DECATUR — Dr. Felix G. Eubanks’ saddlebags, still packed with medicine and supplies, give a glimpse into a different era when doctors made house calls on horseback.
Eubanks’ saddlebags were recently donated to the Decatur Library by the family of Dr. Rex Williams, according to a letter accompanying the saddlebags.
Eubanks lived and practiced medicine in Decatur for a number of years. The town has a street named in his honor, and Eubanks and his wife Mary are both buried in the Decatur cemetery. Their tombstone states that Eubanks was born in 1865 and died in 1949. Mary was born in 1876 and also died in 1949, according to the inscription.
Sometime before Eubanks passed away, he gave the saddlebags to his friend and fellow doctor, Rex Williams, of Siloam Springs, according to the letter. Dr. Williams’ survivors, Rex Williams Jr. and Pat Farley, donated the saddle bags to the Decatur Library so the people of Decatur could enjoy their history, the letter states.
The saddlebags are surprisingly small, about 8 inches long by 6 inches wide, and also surprisingly heavy.
On one side the old leather bags contain long thin vials of medicine - they somewhat resemble metal test tubes - with corroded lids. They are divided by compartments designed to hold them securely while being jostled on the back of a horse.
The other side is divided into a top and bottom portion. In the top is an open pocket with several bottles of pills and a roll of gauze. The bottom contains a pull-out drawer with small square glass bottles of medicine in neatly divided compartments. The leather bags have a stamp on the flap - probably made by the manufacturer - that is illegible except for the words Saint Louis, Mo.
Bernice Walls, of Decatur, recalls visiting Eubanks as a child. By the time the Walls family moved to Decatur when she was three years old, Eubanks practiced medicine out of an office located near the intersection of Main Street and Maple Street and drove a car rather than using a horse for transportation, she said.
Eubanks served as both a doctor and a dentist, Walls recounted. She remembers him pulling several of her teeth when she was 5 or 6 years old.
Walls doesn’t remember the experience being painful and said she knew once it was over she would feel better.
Walls also remembers that Eubanks’ wife, Mary, was a Sunday schoolteacher and would always come in singing Jesus Loves Me.
Dr. C.L. Abercrombie, of Decatur, said that Eubanks attended his birth at home.
“He delivered just about everybody around here,” Abercrombie said.
When Abercrombie was a child, Eubanks practiced medicine in a small house next to the T.D.S. Telephone Company building on Main Street and lived in the house that Abercrombie now resides in. Eubanks and his wife also lived for some time in a house that is now gone, just across the viaduct on North Main Street, Abercrombie said.
Walls said a Dr. Walker also served as both a doctor and a pharmacist in Decatur.
Abercrombie said Dr.
Buffington - who also has a street named in his honor - was another of the early physicians in Decatur.
News, Pages 2 on 09/08/2010