Dr. Goodfellow, Medicine Man

THE OVERLOOK

By Tom Clavin

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          I am about to rectify a mistake that I made in my book Tombstone, which was to not give enough attention to a most remarkable character. In that notorious southeast Arizona town lived a man who was at the forefront of frontier physicians and not just because he became the country’s foremost expert on the treatment of gunshot wounds.

          George Emory Goodfellow’s father, Milton J. Goodfellow, came to California in 1853 to mine for gold. His mother, Amanda Baskin Goodfellow, followed two years later, arriving in San Francisco on the steamship Golden Gate. Their son was born on December 23, 1855, in Downieville, which was then one of the largest cities in the state. His father became an engineer and George grew up around mining camps. When he was 12, his parents sent him across the country to a private school in Pennsylvania. He returned to California two years later where he attended the California Military Academy in Oakland. He was then accepted to the University of California at Berkeley where he studied civil engineering before he applied to the U.S. Naval Academy.

George Goodfellow arrived there in June 1872. He became the school's resident boxing champion, probably a reason why he was well accepted by his fellow midshipmen. Like many of his peers, he took exception to the presence of the academy's first black cadet, James Conyers. While marching, Goodfellow and another cadet began kicking and punching Conyers, who had been shunned and constantly harassed since his arrival. Goodfellow later knocked Conyers down some stairs. News of the incidents and the hazing experienced by Conyers leaked to the newspapers, and a three-man board was convened to investigate the attacks. Goodfellow denied any wrongdoing and Conyers claimed he could not identify any of his attackers. The board nonetheless believed the academy needed to give Conyers a fair chance at succeeding on his own merits and recommended that strong measures should be taken. In December 1872, Goodfellow and two other students were dismissed from the academy.

Instead of a naval career, Goodfellow attended Wooster University Medical School in Cleveland. Soon afterward, he joined his father in Yavapai County, Arizona, where Milton was an executive with the Peck Mine Company. For two years, the young physician was the company’s doctor. During that time, however, Goodfellow had applied to serve with George Armstrong Custer’s 7th Cavalry. Luckily for him, his orders were delayed, so he missed the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876. His next posting was to be the assistant surgeon at Fort Whipple in Prescott, Arizona. There he treated all types of injuries, including gunshot and stab wounds, rattlesnake and scorpion bites, and accidents involving explosives, wagons, and horses.

In the you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up category, with him in Prescott was his wife, Kate Colt. She was a cousin of Samuel Colt, the inventor of the Colt revolver. These six-shooters fired many a bullet in the Wild West, creating the kinds of wounds Dr. Goodfellow treated. The couple would have two children, Edith and George Jr.

In 1880, he terminated his army contract and opened his own medical practice in nearby Tombstone. In some ways, the Civil War was still simmering there because some of the residents were outlaws and cowboys with Confederate roots but the lawmen, who included Virgil, Morgan, and Wyatt Earp, were Republicans from the northern states. On top of that, Dr. Goodfellow later said that Tombstone was the “condensation of wickedness.”

If anyone has heard of Dr. Goodfellow at all, it is probably because of what happened on October 26, 1881, when he treated Virgil and Morgan Earp for wounds sustained during the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. When the Earps were accused of murder after the incident, he testified in court that their wounds were in self-defense, not murder, as surviving cowboy Ike Clanton claimed. In revenge for the deaths of the McLaury brothers and Billy Clanton, two months later, Virgil was shot in the back and left arm by Clanton’s cowboy friends, with Dr. Goodfellow’s efforts saving the arm. In March 1882, Morgan was shot and died from his wounds. Dr. Goodfellow did everything possible to save Morgan but he was unsuccessful.

Uniquely for the time, Dr. Goodfellow insisted on sterile techniques in treating gunshot wounds. Routinely, he would wash the patient’s wound with lye soap or whisky. On July 4, 1881, he had successfully treated a Tombstone miner who was shot in the stomach nine days earlier.  The small incisions Dr. Goodfellow made in the victim’s stomach became known as a laparotomy -- a standard treatment for abdominal gunshot wounds to this day.

Another discovery made by Dr. Goodfellow was that silk acted as protection from bullets. While examining a patient shot in the neck, he noticed two shotgun pellets but no holes in the silk handkerchief around the man’s neck. Goodfellow documented this and other cases in an article titled, “Notes on the Impenetrability of Silk to Bullets” for the Southern California Practitioner Journal. From this sprang research that led to the development of bullet-proof vests.

It was 136 years ago this month that Dr. Goodfellow began a journey that would add another accomplishment to his resume. When the Bavispe Earthquake struck the Mexican state of Sonora on May 3, 1887, it destroyed most of the town’s adobe houses and killed 42 of its 700 residents. Dr. Goodfellow spoke excellent Spanish and he loaded his wagon with medical supplies and rode 90 miles to aid survivors. The townspeople named him El Doctor Santo ("The Sainted Doctor"), and in recognition of his humanitarian contributions, Mexican President Porfirio Diaz presented him with a silver medal that had belonged to Emperor Maximilian and a horse named El Rosillo.

Dr. Goodfellow was fascinated by the earthquake and began a personal study of its effects. He noted that it was very difficult to pin down the time of the earthquake due to the absence of timepieces or a nearby railroad and the primitive living standards of the area's residents. He returned twice more, the second time in July with Tombstone photographer C.S. Fly, to study and record the effects of the earthquake. He traveled over 700 miles through the Sierra Madre mountains recording his observations, mostly on foot. The United States Geological Service praised his "remarkable and creditable" report, describing it as "systematic, conscientious, and thorough."

In August, he wrote a lengthy letter following up on his initial report in the top U.S. scientific journal, Science. It included the first surface rupture map of an earthquake in North America and photographs of the rupture scarp by C.S. Fly. The Bavispe Earthquake was the “longest recorded normal-fault surface rupture in historic time.” The Goodfellow and Fly collaboration was later described as an “outstanding study” and a “pioneering achievement.”

Dr. Goodfellow performed the first appendectomy in the Arizona Territory in 1891. Later that year he developed a procedure called perineal prostatectomy to remove an enlarged prostate. He completed 78 operations throughout his career and only two patients died. He was also one of the first surgeons to develop a spinal anesthesia by mixing cocaine with spinal fluid and injecting the liquid back into the patient’s spine.

As his earthquake research indicates, Dr. Goodfellow was also a naturalist. His research into Gila Monster venom was published in the Scientific American Journal. Prior to 1891, it was commonly believed that a Gila Monster bite was fatal. In that year, he provoked one of these lizards to bite him. Although he spent the next five days in bed, Dr. Goodfellow did recover.

Arizona lost its allure and in 1899, he moved to San Francisco and opened a medical office there. Ironically, it and all of his personal belongings were lost in the 1906 earthquake. Broke, he returned to the Southwest, where he became the chief surgeon for the Southern Pacific Railroad in Mexico. He fell ill in 1910 and died later that year in Los Angeles. To this day, Dr. George Goodfellow is recognized as the first nonmilitary trauma surgeon in the U.S. His legacy includes the George Goodfellow Society at the University of Arizona School of Medicine.

Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 18 books, including the brand-new Follow Me to Hell: McNelly’s Texas Rangers and the Rise of Frontier Justice, and, with Bob Drury, The Last Hill. To purchase a copy (think Father’s Day!), please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, BN.com, or tomclavin.com.