Dr. D. G. Hodges
The First Doctor
from "Southeast Corner of Tarrant County Before the Civil War"
by Sallie Hodges McKnight
When there were no roads and not a doctor in all the large stretch of country between Village and Mountain Creek, Dr. D. G. Hodges, with his young wife and one child, made the trip by covered wagon from Tennessee, dispensed his own medicine which he carried about in his saddlebags. As his practise extended over a sparsely settled country, he might find a relay of calls left at each home which often extended a single round of visits to a week or more.
The most common diseases were chills and fever, black and yellow jaundice, and typhoid fever. These he treated with fair success notwithstanding his views on malaria, which he took literally as "bad air," cautioning his patients against exposure to too much of it, and advised building on the second instead of the first "rise" from the streams. He made annual trips to New
Orleans for his medicines, which always included a large supply of quinine, and dosed his patients with bluemass or bled them according to the weather, or the mood he was in.
He did surgery as emergency demanded, such as extracting stray bullets from the anatomy here and there, removing odds and ends from the eyes, freely amputating both upper and lower limbs,
and even cut out tonsils with a queer sort of knife and fork instrument, while a hefty helper held the head and assisted the patient to keep the mouth open by carrying on a whispered conversation with the Doctor concerning the untoward accident of swallowing the instrument.
While his knowledge of medicine was limited to his day and time, and a man's liver attracted most of his professional attention, he knew his patients as a father knows his child, and held a
sort of restorative and paternal influence over physical waywardness. He died early from exposure.
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