[Manuscript Patient Ledgers of a North St. Louis General Practice Physician]

St. Louis, Missouri , (ca. 1918-1940). Two ruled ledger books. THE FIRST: 12 1/2" x 8 1/2" gray cloth over boards with marooon calf at spine corners. 200 numbered pages full with manuscript entries. Dozens of scrap manuscript notes, printed business cards, etc... laid-in. Binding nearly failed from being laid flat. Gatherings coming loose from one another, but most contents, apart from a few stray loose leaves, servicably holding together. THE SECOND: 12" x 7 1/2." Printed card wraps. 88 numbered pages full with manuscript entries. Card wraps almost entirely split along spine. Mild to moderate handling wear. A few manuscript scraps laid-in loose. Overall each solidly good or better with legibility about the same.

A pair of manuscript ledgers recording visits of patients to the office of Dr. G. William Poehl (1887-1971) from about 1918 to 1940. Located at 5101A Delmar Blvd. on the city's north side and about two blocks east of St. Luke’s Hopital, Poehl's practice seems to have been a general one, started shortly after his publicized dismissal from a post as a staff physician at the City Dispensary:

“Dr. G. William Poehl, who has been a physician at the City Dispensary for the last three years, was relieved from his position shortly after 6 o’clock last night by Hospital Commissioner Cleveland H. Shutt. The commissioner said that he intended the dismissal to be final.
Although no information was given as to the reasons for relieving Dr. Poehl, it is said that a charge that the doctor had been absent from duty caused the action.”

(“Dr. Poehl is Dismissed from Dispensary Service” ; St. Louis Globe Democrat ; 16 September 1916, pp.11)

The entries begin in January of 1918 with patients coming in sporadically and increasing in numbers by the middle of the year. Early cases include a 20 year old from Maryland Heights suffering from venereal disease after “Coitus with prostitute” and a grave case of pulmonary tuberculosis in a 33 year old waiter of the adjacent block of Delmar. He diagnoses and attempts to treat his first case of influenza on November 27 in the early days of the great pandemic of 1918-1919 with inadequate treatments lasting into February 1919 and a final recommendation for the patient to “move south.”

Throughout, Poehl’s patients, whose ages, occupations and addresses preface entries, seem working class, white, and often severely ill or injured. His practice resembled a modern urgent care or even emergency room more than a general physician’s, making these an intriguing primary resource for not only the history of health care in St. Louis, but in the study of the 20th Century development of emergency and critical medicine in the United States, as the first dedicated emergency departments wouldn’t be established in American hospitals until the 1970’s.