, but of course cattle were a lot more important. We had a lot of pig practice. We did everything in this county. At one time Columbia County had more sheep than any other county in the state, and there were a lot of feeder people getting sheep. We had a couple of clients that fed 5,000 lambs and we eventually would vaccinate those. That started the first 10 years of my practice.

         My father was a very knowledgeable person and he knew all about animals, but he got the reputation of not caring about dogs. He'd rather work on horses and cattle then the pets. He was a practical type of person and he didn't really appreciate the pet angle. Practitioners know how you handle pet owners differently than you do the person that's being practical about his livestock. It's a dollars and cents deal there. Well, the more I knew about dogs, the more I realized he knew about dogs and was a good diagnostician, but he just didn't give people the impression that he cared as much about; I mean you got to care about them rather than their pets sometimes, and he didn't really take the time to do that.  

        When I started in practice, like the young MD that comes into town, all the women want their babies with the young fella. I became the pet doctor in the practice and started developing the pet practice. That was probably the biggest change in his first 10 years. I remember dad coming back from a meeting in Columbus, Ohio, and he told me about standing outside the hall where the meeting was going and one of the practitioners come out shaking his head remarking, “You should listen to those guys in there. Small animal practitioners are so used to BS-ing the public, they're BS-ing themselves and believing it.”

        We built a little small animal office in 1949, we moved in January of 1950, and it was the first small animal office or hospital in the state of Wisconsin. As far as I know, I was the first one that put up a free-standing building for a pet hospital, but I built it too small for starters. It was on a busy corner in town, so if it didn't work out, somebody else could use it for something. The internal walls could be all taken out and the building would still stand, but it became a very popular place. The people in Milwaukee were practicing out of store fronts. Dad was still practicing. He practiced until he couldn't go any more. As a matter of fact, my son used to drive him to some of his last calls. Dad would come up there and see an animal that I was having a little problem diagnosing and he knew what it was. He helped me tremendously. As I said, he had this knowledge, and he knew what he was doing, but to go in to talk to somebody across the table and develop that bedside manner - I mean he could do it with a horse or a cow.

        As much as I liked being a veterinarian, I enjoyed practice tremendously, I decided to retire around 65 or so. Dad was 92 when he died and he practiced well into his 80s.

Final thoughts

        The dairy industry in southern Wisconsin was well underway because of the need for milk in Chicago, and Wisconsin as a state took hold. The State Department of Agriculture developed policies for eradicating TB and then brucellosis long before the Illinois farmers would. That was really where the Wisconsin daily industry really thrived. Incidentally, I took the trouble to just look at the microfilm of a local paper in 1957 and milk was selling for $3 cwt in Wisconsin. It seems times have changed.