When Doctors Made House Calls...With Radium!

If you're old enough, you may remember that sometimes a doctor visited your house to treat a patient; sadly, that practice has long disappeared in many places. In early twentieth-century Grinnell, however, physicians often made house calls, even though they also worked from an office downtown. To keep tabs on patients, treatments, and bills, these doctors—without the staff of receptionists, schedulers, billing specialists, and attendant nurses now peopling doctors' offices—kept "visiting lists." Just as their name implies, these booklets identified the dates of a doctor's visit, the patient, the charge, and sometimes a brief indication of treatment. 

An example of visiting list booklet provided free to physicians

Some companies printed these booklets to sell to physicians, and others produced them with advertisements included, donating the booklets to doctors with the hope that they might influence the doctor's choice of medicine or therapeutic apparatus. Most of these "visiting lists" have disappeared, but the visiting lists of Dr. John Love from Whiting, Kansas survive,  as do some 45 visiting lists of Dr. John Janvier Black in Delaware, and four volumes of visiting lists from Dr. J. H. Kelley of Parkersburg, West Virginia. No doubt there are others.

Title Page of Pearl Somers's 1927 Physician's Visiting List
(Grinnell College Special Collections and Archives, US USIaGG, MS/MS 01.131;
P. E. Somers Collection, 1914-1927)

In Grinnell, however, despite the fact that most physicians in early Grinnell almost certainly kept visiting lists, local archives preserve the visiting lists of only one Grinnell doctor—Pearl E. Somers—and for only a few years of his long practice (1914, 1923, 1925, and 1927). These limitations guarantee that we cannot know how all Grinnell physicians operated; we cannot even be sure how typical these years were for Dr. Somers, whose practice began in 1898 and lasted until a few years before his 1952 death. Nevertheless, the surviving physician's visiting lists offer considerable insight into medical practice in early Grinnell, including Dr. Somers's 1920s commitment to radium therapy. Today's post examines Dr. Somers's visiting lists and what they tell us about illness and medicine in 1920s Grinnell.

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Photograph  (ca. 1894) of Pearl E. Somers
(Grinnell College Special Collections and Archives,US-IaGG MS/MS 01.75, Dunham/Grinnell Photograph Collection, 1893-1894)

Pearl Ellsworth Somers was born in 1870 in Green Mountain, Iowa and graduated from Marshalltown High School in 1889. After a year at the Academy at Iowa (Grinnell) College, he enrolled at Iowa College, from which, after an exceptionally successful athletic and academic experience, he graduated in 1894. Three years later he completed Rush Medical college, and in 1898 began medical practice in Grinnell. Member of several local clubs, Somers also served Grinnell College as trustee, was vice-president of the Iowa State Medical Society and headed the Poweshiek County medical society. He established his first office above the old Grinnell Savings Bank on 4th Avenue; later he shared offices in the Grinnell Block with Doctors E. F. Talbott (1873-1943), E. S.Evans (1880-1930), and J. W. Cogswell (1883-1950). In the 1920s he had an office at 825 4th Avenue above Candyland, sharing space with Dr. Edwin E. Harris (1867-1938).

4th Avenue in Grinnell (ca. 1930), showing Candyland, above which Somers had his office
(https://digital.grinnell.edu/islandora/object/grinnell%3A6216)

As local advertising confirms, some doctors opened their offices for limited hours, devoting the majority of their working days to home visits and other obligations. Pearl Somers, for instance, who at various times contracted with Grinnell College to serve the student athletes as well as the college's students, advertised in the student newspaper that his office was open only in the afternoons. The rest of the day, Dr. Somers invested in visiting his patients.

Scarlet and Black, November 12, 1904

In early Grinnell, hospital visits were rare. Lucille "Sid" Potts (1910-2007), when interviewed for the "Voices of the Past" project in 1992, told her interviewer that 

People didn't go to the hospital in those days. A lot of them had their babies at home, and people didn't go to the hospital...You didn't go to a doctor or to a hospital until practically you were ready to die....[Doctors] came to your home. You could call, and they would come to your home. My brother was born in our home on Broad Street.

Stub Preston (1903-1999) told interviewers that he had been "born at 823 East Street in Grinnell, May 30th, 1903. They tell me it was on the kitchen table...and my mother would be taken into a hot tub and then brought out on the kitchen table for the delivery...." John Parish (1904-1997), himself a doctor, recalled that when he began practice in Grinnell in 1933 "a large percentage [of deliveries] still took place in the home." Grinnell doctors also went calling on their patients for numerous illnesses and accidents. For instance, Laura Matlack Wieman (1913-1997) remembered her family's doctor having come to their Grinnell home to treat her visiting grandmother: "he treated her on the dining room table." When called down to Deep River or Brooklyn, Dr. O. F. Parish (1873-1947) would sometimes, as his son remembered,  

pack up his portable operating table, put it in the trunk, and take a nurse along and packs of sterilized instruments and gauze and so forth and go down and operate in the home...he would occasionally do an operation in the country.

In 1901 Pearl Somers organized the first Grinnell hospital at 1127 Park Street, making provision for up to 8 patients as well as space for surgery. Unable to keep up with both the hospital and his practice, Somers soon closed the Park Street facility, so for a time Grinnell had no hospital at all. But in 1908 Dr. Somers helped organize the Grinnell Community Hospital at 1030 Elm Street, adjacent to Sixth Avenue. The building could boast only a half-dozen rooms whose names reflected local donors' generosity—Knights of Pythias; PEO; Elks; McMurray, Norris, etc. No more than twelve patients at a time could be accommodated there (Polk's Medical Register and Directory of North America [Detroit: R. L. Polk Co., 1910], p. 658). Consequently, until the two new hospitals in Grinnell—St. Francis Hospital and Grinnell Community Hospital—opened their doors in 1919, medicine in Grinnell required house calls, and they remained common in Grinnell until the 1950s or 1960s.

1910 Photograph of Grinnell Community Hospital
(https://digital.grinnell.edu/islandora/object/grinnell%3A14514)

The first few generations of Grinnell doctors, of course, made their house calls by horse and buggy. In the early days of his practice, O. F. Parish, for example, whose office was upstairs on the west side of Broad Street, would cross over to the livery on the east side of the street and rent a horse and buggy. Pearl Somers was the first physician in town to own an automobile. John Parish remembered it as "a little two cylinder car...[that would] putt-putt around town and scare all the horses...," but evidently Dr. Somers's first car, a 1902 Oldsmobile (Grinnell Herald, May 16, 1902), had only one cylinder! 

1902 Oldsmobile Runabout (Oldsmobile_Curved_Dash_Runabout_1902.jpg) 

As more powerful automobiles appeared, especially once enclosed sedans came on the market, local doctors found more reliable vehicles in which to do their rounds. Dr. John Padgham was driving a Chalmers coupe roadster in 1916 (Grinnell Register, 20 July 1916); in 1912 Dr. E. F. Talbott drove a 16-horsepower Maxwell (ibid., March 29, 1912); and Dr. O. F. Parish, whose first automobile had been a modest runabout, by 1914 was driving a Studebaker (ibid., 27 April 1914). Automobiles considerably lessened the strain on doctors' house calls, especially when doctors had to visit country farms and travel on muddy or gravel roads. 

Undated Photo of a Restored 1914 Studebaker Roadster
(https://www.texomaclassics.com/1914-studebaker)

To judge by Somers's visitation lists, Grinnell doctors might have made a house call any day of the week. We know from Somers's 1923 book that on Sunday, February 18, for example, he made two visits; the next day he met nine patients, and 8 more on Tuesday. Wednesday the 21st the doctor saw just five patients, but met 11 on Thursday, 12 on Friday, and 4 more on Saturday. The next day, another Sunday, Somers had seven patients to attend to. Although Mrs. James Tompkins (mother of Mrs. B. J. Ricker) may have constituted a special case, during 1923 as her health deteriorated, Somers visited Tompkins at the Ricker household almost every day from May through December.

Unfortunately, Somers did not note the time of each appointment, but it seems likely that he was called out at any time of day or night, especially when attending to the delivery of children. At the same time, many calls must have been routine, requiring relatively little time from the doctor, since Somers charged most patients just two or three dollars. These small bills could add up though, as Somers himself showed in his 1914 visit book, in which he kept a running total of his income. Over the course of 1914 he figured that he had billed patients for a total of $5833.50, about $160,000 in today's coin.

Overall, then, a physician in early Grinnell could expect to be busy most days of the week, day or night, except, perhaps, when on vacation. Somers's 1925 visitation list blocked out the six weeks between April 24 and June 11 for a "Florida trip." This, however, was the exception; Like other veteran Grinnell doctors of the time, P. E. Somers was busy with his practice almost every day of the year.

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All Grinnell doctors made house calls, but it appears that only one adopted radium therapy and "took it on the road" with him—P. E. Somers. When the then-new Grinnell Community Hospital acquired its first batch of radium in 1920, Somers and a colleague who soon left Grinnell (L. A. Hopkins) undertook the training necessary to dispense safely this new, powerful treatment.

Scarlet and Black, March 17, 1920

In March 1920 Somers left town for several weeks, training in Pittsburgh and New York (Marshalltown Evening Times-Republican, March 19, 1920). Exactly when Somers began to practice with radium is not known, but presumably he began to apply his newly-learned technique soon after returning from his training out East. In any case, by October 1923 radium therapy had found a warm reception in Grinnell, as the Grinnell Community Hospital bulletin of that date firmly embraced radium, calling it "the best single agent in the treatment of cancers and should be used in all inoperable cases and is the treatment of choice in cancers of the skin." It seems likely, therefore, that, shortly after his return from the East Coast, Somers began to apply radium in his medical practice, perhaps initially only in the hospital.

Somers's visitation books make clear that no later than 1923 he was taking radium with him on house calls. That year Somers recorded having used radium therapy (denoted by "Ra" in his visitation lists) 35 times—twelve times in October alone. His 1925 visitation list reports another 25 applications of radium before August, after which Somers seems to have abandoned radium therapy altogether: his 1927 visitation list does not mention radium therapy at all. It seems, therefore, that, although Somers originally adopted radium treatment with enthusiasm, by mid-1925 the gloss had worn off. That year for the first time an independent investigation had confirmed that the "Radium Girls," who painted watch and clock faces with a radium mixture, had been injured seriously (even fatally) by radium. Perhaps this news affected Somers's view of the one-time miracle therapy.

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Inasmuch as radium's radioactivity could be damaging to someone carrying it around all day every day, Somers had to have had a safe way of transporting the radium. His kit, whatever it was, does not survive, but it seems likely that he used a carrying case like the one advertised by the Radium Company of Colorado. The velvet-lined box provided a snug fit for a one-inch in diameter, nickel-plated, lead-lined container within which the physician might store the glass tube of radium solution, itself held in a silver container sheathed by a brass capsule (Technique of Radium Application, 2nd ed. [Denver: Radium Company of Colorado, 1921], p. 22).

Radium Carrying Case
(Technique of Radium Application, 2nd ed. [Denver: Radium Company of Colorado, 1921], p. 22)

According to the Radium Company of Colorado, radium bromide, radium chloride, radium carbonate, and radium sulphate all might serve the physician's needs, depending upon the intensity of radium thought desirable for treatment (Technique of Radium Application, p. 21). For various skin cancers and other cancers on the body's exterior, experts recommended applying the glass tube directly upon the cancerous tissue for a fixed period of time; to reduce the radiation's intensity, physicians might apply the silver tube within which the glass tube remained, thereby restraining somewhat the active radiation; still less intensive treatment might come by applying the glass tube surrounded by both the silver and brass capsules (ibid., p. 22). 

Tumors within the body called for a different device by which the physician could place the radium adjacent to the cancerous tissue. For uterine cancers, for example, experts recommended a uterine sound with a brass container of radium at the end.

In this way the radium can be shifted along the uterine canal, beginning by inserting the radium well up into the fundus and radiating in that location for a period of twelve to eighteen hours...The whole applicator is covered with a rubber dam [to protect adjacent, non-cancerous tissue] (ibid., p. 25).

For vaginal cancers a different applicator was imagined: dental wax moulded around a lead plate permitted the practitioner to insert the glass tubes within the wax but adjusted so that "the tubes are in apposition with the seat of pathology" (ibid., p. 26). A surprising variety of instruments might serve to apply radium to the larynx, pharynx, tonsils, and esophagus; gold and steel-alloy needles also made it possible for physicians to reach tumors below the skin.

Suggested Applicator for Vaginal Cancers
(Technique, p. 26).

It seems unlikely that Somers carried all this equipment, and therefore unlikely that on his house calls he applied radium therapy to all cancers. Inasmuch as Somers did not note the diagnoses that prompted him to apply radium, we cannot be sure exactly how extensive his radium therapy was. Moreover, he may well have treated some patients at the hospital instead of at their homes, a fact we cannot confirm until the Grinnell community hospital register for the 1920s surfaces. However, Somers did identify the patients, some of whom endured radium therapy numerous times. He also indicated the charges, which proved to be variable, an indication, perhaps, of how intensive was the therapy. 

A Page from February 1923 Visiting List of Dr. Pearl E. Somers 
(Grinnell College Special Collections and Archives, MS 01.131 P. E. Somers Collection 1914-1927)

Mrs. Henry Booknau (Somers used this variant of his patient's name, which in other documents appears as Buchenau), for instance, received two radium treatments in February 1923 at her home at 834 Summer Street, and three more in March that year. Her name disappears from the visitation lists until May 1925 when Somers returned, beginning an intensive course of radium treatment. May 14, 15, and 16, 1925 he applied radium to Mrs. Buchenau, then again on the 20th, 24th, and 29th. Two last treatments occurred on June 3rd and 8th. Since Somers's 1924 visitation list does not survive, we cannot know how often she saw Somers that year, but from the books that remain we know that altogether Mrs. Buchenau had perhaps a dozen close encounters with radium.

To judge by the charges Somers made, Mrs. Buchenau received the maximum dosage: initially he charged her $35 for each application (the most he ever charged for radium) and $25 the other times. All this medical attention makes one wonder what was Mrs. Buchenau's affliction and how the radium affected her. Unfortunately, I could find nothing to identify her illness, but the radium treatments apparently did her little harm, as she died of a stroke only in January 1956 when she was eighty years old. Just 51 when she received her first radium treatment from Dr. Somers, Rose Buchenau lived thirty years thereafter, despite—or perhaps because of—her intensive experience with radium.

No other Somers patient received so much radium. Mrs. Warren Kroh (1030 Pearl Street) and Mrs. Otto Broders (Malcom) both received a half-dozen serious treatments: $25 for each application. Both lived some years after having received the radium, although not so long a life as Mrs. Buchenau enjoyed. Carrie Kroh (1873-1943) died in 1943 of an unspecified "lingering illness," but Catherine Broders (1873-1932) perished in 1932 from "carcinoma of the ovary and small intestine." It seems unlikely that Carrie Kroh, who lived twenty years after her encounter with radium, suffered deadly injury from the treatment. Even Catherine Broders's death, nine years after Somers applied radium to some part of her body, seems difficult to blame on radium therapy. Indeed, it may be that the cancer that killed her was the very reason that Somers treated her with radium, and might thereby have helped extend her life and delay cancer's victory.

1930 Death Certificate for Joseph McConnell
("Iowa, County Death Records, 1880-1992," database, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XV3N-NFQ : 9 September 2021)

Somers's visitation lists identify another sixteen patients whom he treated with radium. Joseph McConnell (1861-1930) had Dr. Somers bring the radium kit to his Brooklyn home a half-dozen times in April and May 1925. Each dose, billed at $25, was presumably maximum exposure, and may have been directed to carcinoma of the face, a condition noted on McConnell's death certificate as having been diagnosed in 1927. However, doctors attributed McConnell's death primarily to an "acute intestinal obstruction," a vague expression that might reference a tumor. When he died in April 1930, McConnell was still five years past his radium treatment documented in Somers's visitation lists.

Undated Photograph of Grinnell College President, J. H. T. Main (1859-1931)
(Scarlet and Black, April 8, 1931

Other Somers patients had less experience with radium. Perhaps the most well-known of his clients was Mrs. J. H. T. Main (wife of the Grinnell College President, J. H. T. Main), who in March 1923 endured two radium treatments, both of which were apparently less intense than McConnell's: Somers charged $20 for each visit rather than the $35 or $25 he charged Mrs. Buchenau. It is frustrating not to learn Mrs. Main's diagnosis, but the radium, whatever Somers intended it to treat, seems not to have much affected Mrs. Main who died in April 1938; the death certificate noted that since 1934 she had suffered from cardio-renal disease, judged to have been the primary cause of death. 

Similarly unaffected by the radium was Mrs. James Rule (1849-1932) who lived at 1410 4th Avenue. Dr. Somers applied radium treatment to her twice in April 1923; both applications were evidently less than maximum intensity, as Somers charged only $17.50 for each. In mid-October of that year Somers was back with his radium, this time charging $25 for what was evidently a maximum dosage. When Isabel Rule died in April 1932, nine years after her radium treatments, Dr. E. E. Harris, who signed her death certificate, gave as cause of death both "old age" (she was 82) and "cancer of the scalp." Certainly Somers could easily have attempted radium treatment for cancer of the scalp, but no extant record allows us to confirm this suspicion.

George Mason (1881-1967) also had three radium treatments in 1923, but he survived more than forty years afterward. His wife, Martha Ann Mason (1887-1939), submitted to an apparently mild ($15) radium treatment just once around the time her husband received his last dose. Dying in 1939, she did not live so long as George, but still lived sixteen years after having experience with radium.

Undated Photograph of Professor Roy H. Perring (1874-1943)
(Scarlet & Black, October 15, 1943)

At least five other Somers patients received two radium treatments. Roy H. Perring, for example, a Professor of German at Grinnell College who resided at 605 Tenth Avenue, received intense doses twice in May 1923. But when he died in 1943, twenty years after his encounter with radium, it was a heart attack, not cancer, that took him.

A few of Dr. Somers's patients died soon after treatment, but not necessarily from the illness for which Somers prescribed radium. John S. Miller (1857-1926), for instance, received two doses of radium in March 1925, and died at his West Street home in September 1926. But it was pneumonia that killed Miller, a disease for which radium was no help and an illness that cannot be blamed on radium. Many other Somers patients died long after their encounter with radium. Virgil Adams (d. 2006), for instance, who seems to have had a light dose of radium in July 1925, died more than eighty years later (Des Moines Register, November 12, 2006). William Dodge, who lived in the Brande Apartments in Grinnell, had Dr. Somers treat him in spring 1923, but he died an octogenarian in 1955, more than thirty years after Somers packed up his radium tube.

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The extant visitation lists of Dr. Pearl Somers, despite their limitations, describe the wide-ranging activity of a small-town doctor early in the twentieth century. It would be interesting to compile a list of all Somers's patients to see what part of the town the good doctor served. Even better would have been details about what illnesses or accidents convinced Grinnellians to summon the doctor; regrettably, Somers did not find it necessary to commit this information to his visitation lists. Consequently, we can only surmise that, as he jumped into his old Oldsmobile or whatever automobiles he later owned, he set out day or night, weekend or weekday to serve patients in the greater Grinnell area. We can only suppose that other Grinnell doctors of the time did the same.

What definitely distinguished Somers's practice from his medical colleagues, however, was his commitment to radium therapy. The lack of detail in the surviving records prevents us from establishing a clear picture of what illnesses Somers treated with radium and how broad a selection of applicators he used. All the same, the 1923 and 1925 visitation lists confirm that Somers embraced the new technology; not only did he agree to leave town to undertake the necessary training in Pittsburgh and New York, but we know from his visitation lists that he pursued radium therapy with some enthusiasm, at least until August 1925 when circumstances persuaded him to drop it abruptly.

The Cover of a Recent Study of Women Poisoned by Radium

Studies like that done on the Radium Girls make clear that radium, irresponsibly handled, could be destructive. As follow-up of Pearl Somers's patients makes clear, however, the Grinnell doctor exercised admirable care with this powerful element. No doubt he was anxious to cure the cancers he treated, but he seems not to have allowed that high-minded motive to overwhelm good judgment, as the later lives of his patients demonstrate. Most lived many years (in some cases, decades) after their encounter with radium. And none seem to have suffered serious injury as a result of the radium Somers applied. It seems unlikely that the men and women who entrusted their health to Dr. Somers fully understood the potency or appreciated the danger that radium constituted. But they trusted their doctor who recommended the therapy and the results—whether or not the therapy cured the original problem—seem to have vindicated their confidence in the Grinnell physician who journeyed to their homes to treat their illness.

Quack! Quack! Patent Medicines in Early Grinnell

Most readers will be familiar with the over-the-counter shelves of Walmart and Target. There one can find a vast array of products intended to relieve headaches, fight the pains of arthritis, shorten the duration of colds, remove corns, and much more. Thanks to a series of laws, beginning with the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, today's consumers can learn the active ingredients in all these products since the law requires that they be listed on packaging. Moreover, legislation prohibited false claims about cures, and established organizations to examine and supervise the marketing of these products.

Things were different in early Grinnell. With no one to whom to answer, entrepreneurs generated and sold concoctions with no proven effectiveness and not infrequently with large quantities of alcohol or addictive drugs, in the process alleging wildly extravagant claims for their products. Grinnell did not escape this phenomenon; today's post looks at some of the patent medicines offered consumers in early Grinnell and what they tell us about life early in the twentieth century.

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Undated photograph of McNally's Meat Market (1920?)
(https://digital.grinnell.edu/islandora/object/grinnell%3A11924)

As Grinnell's W. B. Tew (1869-1946), who sold meat at 826 Main Street, pointed out in a 1903 newspaper advertisement, "There's nothing like a rich, juicy and tender beef steak. It warms the cockles of your heart; you never tire of it...." Indeed, the ad urged consumers to enjoy red meat for breakfast as well as for dinner (Grinnell Herald, March 20, 1903). Evidently lots of Iowans agreed with Tew's enthusiasm. By today's standards, early Iowans consumed way too much meat. According to a 1909 survey of urban Americans, the poorest Americans consumed 136 pounds of meat a year, and the richest more than 200 pounds, the great bulk of it red meat. 

The meat-heavy diet of the early twentieth century likely led to considerable abdominal discomfort among Grinnell's finest families. Red meat has no fiber, and if a person eats a lot of meat, the quantity of fiber-rich fruits and vegetables inevitably declines. The result? Constipation. Ambitious marketers rushed in with proposed remedies (none of which involved eating less meat). Indeed, some historians have characterized the early twentieth century in America as the "Golden Age of Purgation" when patent-medicine makers concentrated advertisements upon the ability of their products to relieve constipation, "biliousness," and sluggish bowels. Grinnell's newspapers regularly printed advertisements for products said to offer relief.

Dr. Pierce's Golden Medical Discovery
National Museum of American History
(https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_715454)

One of the entrepreneurs who flooded the market with over-the-counter remedies was Dr. Ray Vaughn Pierce (1840-1914).  Unlike most of his competitors, many of whom called themselves "Dr.," despite having no medical training, Pierce actually did graduate from medical school and for a few years practiced medicine in Pennsylvania. After he moved to Buffalo, New York in 1867, however, he concentrated upon the manufacture of patent medicines and proved very successful in this enterprise.

Dr. Pierce's Pleasant Pellets (!), for example, focused upon the liver, which, according to advertisements, "has a great deal to do with the removal of waste from the body," and not just from the blood either. "Dr. Pierce's Pellets regulate the bowels," an early ad claimed (Grinnell Herald, May 23, 1902). Indeed, Pierce's pills, which depended upon jalap resin, and aloin, may well have acted as a laxative, whether or not they helped the liver (Merck Manual [Rahway, NJ: Merck & Co., 1972 (reprinting 1899 ed.)], pp. 93, 188). But the presence of jimsonweed, known as a hallucinogen, complicated the formula for relieving constipation and added unanticipated side-effects.

Pierce's Golden Medical Discovery, often paired with Pierce's Pellets in advertising, was, its maker claimed, "far more than a tonic." Created from a mixture of root extracts (mandrake root; bloodroot; stone root; golden seal root, etc.), glycerine, borate of soda, and a lot of water) "Medical Discovery" was said to cure the liver, which,

When it is sluggish in its action the whole body must suffer by reason of clogging accumulations.... Pierce's Golden Medical Discovery...restores the liver to healthy activity, purifies the blood, and cures diseases of the organs of digestion and nutrition (Grinnell Herald, April 18, 1902).

Or so Grinnell purchasers hoped. 

Dr. Pierce's Favorite Prescription
National Museum of American History
(https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1298480)

Lest one think that these medicines aided only men or the elderly, advertising claimed help for the growing girl, "especially...as the young girl approaches that important period of change when the womanly function is established." Testimony alleged to come from a mother in Washington, DC confirmed that Pierce's Favorite Prescription (containing extracts from viburnum and the roots of lady's slipper, black cohosh, blue cohosh, and oregon grape) along with Pierce's Pleasant Pellets had cured a daughter previously "troubled with dizziness and constipation..." (Grinnell Herald, May 23, 1902). An ad published in Grinnell one month earlier used the words of a Virginia woman who believed "Dr. Pierce's Favorite Prescription to be the best medicine in the world for suffering females" (Grinnell Herald, April 25, 1902).

Advertisement in Grinnell Herald, April 25, 1902

Another patent medicine that competed for the attention of Grinnell's bloated, constipated citizens was Kodol, a "dyspepsia cure" manufactured by Chicago's E. C. DeWitt & Co.  Like other patent medicine purveyors, Elden C. DeWitt (1855-1927), who was born in Jones County, Iowa, grew rich: at his 1927 death his estate was valued at $20 million (approximately $300 million in today's currency). His money came from another wide array of patent medicines—aimed at kidneys, hemorrhoids, constipation, and "women's personal cleanliness and hygiene." 

Like Pierce's products, Kodol was a steady advertiser in newspapers of the early years of the twentieth century. Kodol "Digests what you eat," ads claimed, thereby allowing one "to eat all the food you want." "It can't help but do you good," advertising asserted, although nothing explained why or how the product accomplished its goal. One bottle cost one dollar, providing the purchaser with a considerable quantity of alcohol (about 12%), as well as some pancreatine and pepsin (Grinnell Herald, April 25, 1902). The Merck Manual of 1899 attributed some useful digestive quality to both pancreatin and pepsin (p. 118).

Kodol box and bottle
(https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/kodol-for-dyspepsia-medicine-bottle-bx-2lbl)

Hood's Vegetable Pills, "the best family cathartic," was yet another competitor for the cash of Grinnell's citizens. Hood's Pills, prepared and sold by C. I. Hood and Company Apothecaries, Lowell, Massachusetts, were cheaper than many remedies, selling for a mere twenty-five cents. Packages of the pills claimed that they "regulate the bowels, invigorate the liver, and cure sick headaches." An ad in the Grinnell newspaper went further, offering relief for "Constipation, Headache, Biliousness, Heartburn, Indigestion, [and] Dizziness" (Grinnell Herald, February 16, 1900). Packaging declared the pills to be "purely vegetable, containing no calomel, mercury, or mineral substance of any kind."

C. I. Hood Company Laboratory (ca. 1895)
(J. Paul Getty Museum, https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/89026/attributed-to-ci-hood-company-hood's-sarsaparilla-laboratory-lowell-mass-about-1895/)

Charles Ira Hood (1845-1922), like DeWitt and Pierce, produced an assortment of medicines that promised to cure everything from ingrown toenails to jaundice and eczema. By 1900 Hood was operating from a facility said to have been "the largest building in the world dedicated to the manufacture and sale of patent medicines." He had begun as a pharmacy apprentice, and by age 25 had opened his own drug store in Lowell, Massachusetts, and begun the preparation of Hood's Sarsaparilla, a purgative which included bits of several plants and a whole lot of alcohol (18%). He soon branched out into other products—tooth powder, soap, lotion, and cough syrup. When his wife sold the business soon after Hood's 1922 death, the widow collected $450,000—something more than $7 million in today's dollars.

Hood's Vegetable Pills
From National Museum of American History (https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_737797)

Another contender in the business of relieving constipation was Cascarets, which was perhaps the most widely-known patent medicine directed toward relieving constipation. Cascarets was the invention of a former Keokuk man—Harry L. Kramer (1861-1935)—who settled in Indiana, where he erected a health resort near Attica. Originally touted for its mineral springs, the resort soon focused upon the mud baths offered there, and so Hotel Mudlavia was born. Numerous celebrities visited the site, anxious to relieve the pains of rheumatism and other ills.

But it was Cascarets that earned Kramer a place in the patent medicine hall of fame. Packaged in a slim metallic case that could easily fit into a vest pocket or purse, Cascarets aimed to heal "cositive [sic] bowels, sour stomach, cold or headache." A half-dozen chocolate-like tablets originally cost ten cents, although later the price rose to a half-dollar. Like its competitors, Cascarets warred against a "torpid liver" and constipated bowels. The product's name hinted at its main ingredient, cascara, extracted from buckthorn bark and long recognized as a purgative. By 1900 Sterling Products, the maker of Cascarets, was selling five million tins a year.

Photograph of a tin of Cascarets
(National Museum of American History,  https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_718611)

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Tanlac appeared less often in Grinnell newspapers than some of its competitors, but was omni-present elsewhere. The invention of a Dayton, Ohio entrepreneur named Lee Thomas Cooper (1875-1927), who had earlier tried to huckster a variety of cures, Tanlac claimed to be a "tonic and system purifier," phrasing that helped it escape regulation by the Pure Food and Drug Act. Depending upon an aggressive advertising campaign that employed unverifiable testimonials, Tanlac helped generate a fortune for Cooper. According to one report, 208,000 bottles were sold in eight months in North Carolina alone (The Health Bulletin of North Carolina, vol. 31[1916-17], p. 68). In 1921 company advertising claimed that more than 20 million bottles had been sold over the preceding six years (Grinnell Herald, June 21, 1921).

1922 US Passport Photograph of L. T. Cooper
Ancestry.com (U.S. Passport Applications, 1795-1925)

Tanlac literature did not reveal the secret contents, but advertising regularly claimed exotic origins for its constituent elements: "The Alps, Appenines, Pyrenees, Russian-Asia, Brazil, West Indies, Rocky Mountains, Asia Minor, Persia, India, Mexico, Columbia and Peru are among the far away points from which the principal properties of this remarkable preparation are obtained" (Grinnell Herald, June 21, 1921).

Chemical analysis discovered, however, that the main ingredient was alcohol—about seventeen percent; glycerine and various alkaloids were also present in smaller quantities (The Health Bulletin of North Carolina, vol. 31[1916-17],  p. 69). The several natural purgatives made Tanlac useful against constipation, and the alcohol may well have stimulated the appetite. But there is no reason to think that Tanlac, despite all the wild claims of its printed testimonials, relieved the numerous ailments advertising alleged to remedy (ibid., p. 70).

Package of Tanlac (http://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/tanlac)

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Other patent medicines hawked in Grinnell's newspapers addressed problems other than constipation. Scott's Emulsion, for instance, claimed to help "build new flesh." In the mid-1870s Alfred B. Scott (ca. 1846-1908) and Samuel W. Bowne (ca. 1843-1910) created this product as a "less nauseating preparation of cod liver oil." Unlike most other patent medicines, Scott's Emulsion advertised its contents, even before legislation required it: 50% cod liver oil along with calcium, soda, glycerine, and mucilage (possibly gum acacia). By 1900 Scott's Emulsion was being sold throughout the world, and some versions continue to be sold in the US (at Walmart, for example).

Advertisement in Grinnell Herald, April 25, 1902

Early ads shouted that Scott's Emulsion "is not a good medicine for fat folks...Fat people don't want it. Strong people don't need it" (Grinnell Herald, April 25, 1902). Depending primarily upon cod liver oil (but flavored to make it more palatable), Scott's Emulsion provided vitamins A and D, whether or not it helped thin people grow stouter.

American Museum of American History
(https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1352148)

Shiloh's Consumption Cure, first offered for sale in the 1870s, was the brain child of Schuyler C. Wells (1840-1897). Like some other patent medicines, Shiloh's Consumption Cure pedaled a "habit-forming drug," in this case, heroin. Early advertisements, however, "guaranteed to cure Consumption, Bronchitis, Asthma, and all Lung Troubles. Cures Coughs and Colds in a day"—all this for twenty-five cents. After passage of the 1906 Food and Drug Act, the S. C. Wells Company changed tack, abandoning some of the most outrageous claims and concentrating instead upon the product's ability to stop coughs. For a time it bore the name Shiloh's Consumption Remedy (and not "cure"); under further pressure from critics, the company resorted to "Shiloh's Cure" (without specifying what it might cure), which remained available until at least 1948.

Advertisement for Shiloh's Consumption Cure
Grinnell Herald, April 29, 1902

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Swansons Rheumatic Cure (also known as Swanson's 5-Drops), for instance, promised relief not only from rheumatism, but also from "bronchitis, lumbago, sciatica, gout, asthma, catarrh, nervousness, backache, dyspepsia, indigestion, croup, nervous and neuralgia headache, heart weakness, paralysis, creeping numbness, sleeplessness, eczema, scrofula and all blood diseases" (Grinnell Herald, December 30, 1904). 

Bottle of Swanson's Five Drops
(https://www.ebay.com/itm/382843208410)

Dr. Fenner's Kidney and Backache Cure was more modest in its claims, but no less insistent upon its effectiveness (Grinnell Herald, December 23, 1904). Milton Fenner (1837-1905) did earn an MD in "eclectic medicine," which he used to manufacture a variety of compounds of his own design. Dr. J. M. McLean's Liver and Kidney Balm, "a reliable remedy for diseases of the liver, kidneys and urinary organs," cost only one dollar (Grinnell Herald, February 17, 1903). Grinnellians worried about their hair or its disappearance could acquire Ayer's Hair Vigor, which "makes the hair grow, completely cures dandruff. And it always restores color to gray hair, all the rich, dark color of early life" (Grinnell Herald, January 24, 1905).

Bottle for Ayer's Hair Vigor
(National Museum of American History: https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_715094)

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Even in Grinnell, there were numerous other mixtures available which did not purchase space for advertisements in the newspaper. The Grinnell Historical Museum, for example, owns a bottle for what was known as Adlerika, invented in 1902, ostensibly as a cure for appendicitis. Fritola compound, a bottle from which may also be found in the Museum collection, was another patent medicine marketed as a laxative. Depending primarily upon several oils—olive, peanut, corn and palm—Fritola compound quite literally greased the intestines. No doubt there were many more patent medicines available at the five drug stores operating in early Grinnell.

Photo of Johnson and Wadsworth Drug Store, 827 Broad (ca. 1880s)
(https://digital.grinnell.edu/islandora/object/grinnell%3A3297)

Reading the expansive claims made for these concoctions tempts one to ridicule the men and women who swallowed not only the bottle contents but also the claims that advertising for them advanced. However, if we consider for a moment contemporary off-label uses for products like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, our ancestors look a lot more like us than we might wish. Moreover, as today's bulging over-the-counter medicine racks prove, plenty of twenty-first-century Americans continue to self-prescribe remedies for their illnesses and pains.

What certainly distinguishes our world from that of early twentieth-century Grinnell, however, is the consequence of government intervention. The unregulated industry of patent medicines was dangerous and intentionally deceptive, the entrepreneurs' goal of great wealth playing a more important role than concern for the public health. Only after government stepped in, first in the form of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and then later with additional legislation, did manufacturers moderate their claims of effectiveness and alert purchasers to the contents of the packages that they purchased. Of course, fakery did not disappear, but government initiative made the early twentieth-century patent medicine market more truthful and helped weed out the worst offenders against public health.

PS. Thanks to Gene Wubbels for suggesting the 1899 Merck Manual to me.

When Grinnell College Had a Black Playwright In Residence

Grinnell College is lucky to count Hallie Flanagan (1889-1969), Gary Cooper (1901-1961), and Peter Coyote (1941- ) among its alumni who have been active and successful in theater. Arthur Clifton Lamb did not achieve the same fame as these three, but his African American heritage propelled him along a different and no less important arc, dramatizing Black lives. Lamb graduated from Grinnell College, and took a master's in dramatics from the University of Iowa. He then taught at a series of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, ending his university career by teaching 25 years at Morgan State University in Baltimore. Along the way he sometimes took to the boards himself, but concentrated his energies on writing plays intended to bring the experiences of African Americans to theater audiences.

Today's post examines Lamb's life and his connections to Grinnell.

Norfolk New Journal & Guide, August 23, 1941

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Arthur Clifton Lamb (1909-1988) was the fifth child born to Minnie (1879-1935) and Jacob Lamb (1876-1943) in Muscatine, Iowa, where Clifton, as he then liked to be called, attended the public schools.  Adjacent to the Mississippi River, Muscatine was closely tethered to the river. In the nineteenth century the Mississippi brought into town large numbers of African Americans who fled the slave-owning southern states by following the river north. The river also deeply affected the city's economy: the bend in the river at Muscatine deposited large numbers of mussel shells, which then brought to town button manufacturers who turned the shells into stylish buttons. Jacob Lamb, Clifton Lamb's father, was one of many African American button-cutters in turn-of-the-century Muscatine.

At the time of the 1925 Iowa census, Jacob Lamb and his entire family were settled in their Muscatine home at 518 Miles Avenue, living next door to Minnie Lamb's parents and not far from the river. "A. Clifton Lamb," as the 1926 Muscatine High School yearbook calls him, was approaching the end of his high school education, playing football, running track, and participating in "Declam" and the Athletic Scholarship Society. A photograph of the school's letter club shows that Lamb was the sole African American, a circumstance that prepared him for Grinnell College where he enrolled in the fall of 1927.

Photograph of the Letter Club, 1926 Muscatine High SchoolYearbook

At Grinnell Lamb lived in Clark Hall, where he was the only African American. He was similarly alone when, newly enrolled at the college, he was named one of five new members inducted into the Cosmopolitan Club (Scarlet and Black,  September 21, 1927). Indeed, he was inevitably the lone Black at Grinnell, wherever he went on campus.

Photograph of residents of Clark Hall; Lamb in middle of back row
(1931 Cyclone)

The student newspaper did not find much reason to print Lamb's name for the next eighteen months, but in February 1929 it carried word that Lamb would address the Cosmopolitan Club on "Solving the Negro Problem." Club members heard the young man say that "Race prejudice is barbarous and dangerous to a free and stable government," a comment that is no less true today than it was when Lamb articulated this proposition ninety years ago. But the college sophomore was not prepared to tell his white audience that the problem began and ended with white people.

We negroes are a sensitive and emotional people; we get incensed when there is no real cause for it. For instance, many negroes resent being called Afro-Americans. We have the same language, customs, and conscious history that the whites have, and we have shown our patriotism by sacrificing our blood in war and by contributing to the art and literature of America. Our negro spirituals are the only real folk songs that American has. We are not just Afro-Americans, but real Americans (ibid., February 27, 1929).

These thoughts led Lamb to encourage Blacks to be less sensitive, but he did not mean to overlook white stereotypes of African Americans. "...You [whites] should understand," he continued, "that we're not all chicken-thieves, crap-shooters and watermelon stealers. We have our own aims and dreams" (ibid.). Whether the Cosmopolitan Club members had heard these words previously the newspaper did not say, nor did it report how Lamb's talk was received, but the event reveals that young Clifton Lamb was thinking about race as he walked the halls of his overwhelmingly white college in the late 1920s.

Advertisement from the Scarlet and Black, April 23, 1930

In his junior year, Lamb began to write plays, the art that he would take from Grinnell into the future. In the spring of 1930 his first play, "The Faith Cure Man," was performed in the ARH auditorium (ibid., March 22, 1930). According to a newspaper report, "the play depicts Negro life as it is influenced by spiritualism, and the plot is the conflict between old and new racial beliefs" (ibid., April 16, 1930).

Photo Still from 1930 Production of "The Faith Cure Man," 1932 Cyclone, p. 96

Lamb's play was a candidate for the Steiner Prize, but did not win; student judges deemed a competitor, "The Scoop," to have a better, more complicated plot than "Faith Cure Man." All the same, the student newspaper thought that Lamb's play "was the most impressive...from an emotional standpoint...The scene and the individual characters were real enough to produce a vivid emotional effect on the audience" (Scarlet and Black, April 30, 1930). More striking in retrospect is the fact that four white students—Margaret Napier '30; Myrna Adams '31; Russell Peterson '30; and William Schmaedecke '32—played the parts of African Americans. Given the scarcity of African American students at Grinnell, the roles could not have been filled in any other way, but casting white actors in plays about African Americans complicated Lamb's productions until he worked at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Photo Still from "Emperor Jones," 1931 Cyclone, p. 92

Lamb not only wrote plays; he also acted in them, including playing the lead in Eugene O'Neill's "Emperor Jones," which was performed on the Grinnell campus in December 1929 and re-staged for the 1930 Commencement. A student critic, writing in the Scarlet and Black, praised Lamb's acting and "artistic intensity." "The awful sincerity with which Mr. Lamb endured and fell victim to the fears of the forest must not have been easy to experience...and was not easily shaken off by the spectator..." (June 7, 1930).

But Lamb continued to focus his attention upon playwriting. In the spring of his senior year the drama department staged "Reachin' for the Sun," which the student newspaper called "a serious drama" (ibid., March 14, 1931). Because the play presented characters of a black minstrel group, white actors again assumed black identities on stage. At the 1931 commencement several student-written plays, including Lamb's "The Faith Cure Man," were staged as part of the celebration (ibid., May 27, 1931; Chicago Defender, June 20, 1931). The 1933 commencement week saw Lamb take the role of Cotton Lips in his  "Shades of Cotton Lips," in which "a Negro playwright...wishes to get away from the ordinary type of show featuring colored actors" (Scarlet and Black, May 6, 1933). These plays confirm that, even within the context of an otherwise white college community, Lamb wrestled with questions of African American identity, perhaps especially his own.

Advertisement for 1933 Commencement Plays at Grinnell College
(Scarlet and Black, May 13, 1933)

Although Lamb officially graduated in 1931, he was still on campus the following year; it may be that he had taken a break from college at some point, because his photograph appears with the graduating seniors in both the 1931 and 1932 Cyclones. 

Arthur Clifton Lamb, 1932 Cyclone, p. 27

In any case, his plays continued to attract attention, and not only in Grinnell.  At Christmas 1932 the Bethel Players, "a permanent and distinct unit of the [Bethel] A. M. E. church" in Muscatine, premiered Lamb's "The Two Gifts,  A Christmas Play for Negroes" (Muscatine Journal and News, December 21, 1932). Back in Grinnell the following spring, students (among them, Lamb in the role of Melchior) were rehearsing the same play to be performed in Mason City for the Iowa Federation of Women's Clubs (Scarlet and Black, April 22, 1933). A year later the college's drama department announced its intention of staging another Lamb play, "She Dyed for a Prince," but, for reasons not explained, the Lamb play was pulled, replaced by a two-act comedy from Philip Moeller (ibid., February 3, 1934). A few months later, however, Lamb's most recent play was back on the boards (ibid., April 25, 1934).

In the summer of 1934 Lamb found himself in New York where he obtained a small part in "Dance with Your Gods," a Kenneth Perkins play set in Louisiana (ibid., September 26, 1934). After the play closed, Lamb returned to Muscatine where he wrote to Grinnell's Sara Sherman Pryor about her plans to publish some Grinnell student-authored plays.

I do know that I will never feel as much at home as I felt in New York. Broadway is not prejudiced against the Negro actor; it is willing to give him a decent break. The trouble is that there are too few good Negro plays. I think, for the time being, it is better for me to concentrate on my writing. With the few contacts I have made, I am confident that if I can produce something worthwhile, I can find a producer (ibid., December 8, 1934).

Winter 1935 Lamb returned to Grinnell where he was "working on a long play for Negro characters." He also took part in a playwriting class at Grinnell, but whether he was volunteering or hired I could not learn (ibid., February 20, 1935). While in Grinnell, Lamb joined the cast of Robert Irwin's "May-Basket," which the newspaper described as "a pleasant comedy about a negro communist who has been taken up by a couple of college students" (ibid., May 4, 1935). A few days later the annual student art exhibit included a series of "oil portraits of Clifton Lamb '32, negro playwright and actor, dressed as the leading character of his original one-act play, 'Cotton Lips'" (ibid., May 22, 1935).

Lamb costumed as Cotton Lips, 1934 Cyclone

Lamb's career received a boost when the Grinnell College Department of Drama published a collection of student-written plays, among them Lamb's "Two Gifts." The newspaper observed that the college's drama department would earn ten percent on all copies sold; the authors were also slated to receive royalties, although they must have been even more excited with the publicity that publication of their works brought (ibid., March 6, 1935; ibid., September 25, 1935; Norfolk New Journal and Guide, November 16, 1935).

Scarlet and Black, September 25, 1935

Soon after this Lamb took a position at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. University catalogs indicate that Lamb held the position of Instructor in Dramatics only for the academic year 1935-36 (1935-36 Shaw University Bulletin, p. 9). It seems likely that while at Shaw Lamb met Ann Louise Parham (1911-1991), then a student at Shaw and a pastor's daughter from Richmond, Virginia. The couple married June 12, 1937, by which time Lamb was teaching remedial English in New York City where the wedding was held (Muscatine Journal and News, July 29, 1937; Afro-American, 7 August 1937). 

Photograph from the April, 1940 Production of "Beebee" at University of Iowa
(Frederick W. Kent Collection of Photographs, 1866-2000, University of Iowa Digital Library: https://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/islandora/object/ui%3Aictcs_22630)

That autumn Lamb took what was evidently a temporary appointment at Prairie View State College (today's Prairie View A&M University), because soon he was back in Iowa, enrolled in a graduate program at the University of Iowa. The three-act play he wrote for his master's degree, "Beebee" (later retitled "Black Woman in White"), was staged in April 1940 at Macbride Auditorium on the university campus. A newspaper report called the play a "dramatic struggle of a Negro lady doctor for a hospital for her people, and is set in Texas where Lamb is regularly employed as head of the department of dramatics at Prairie View State College" (Muscatine Journal and News, April 26, 1940). The same play, under the title, "Black Woman in White," had successful productions later at Howard University and the following year in Harlem by the Rose McClendon Players (Norfolk New Journal and Guide, August 23, 1941; New Amsterdam Star-News, August 23, 1941), whose performance earned raves (New York Age, August 23, 1941).

1940-41 Catalog of Prairie View State College, p. 15

According to the Muscatine newspaper, in 1940 Lamb had been at Iowa for a year and a half, but in that interval he seems to have been in Prairie View, Texas fairly often. Prairie View State University documents identify Lamb as a faculty member in 1937, and then again beginning in 1940. However, a 1939 article in the Prairie View State College newspaper, reporting on the staging of Lamb's play, "God's Great Acres," described Lamb as "head of the drama department at Prairie View" (The Panther, April 7, 1939), so he evidently remained formally affiliated with Prairie View then. 

Lamb the playwright also nursed an affection for poetry, although I found only a few of his poems published. In 1940, however, with talk of war everywhere, he published in the Pittsburgh Courier a three-stanza poem affirming his patriotism, and, by extension, the patriotism of all African Americans.

Listen, America! Mine was the first blood spilled in the Revolution. My brown hands helped rivet the nation together. I was with Teddy Roosevelt at San Juan Hill. I, too, bore aloft the falling torch of the Flanders dead, And MY youth "where poppies blow." I have proved my right to sing full-voiced "My country 'tis of thee"... (Pittsburgh Courier, December 21, 1940).

The poem caught the eye of Langston Hughes, who sent Lamb an autographed copy of "America's Young Black Joe," a song whose lyrics Hughes had written on a similar theme (Pittsburgh Courier, January 18, 1941).

A 1942 article in the Chicago Defender tagged Lamb as "newly appointed chairman of the department of speech and dramatics" at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina (December 12, 1942). University catalogs confirm that Lamb remained on the faculty there through 1946 (1944-1946 Catalogs of Johnson C. Smith University), when he accepted appointment at Morgan State College (now Morgan State University).

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At Morgan State Lamb continued his work with drama, but also developed interests in radio and television. In 1948 Lamb returned to New York City to study for and obtain a Certificate in Television and Radio from New York University (Bernard L. Peterson, Jr., comp., Early Black American Playwrights and Dramatic Writers: A Biographical Directory and Catalog of Plays, Films, and Scripts [NY: Greenwood Press, 1990], p. 123). Almost immediately thereafter, Lamb, back in Baltimore, helped found Morgan State's own radio station (WEAA), and began producing radio and television shows for the university (Baltimore Sun, March 27, 1988).  A 1960-61 Directory of College Courses in Radio and Television (ed. Pat Beall Hamill) reported that Lamb taught "Radio broadcasting; radio announcing; advanced radio direction and programming," a significant stretch of his earlier focus on acting and playwriting.

In addition, Lamb continued to reflect upon the difficulties confronting Black playwrights. Spring 1948 he took part in a Fine Arts Festival at Morgan State, delivering a lecture on "The Negro Playwright" (Baltimore Sun, May 13, 1948). He returned to this theme several times, including a letter to the editor of the New York TImes (February 13, 1955) and a lecture he gave at Goucher College in 1968 (Baltimore Sun, July 14, 1968).

Daily Iowan, November 19, 1952

Twenty years after his Grinnell graduation, Lamb returned to Iowa to pursue a doctorate at the University of Iowa while on leave from Morgan State (Daily Iowan, November 15, 1952). However, what began triumphantly ended in a personal defeat. Early in his second tenure at Iowa City, the University's Experimental Theater staged Lamb's "Roughshod Up the Mountain," which newspapers described as the "first all Negro university theater production in several years" (Daily Iowan, November 19, 1952; Des Moines Register, November 23, 1952). Despite the inexperience of the cast—which included "a Des Moines waiter, two Iowa City housewives [one of whom was Helen Renfrow Lemme, a Grinnell High School graduate], a shoe repairman, and six SUI students," only Lamb, who played the part of Preston Spears, a preacher, had any acting experience—the play enjoyed a generally favorable reception (Daily Iowan, November 26, 1952).

From this exciting success, Lamb's career took a heartbreaking crash: shortly after staging "Roughshod Up the Mountain," Lamb was expelled from the University graduate program, but no explanation was made public. In a 2016 book, however, Lena M. Hill argued that Lamb was a victim of white mistrust of "relationships across racial lines," a reflection of the continuing racism at the University. "Notwithstanding Lamb's promising start [at Iowa]," she writes, 

when a night watchman discovered him and a white female student in a compromising situation in the basement of the drama building, his doctoral studies came to an unceremonious end...As soon as the news of Lamb's interracial romantic liaison spread, [E. C.] Mabie [1892-1956], Lamb's adviser] was forced to take action to protect the integrity of the department. Thus, Lamb was not allowed to complete his doctoral work at Iowa (Invisible Hawkeyes at the University of Iowa, eds. Lena M. Hill and Michael D. Hill [Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2016], pp. 97-98).

I found no account of how Lamb absorbed this humiliating end to his Iowa studies, nor did I learn how Louise Lamb or the couple's two children, Arthur Clifton Lamb, Jr. (1939- ) and Carroll G. Lamb (1942- ), processed the news. But the fact that the encounter was "interracial" reminds us how all along Lamb had been navigating African American experience with white casts and white audiences. White actors might easily don blackface to act their parts, but doing so did not liberate them or their superiors from racial bias.

Morgan State chapter of Alpha Psi Omega Honorary Dramatics Society
Arthur Clifton Lamb, back row, 2nd from left
1955 Promethean Yearbook, p. 80

By 1955 Lamb was back at Morgan State, advising the local chapter of the national honorary Dramatics Society (Alpha Psi Omega) and staging "Roughshod Up the Mountain." He remained a vital part of the dramatics program at Morgan State, adding courses in radio and television work. By the time he retired in the 1970s, Lamb bequeathed a vital legacy of African American dramatics to Morgan State and its students. It is a shame to realize that Lamb did not live long enough to see his name, along with that of his Morgan State colleague, Waters E. Turpin (1910-1968), etched onto the face of the university's new theater in 2001. Unfortunately, many of the racial issues with which Lamb and his dramas had wrestled remained to trouble new generations. But his playwriting, begun on the campus of an all-white Midwestern college, had brought generations of African Americans—especially within the campuses of Historically Black Colleges and Universities—into closer touch with their American experience.

A Beginning List of Arthur Clifton Lamb Plays and Performances

Information borrowed from Bernard L. Peterson, Jr., ed., Early Black American Playwrights and Dramatic Writers: A Biographical Directory and Catalog of Plays, Films, and Scripts (NY: Greenwood Press, 1990). Additional sources indicated in the text.

"The Faith Cure Man" (1930) © July 30, 1930; D unpub. 6006; Arthur Clifton Lamb, 518 Miles Ave., Muscatine, IA  4278.  One-act play produced on Grinnell College campus March 22, 1930, and again at commencement week 1931 and 1933.

"Reachin' for the Sun" (1930). One-act play produced on Grinnell College campus, March 1931.

"She Dyed for a Prince" (1930). One-act play produced on Grinnell College campus,  April 1934.

"Shades of Cotton Lips" (1931). First produced at Grinnell College, May 18, 1933 and again June 3, 1933; later at North Carolina A. & T. College, Greensboro, NC and at The New School for Social Research, New York.

"The Two Gifts (A Christmas Play for Negroes)" (1935) © July 1, 1934; D 31236; Dept of Drama, Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA 5644. Produced by the Maclean College Players, Chicago, December 6, 1935; published in Grinnell Plays (Chicago, 1935).

"God's Great Acres" Produced at Prairie View State College, April 1939; "portrays the social problem of farm mechanization and its effects upon sharecroppers...stirring drama...of humor, pathos, song...true to life characterization of the southern sharecroppers" (Prairie View Panther, April 7, 1939); awarded Sergel Prize in Regional Playwriting from University of Chicago in 1939 (Helen Keyssar-Franke, "Afro-American Drama and its Criticism," Bulletin of New York Public Library, vol. 78, n. 3, p. 331).

"Black Woman in White" (formerly "Beebee)" (1940) © Dec. 16, 1940; D 72862; Arthur Clifton Lamb, Hempstead, TX 707.  First produced at University of Iowa, April 25, 1940; produced at Howard University (date unknown) and in Harlem by the Rose McClendon Players at Rose McClendon Workshop, New York, August 13, 1941.

"Millsboro Memorial" (1946) Produced at the Tenth Annual Conference of the Southern Association of Dramatic and Speech Arts, convened at Tennessee A. & I. State University, Nashville, TN, April 10, 1946

"Portrait of a Pioneer" (1949). Short radio play on the career of Ira Aldridge, the first Black Shakespearean and classical actor of the nineteenth century. Published in Negro History Bulletin, April 1949, pp. 162-64

"Roughshod Up the Mountain" (1953) © Arthur Clifton Lamb, May 13, 1953  DU34057.  Produced at Tennessee A. &  I. State University, Nashville, TN, June 25, 1956; presented as the American entry in the Annual International Festival, Sarah Bernhardt Theatre, Paris, June 1946; staged at University of Iowa Experimental Theater, November 21-22, 1952 (Daily Iowan, November 15, 1952; Muscatine Journal, November 15, 1952); produced Off-Broadway by Ira Aldridge Players of Morgan State College for a Producers' Showcase performance, November 22-25, 1956 (Los Angeles Sentinel, November 1, 1956); produced in Paris for 11th International Theater Festival, summer 1964 (Muscatine Journal, February 7, 1964).

"Mistake Into Miracle" (1961) 90-minute teleplay, adapted later into full-length play that dramatized the life of George Washington Carver (Baltimore Sun, March 27, 1988). Produced at Morgan State College, Baltimore, December 8, 1961.