St. Francis Hospital
EARLY HISTORY St. Francis Hospital as it is known today, originated as a ten-bed structure built in 1923 by Floyd Neiman, Marceline Contractor, for Ola Putman. M. D., as a memorial to his father, Benjamin S. Putman, M. D., who had served the Marceline area forty-seven years as physician and surgeon. He called it the “Putman Memorial Hospital“. It is situated at 108 East Howell Street. Dr. Benjamin B. Putman was a member of one of the oldest families of Linn County and was born in North Salem township of that county June 10, 1844. He had a rural environment during his youth, and had begun the study of medicine during the Civil War. He read medicine in the office of a practicing physician, Dr. D. I. Stevenson, and in 1864 took a course of lectures in the St. Louis Medical College. With this preparation he entered upon a country practice, and in 1872 returned to the St. Louis Medical College, where he was graduated with the degree of M. D. He first practiced at North Salem, and for 28 years made his home at Bucklin. During twenty years of that time he conducted a drug business in connection with his practice. Doctor Putman in 1889 established his home at Marceline, and during the nearly 20 years that remained to him, he worked with seldom a vacation or interruption to his continuous service covering a wide extent of country around Marceline. On locating at Marceline, he became local surgeon for the Santa Fe Railway, and during the last fifteen years of his life, looked after the surgical practice of coal mining companies in that vicinity. The work of his profession was to him a primary responsibility and a great duty which he performed unremittingly and with little concern for its material rewards. He was a member of the Missouri State and District Medical societies, served at one time as mayor of Marceline, was a Democrat and a 32nd degree Mason. He was active until his death in 1912, at the age of 69. Dr. Ola Putman, builder of the Putman Memorial Hospital, and father of Dr. George Benjamin Putman, was born at Bucklin, June 6, 1878. He received his early schooling at Bucklin, then because of poor health went to Colorado and attended the Denver University and Gross Medical College. He was a graduate of Rush Medical College in Chicago in the class of 1901, and practiced at Marceline from 1901 until his death on December 4, 1933, a period of over thirty years. He was surgeon of the Santa Fe Railroad for thirty years, was Sigma Alpha Epsilon, a member of the County, State and American Medical Associations. He was one of the most advanced of the early surgeons of Missouri and attracted nationwide attention. He was one of the first surgeons west of the Mississippi to perform a Caesarian operation. He was a pioneer in the treatment of hay fever and asthma, from which he was a great sufferer. He discovered and isolated the first case of tularemia in Missouri. He was associated with his father until the latter’s death in 1913. In 1923 he built the 10-bed hospital as a memorial to his father and was its active head during the last ten years of his life. Dr. George Benjamin Putman represented the third consecutive generation in his profession at Marceline. He was born at Marceline July 22,1907. After graduating from high school in 1925, he took two years of medicine at the University of Missouri, was awarded his A. B. degree by Harvard University in 1929, and in 1933 was graduated in medicine at the Cornell University Medical College in New York City. Doctor Putman had experience as an intern at Jersey City Medical Center, and in 1934 returned to Marceline to take over the work in which his father and grandfather before him had earned deserving distinction. He was a member of the Linn County, Missouri State, and American Medical Associations. He took over his father’s practice in 1933 upon the latter’s death and continued to care for the people of the Marceline area until an untimely and sudden accident abruptly ended his medical career. On the night of February 22, 1942, he was driving through a snowstorm to attend a maternity case when he had a motor car accident and sustained severe contusions, concussions and laceration of the brain. He has been hospitalized since. The Putman Memorial Hospital continued operation under two local doctors for a couple of months after Dr. Putman’s accident but was finally closed on May 1, 1942, and remained unused until April of 1946. Mrs. Ben (Mildred) Putman sold it to two elderly ladies of Keytesville, Missouri, Mrs. James (Elizabeth) Robertson and Mrs. Robert (Mary) Guthrie. These two ladies purchased the building for $20,000 then deeded it over to the Sisters of St. Francis whose Motherhouse at that time was in Chillicothe, Missouri, in memory of their two brothers, J. Hudson Smith and William Smith. Arrangements for the transaction were instituted by the Rt. Rev. Thomas J. McCartan, then pastor of St. Bonaventure Church, Marceline, Missouri. St. Francis Hospital was not ready to serve the public immediately. Months of remodeling, repairing, and renovating were required before the building was in shape. New equipment was installed and the hospital space utilized in a manner to enable the Sisters to care for sixteen patients. The Hospital was re-opened on August 15, 1946, and dedicated formally on October 6, 1946, with the late Bishop C. H. LeBlond of St. Joseph, Missouri, as the principal speaker. In a perfect Indian summer setting the St. Francis Hospital was dedicated “to the service of humanity.” Bishop LeBlond told the large gathering present: “With all the efforts of the United States directed for five long years to war, to the destruction of human life and property, the dedication of an institution for unselfish service to the community of Marceline has marked the beginning of a new
Robert W. Smith, M.D., Chief of Staff
Robert W. Smith, M.D., was born in Washington, Iowa on November 5, 1918. He was graduated from Central Missouri State College in 1939 with AB and BS Degrees. In 1941 he was graduated from the University of Missouri with a BS in Medicine and in 1943 from the St. Louis University School of Medicine. He interned at St. Mary’s Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1943, after which he served a year as a resident in surgery in the same hospital. For the next , two years he was assistant chief of Surgery of the 147th General Hospital at Scolfield Barracks. Dr. Smith attended the Cook County Postgraduate School of Medicine in Chicago in 1958 and was accepted as a fellow in the International College of Surgeons in 1959. In 1962 he was accepted as a member of the American Society of Abdominal Surgeons. He is a staff member of St. Mary’s Hospital in Kansas City and of Pershing Memorial and is a member of the American Medical Association, the Missouri State Medical Association, Jackson County Medical Society, Grand River Medical Society, Association of Railway Surgeons, and Missouri State Surgical Society.