I remember that my father had an old black medical bag. Probably it is still around somewhere. It was an obsolete thing even then, mostly useful for house calls which have become a dimly remembered tradition. The bag was full of odds and ends, it seemed to be a place where out dated pharmaceuticals and bandages just endured.
Here's today's "Time Capsule".
This was my "black doctor's bag". I remember getting it early in med school and that it was a gift from a pharmaceutical company back when such gestures were more about appreciation than about trying to bribe you into prescribing their stuff.
It served a function. When on clinical rounds you needed a place to stow things. We were expected to do painstaking physical exams that included checking all sensory functions. I remember that this bag once held both a tuning fork and a tiny vial of a strong peppermint stuff, the latter for testing sense of smell. The bag smelled like peppermint for years afterwards.
Perhaps the secondary function of the bag was to make young, inexperienced students look just a bit more official.
My research into this artifact started with a look at the underside.
The bag was a gift from the Upjohn Pharmaceutical company, and was actually a bit of homage to one of their long standing traditions. Full details HERE but in short, Upjohn sales reps carried alligator skin bags as their trademark beginning in the 1880s. A similar bag, now made of cowhide, was given free to medical students. What I have read suggests it was at graduation, but I am quite sure I had this during my second year clinical rotations.
That would have been circa 1983, so I think I just caught the end of the free bag tradition. Upjohn disappeared in 1995 by way of a merger. Probably the give aways stopped before that date, the practice of drug company freebies was already starting to be questioned when I was still in training.
And of course, even a newer doctor's bag can act as a magnet for old stuff. Rummaging around in the pockets I came across this:
26 year old tablets of Cipro. Now entirely inert and useless, they went into the trash.
Hill 80 video,
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I am a second generation MD also. I was given my dad's Upjohn Doctors Bag and dusted it off to give a talk about being a physician to some pre-schoolers. I graduated from medical school in '78 and no bags were given at that time, at least for my school (Wayne State Univ). The practice had stopped well before then. My dad said that Congress shut the giveway down. My son is currently in DO school, and he will be getting the bag upon his graduation.
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