Interview with Dr. Aaron S. Canowitz
This interview with Dr. Canowitz took place at his home in Columbus in the summer of 1997, and is a part of the Columbus Jewish Historical Society Oral History Project.
Dr. Canowitz, who touched many lives as a family practice physician in his 65 - year practice, speaks to Marvin Bonowitz about growing up and practicing medicine in Columbus. Bonowitz is a cousin of the doctor. The family trees of the Canowitz family, the David Bonowitz and Samuel Bonowitz families which he mentions, can be found in the archives of the Columbus Jewish Historical Society. Dr. Canowitz begins by identifying some of his own sisters and brothers and their family members at a family picnic.
Dr. Canowitz. We started a family club and we would meet, each one of us, that one month there was a president, secretary and treasurer, and we used to have a thanksgiving dinner and a family outing, and we’d have a little poker game and we’d go out to poker to the penny ante game and it wasn’t enough, but everyone would chip in - this was one of the old pictures, and in this one, it just happens that some of our relatives - our cousins from Cleveland were visiting. I’ll tell you about them. She made a copy of that (picnic photograph) and listed the names so you know all this. Now, this one here, is one of the more recent ones, while (brother) Joe was still living. After my mother passed away we still tried to have the picnic once a year, and it just happened that we took a picture of this group. We have an extra picture if you want to keep it.
It shows Harry and Sarah and Reva - Rudy was already gone, and there was Judy and Bill (Brown) and Margaret and Lou (Grossman,) and Naomi (my wife) and I and Celia (Katz) and (brother) Joe (Canowitz.) [Dr. Canowitz proceeds to speak of David and Sarah Bonowitz and some of their children:]
Some of the things I remember - (Dr. Canowitz begins to speak about the family of his cousins, David and Sarah Bonowitz,) from the beginning, the things that I remember. Their oldest daughter (Minnie Bonowitz) married a man, a Canadian from Toronto and they moved down here and he had difficulty really making a living. He was an umbrella maker among umbrella makers, and they lived after he passed away, they lived on Oakwood Avenue, just south of, just north of Livingston Avenue, just close to my office. She was a very ill woman, had a lot of trouble with her legs, and her children - her daughters and son - anyway, her oldest daughter, Amelia (Gruber) never married. Another daughter married a relative of theirs, by marriage: Helen (Gruber) Winter. Her husband, Martin Winter was a brother of Harry Winter, who had married her aunt, Anna Winter. (Harry and Anna) had two children - the oldest child died rather young - an interesting story.
I delivered the child. I think his name was Martin. I didn’t think it was such a difficult delivery, but (Martin Rosen) was so upset by the delivery, that he said he would have no more children.
Lydia and Madelyn - Madelyn died rather young. Lydia moved to Akron. They were all patients of mine. Zelda Bonowitz never married. She worked for the John Deere Plow Company for years and years and years. She lived in the Governor’s Terrace Apartments on Broad Street and Governor Place. And then the twins - Esther Bonowitz married and attorney, Frank Bayer and they moved down to Florida. Goldie became interested in theatrical work. She was quite talented. Most of her work was in elocution, in teaching actors how to act, and she made quite a name for herself. She wasn’t some movie star shortly, and she married a fellow by the name of Joe Solomon, from Columbus. Elliott Bonowitz was sort of a - I hate to say this - and I’m going to turn this off because I’m going to tell you - (pause)
Ol’ Man David Bonowitz, was also an original member of Agudas Achim but for some reason there was a misunderstanding between the powers that be there, and he started a new shul there, just two doors north of Agudas Achim which we called the ogarisineh shul, but its real name was Ahavas Sholom, and he was the big macher there.
Interviewer. Ogarisineh means?
Dr. Canowitz. Breaking away. That (breaking away) was quite common, and this business of Jewish people very frequently separating themselves from their original shuls, reminds me of a story of a Jewish man that was shipwrecked on an island. It was habitable and he got along pretty well, and after several years a ship came to that place, and he was so proud to show them his accomplishments, and he showed them that he had built two shuls, and they asked him, "Why did you build two shuls?" and he said, "One shul I don’t have to go to." (hearty laughter)
So those were the things I remember about the family.
Interviewer. Did you take care of those twin boys (David and Dale Bonnie?)
Dr. Canowitz. Minnie Reiffel - her husband was a silversmith. The company he owned at the time - all the nice hotels served on silverware instead of the stuff they have now. He used to go from city to city to pick up their silverware and replate it give it to them. They lived very nicely and my brother Joe and his wife Fannie used to visit them (in Chicago) frequently, and they came here. She was a nice, elegant lady and they were nice people. The two children that I remember were Arthur and - who was the daughter? I don’t know if they’re alive now or not.
Interviewer. No.
Dr. Canowitz. Naturally, when (my brother) Joe and (his wife) Fanny were gone, I lost track of (Minnie Reiffel and her husband.) Now who can I talk about now?
Anna Winter was Daughter #3 (of David and Sarah Bonowitz.) She married a fellow named Harry Winter who used to work for the Gas Company. When he quit then they had a little dry goods store on Cleveland Avenue Harry had a brother named Martin. (I console myself that I frequently do not recall names so much by saying, not that the nerves are deteriorating in my head, but that the telephone lines are so full that the messages don’t come through. It may not be so (laughing at himself,) but that’s how I console myself.)
After Fanny then there was Zelda and I mentioned to you already about Zelda working for the Deere Plow company for many, many years. I think she was sort of running the operation here.
And then came Joe (Bonowitz,) who played high school baseball - he was a catcher. He graduated high school and he went into professional baseball. It wasn’t Class A, AAA, not even AA, it was in a western conference. I forgot the name (of the team.) Naturally, the amount of money he made was very minimal, and after he married, he moved down to Florida where he was in the dry cleaning business in West Palm Beach. Elliott, (Joe’s younger brother) went into professional football on a Columbus team called the Columbus Senators. It was a time when the Canton Bulldogs, you know, played at the old Senator’s baseball field on Cleveland Avenue next to the big bakery there. He was injured and went into another business. His two sons that I remember (Dale and David Bonnie) made a name for themselves in college football (at Ohio State.)
Dr. Canowitz now speaks of his own sisters and brothers.
Now the Canowitz’s. Who can I start with? The mother? I never knew my father - I was born in the old country, in Grodno, and my father died six months before I was born, left Mother with seven and a half children. My brother, Joe at that time was still going to the Yeshiva - at eighteen years old he was quite learned, but he had to quit work, as did all the rest of them. Rudy, who was 12, Chani (later Berliner) and Sarah (Wolman) each found bits of work around the county. My younger sisters, like Judyth (Brown) and Margaret (Grossman) and Celia (Katz) did attend some schooling in Grodno - there were public schools in Russia at that time. Jewish enrollment there was limited, so the wealthy Jews of the small communities like Grodno would sponsor schools for them to learn not only Russian and Yiddish, but other things like reading and writing and mathematics and stuff like that. They all did go to school in the early years.
As a boy, I started to school about the age of 3 1/2 years - I went to cheder - my mother took me. It used to be the custom of the father taking a child of 3 1/2
years of age to go to cheder, cover him with his tallis, and the mother would give him a bag of cookies to sweeten the - I don’t remember too much of that, and the reason I was sent to cheder at that age, is that we had anticipated coming to the United States and we would be coming to a goyishe country that may not have any education.
My brother Joe was inducted into the army at the age of twenty, but we realized that that was not any place for him, and he went AWOL, over the fence so to speak, and left one night. There was a regular, sort of underground situation in which escapees could go from place to place until they landed in Bremen, Germany, and then came to the United States.
He ended up in Circleville, because that’s where his uncle, (Marvin Bonowitz’s grandfather, Samuel Bonowitz) Simcha Abba lived at that time. Circleville at that time did have sort of a Jewish community there. There were the Dulskies, the Friedmans, and so forth, there, but they must have moved a year later - that was 1910 - and in 1911 they moved to Columbus, and I believe my brother, Joe, still lived there (in Circleville.) My brother Rudy and sister, Chani, came in 1910, 1912. I imagine Chani was about 19 and Rudy was about 17 or so. They came over and they came to Columbus, where my brother Joe already had a place and they then lived together all in the same area with my mother’s brother, Samuel Bonowitz. We lived at 840 Parsons, and the Bonowitzes lived at 860 Parsons Avenue. At 858 Parsons, were the Grossmans, who later became related to us when Lou Grossman married my sister Margaret.
But that whole area from Columbus Street south to Livingston, the whole street was practically all Jewish people.
Anyway, one interesting thing that happened on the trip from Chani and Rudy was this: they both left together, but during the trip one of them developed a little eye irritation, and at that time, when you landed in the United States, they were very, very careful about admitting anybody with glaucoma, which was quite common at that time, so Chani and Rudy figured out something. They traded health certificates, because the one with the irritated eye, I don’t remember which one it was, whether it was Chani or Rudy. The doctor examined the certificate and says the eyes are normal, no trouble. He had a good certificate but had eye irritation, and the other had a certificate listing an eye irritation, the doctor examined and said, "I can’t see anything wrong," and he let her in. Otherwise, one of them would have been sent back. I do not know the name of the ship they came in.
We were supposed to arrive here in 1914, but in 1913, in January, February or March, there was a bad flood that inundated the entire west side to the hilltop, and my mother heard of that, and she was so anxious to go home to see her family, so we left in June, 1913 for an eighteen day trip, and we landed June 15, 1913 in Baltimore, not in Ellis Island, and through the Jewish Aid Society, they directed us to Columbus. Joe did not get to meet us in New York, and we went directly to 860 Parsons Avenue, a home that he had furnished for us.
The trip was an eighteen day trip and, most of my family was very
ill. They say
I was the only one that didn’t get seasick and I ran around the entire
ship. I’m giving you some little incidents. To me it was an
experience. I remember the first time eating some fresh fruit, like a
banana - stuff like that. Another thing that I like to mention to
people. We came over here third class. And do you know why we came over
third class? Because there wasn’t any fourth class ! Because we
were very affluent (ironic humor.) I thought I’d slip this in!
I was five years old, came in July, and we went to school right away - we attended Siebert Street School. I was in the first grade - (sister) Judy was in the 2B, Sarah was in the 3B, and Margaret even went and I think Celia even went for a few months there, but she was already an older girl of fourteen or fifteen. But the interesting thing is this: we learned English, and that’s all. Not Russian, not Polish, no, we learned English, and it really bothers me that they allow foreigners today to come over and learn their language and not learn English. This is America! If they wanna be American or they wanna be a Latin or Greeks or Turks, or whatever they are, They ought to learn English American.
My mother’s regret is that we did not teach her English. We only spoke Yiddish at home, and to this day, I think I can speak a fairly good Yiddish yet. Much later, when I was a physician already associated with St. Francis Hospital,
I would take her to some of the affairs, and even though she could not speak English, she could understand a little bit, and she could get along and people enjoyed her. As far as my youth is concerned, I was as ornery a boy as the rest of them, and played tricks, and on Halloween turned over the outhouses. After all, all the houses had outhouses. We didn’t have inside plumbing or inside electricity. There was a gas mantle for light inside the house, and my brother tells me the story that when they first came here to Circleville, they had gas, too. The light could blow out but the gas kept going.
My brothers, Joe and Rudy, were tailors. Joe worked for somebody else at first, in a store at 615 East Main Street just west of Parsons Avenue by the name of,
I believe, Grodsky. I can’t remember for sure. They were apprentice tailors in Europe. My brother Rudy went in partnership with your (Marvin Bonowitz’s) dad on Parsons Avenue close to Oak Street on the east side of the street. I remember the store very, very well. Later, he bought out the store at 615 East Main Street. It was just north of, just west of Parsons Avenue, close to where we lived. Then when your father had to go to the service, Rudy went into partnership with Joe. He (Joe) had moved his store to Parsons Avenue near Oak Street, and when your father came back from the service, he went into business on Mt. Vernon Avenue, but he had his tailor shop, and then he went into haberdashery and sold suits and stuff like that.
Interviewer. How did Rudy feel about Abe opening his own store?
Dr. Canowitz. It didn’t bother him, he was all ready, I think, or Joe thought they’d get together. I’m not sure, actually - Abe was not a true tailor. He learned whatever he knew from Rudy or picked it up somewhere. There were two kinds of tailors at that time. There were those that could make a complete suit from a piece of cloth. The others were called bushelmen - not bushelers -that’s in the dictionary - an individual who could do various alterations on sleeves, cuffs, side seams.
Interviewer. Were there any bad feelings that Rudy had?
Dr. Canowitz. Well, really not. There were, just between us - this is not - I don’t want this (recorder) on - I’ll start again.
There used to be an open air theater on the northwest corner of Whittier and Parsons that had benches, and we’d go to see a movie. It would cost all of five cents and very frequently when I was with Joe visiting your grandpa and David Bonowitz I would get a nickel from my brother Joe to go to the pictures. Otherwise, we would sometimes get into the pictures by distributing circulars - go down Stanley Avenue and other streets, putting a circular into the mail box, so we could get a ticket to go into the pictures. I hate to tell you this, but a lot of the circulars went down the sewers - we were kids - they expected it and they knew we did it - Benny (Abe Bonowitz’s brother) and Elliott and I and another fellow - a young kid named Joe Somebody, whose father had a grocery store across Parsons Avenue where the Shusticks lived, and we were sort of a clan - a group -we’d get into more messes and more fights - we had nothing to do at night but get into mischief. If we got caught, we got a licking. Okay, enough of that.
I went to Siebert Street School until the second grade, and then we moved to 342 Parsons Avenue, closer to Main Street, and we transferred to Fulton Street School. And there, even though I was an average student, my sisters were always ahead, and I knew doggone well, if I didn’t bring home good grades I’d get my tuchus beat up but good, and the sisters said, "If you fail, don’t come home - just keep walking!" So I _____ and the funny thing about Fulton Street School that’s an interesting thing, it was mostly, I would say, the enrollment was 95% Jewish. Very few colored people, and the rest - 8% non-Jewish.
And a curious story about that Fulton Street School. My sister-in-law Hanna (Neustadt), who was teaching, had passed the Ohio State Board but was not allowed to teach in Columbus schools until she had a couple of years practice, so she got a job in Hamilton, Ohio, and after that two years she came back to Columbus and got a job.
Side B
Interviewer. Joe’s wife?
Dr. Canowitz. My sister - in - law, Hanna (Neustadt.) Anyway, there was a teacher there who was there for years and years. Her name was Miss Dawson. She was a very good teacher and for some reason she stayed on for years and years and years. She told Hanna, "Be sure to not come to school before the bell rang." And when the bell rang to dismiss, to leave the school immediately because at that time already it was overrun by some people that didn’t care and there was scribbling and all that and urination on the floors and all that. And this Miss Dawson, she doesn’t know that Hanna is a Jew. She said, "Fulton Street School is one of the best in the city of Columbus. And do you know why? Because the enrollment is 95% Jewish kids."
Those of you who look back see that those people who became the professionals and the big businessmen of Columbus, they were mostly kids that went to Fulton Street School. It was the best school in the city of Columbus. It’s not so now.
Anyway, from Fulton Street School to Mound Street School, who also had a pretty good enrollment, maybe 50% Jewish people, kids. I walked. It was on the northeast corner of Third and Mound, and I always walked Parsons Avenue. There was no such thing as busses when you went to school; winter, summer, snow, you went to school. And you better - my brother saw to it. And so I did fairly well in the latter part of Fulton and Mound, and for some reason, I passed.
I skipped some grades. I was five years old when I started school, and by the time I graduated high school - from Mound I went to South - I was fifteen years old when I graduated from South High School. At that time I went into pre-Med at Ohio State University - the total enrollment at that time was 9,000, and I’m quite sure if we had lived in another town we would not have been able to afford to go, but I went there and I was accepted at the end of two years, and I graduated Medical School at the age of 21.
You worked hard, and during that day when a lot of us were in college, I worked in the evenings at Central Market, and North Market every Saturday, every little nickel helped, and I used to work a little bit for my brothers - they would be making coats for the big stores - big tailors down town. They would cut them, send them down and my brothers would put them together. And I used to deliver coats to them - I did a lot of mending - even when I was 5 -6 -7 - 8 years old, I sold papers downtown. I sold papers on Spring and High, and we were allowed to go on foot. Benny would be on one corner, and I would be on the other corner. and we would go run on the street car one block for nothing to sell papers. Everybody worked - everybody pitched in to earn a living. We were very affluent there, as I said before.
Anyway, after graduating, I was accepted at St. Francis Hospital as an intern, and I got along with the nurses with the sisters there very well so they asked me to stay there as a resident. I was only 21 to begin with, and I felt that I was still too young to go really out and compete with the older Jewish doctors - Adelman and Lou Harris, so I took an internship and two years’ residency at St. Francis. They couldn’t afford to pay a resident, so one of my professors - really a mentor - in my third year in medical school there was a doctor by the name of Ernest Scott, who was head of the Department of Pathology, and I got along very well with him. He sort of took a liking to me, and he paid for my college. I was making fifty bucks a month. When I was an intern I was making twenty - five bucks a month, the cost of board and room. Then I got fifty bucks a month for which I would do all the pathology work - I did all the autopsies at St. Francis, all the autopsies at Columbus State Hospital, where you had to examine not only the body but the brain, and all that, and I learned a lot during that time.
And during that time also while at St. Francis, even during my internship, they didn’t have a full - time anesthetist and generally, the doctor who sent the patient in frequently gave the person the anesthetic, and it was not really a good system. They wanted somebody who would stay there and learn and learn and learn. I sort of took a liking to it. In addition to my general practice, which included deliveries and house calls and all the things you run together. And of course I got married in 1936 and David was born in 1938 and when he was 5 months old I developed a ruptured diaphragm. I lifted a patient off the table and tore my diaphragm and had to go to the Mayo Clinic to have it fixed because there was really nobody in town that was doing chest work at that time.
One of the doctors I was friendly with in Columbus knew the surgeon in the Mayo Clinicand sent me there and I got along pretty well. My wife went with me - she left her five - month - old baby with her sister and I’m quite sure it didn’t help her morale much.
Anyway, in 1942 I was drafted for the army but they turned me down because I had an incarcerated hernia that I did not know about. When I came back I had it repaired and I applied again. Dr. I. B. Harris, who was Chief of Surgery at St. Francis said, "You don’t have to go - I can write them a letter saying that you are important to the Anesthesia Department."
So I said, "Dr. Harris, is your son in the army?" His son was also a doctor. He says, "Yeah." I said, "Well, I gotta go into the Army, too. There were a lot of Jews who are being hurt over there and I want to go to the army." Well, Naomi was very, very much upset, and of course, I don’t need to tell you that my mother was quite concerned, too. As a matter of fact, I’ll tell you a little meise: a week or two before I was going to go into the service in 1943, my mother came into my office - I asked her to come in at that time - just for a check - up. Her blood pressure was so high that I said - in fact, we didn’t have medication for blood pressure. All we knew was rest and giving them a sedative. And I said, "Mother, if you were an ordinary patient of mine, I would put you to bed for two weeks. And her face got so red and so suffused, I said, "Forget it, Mother, forget it."
And my mother stayed alive until I came back from the service in 1946, in August. She died in December, 1946. She stayed alive by her own will and determination. So that’s my story.
My second child was born in 1940, so when I left for the service I left two children and my wife. So that brings us up to pretty near modern times. Your (Marvin’s) grandmother lived between Forest and Columbus on the west side of Ohio Avenue.
Interviewer. First on Parsons Avenue.
Dr. Canowitz. Parsons Avenue. Across the street. And of course I remember Fannie, and Abe, Bobby and Ced (Shustick.) Cecil is a little younger than I am. Didn’t Bobby live in Dayton and Molly in Cincinnati? You see, I remember the little details!
I remember your grandfather - your mother’s father very well. He was the big contributor to the Bes Yankov (Beth Jacob) and when Bes Yankov moved from Donaldson Street to Bulen Avenue, your grandparents lived - it was an even number, on the east side of the street, at 1044 Bulen Avenue and I used to see them frequently. And on the other side of the street, they lived close to the Whites. Mrs. White was the one who catered my bar mitzvah. And the old man White later became the shammes for the Hungarian shul (Tifereth Israel) that was at the corner of McCallister and Parsons.
We lived two doors away from them and I was already bar mitzvah so he used to wake me up every morning and Lou Gertner, who lived on Mound Street, right off of Parsons, to help make a minyan, because the Margulises, the Schlezingers, the Polsters were all saying kaddish at the same time, and they needed a minyan, so morning and evening, Lou and I were there, and as a result, they gave us at the end of the year, a signet ring which I wore all the time until I even graduated medical school and was in practice at Ohio and Whittier, until the damn thing sort of wore down. So I sort of cherished it. And the man who lived next to me was a jeweler who worked for Hohenstein’s the big shots’ jeweler downtown, and I designed a ring and this followed the intials were from the old gold, and he made the rest of the ring onyx out of new gold.
So I feel - I always contribute a little something every year - fifty dollars or something like that just for old times’ sake - and I got married. If it had come in 1914 it would have been too late, and my brother Joe said, and it was almost like a korvan - a sacrifice that my father did so that we all lived. He died at 42 years of age of appendicitis or something. Naomi’s father died ...
This concludes the interview with Aaron Canowitz, which is a part of the Columbus Jewish Historical Society Oral History Project.
Interview #2 with Dr. Aaron Canowitz
This interview was recorded on December 17, 1998 for the Columbus Jewish Historical Society Oral History Project.
Dr. Canowitz lived in the area of Parsons Avenue and Fulton Street after coming
to the United States at the age of three with his mother, two brothers and five sisters. At age 90,
he speaks about his medical practice and career. See also another interview taped earlier in
which he speaks about his family, schools and living in the south end.
Interviewer. This is Marvin Bonowitz, speaking with Dr. Aaron Canowitz on December 17,
1998 in his home on Effingham Road in east Columbus. His son, David, is also present.
Dr. Canowitz. -- the practice of medicine in that transition period, where some of the old things were used and new things were being discovered. Some of the old things, for example, ether was discovered in the 1500s, but it became from what they do nowadays for local fun. People would take it, get a little high, and one time when people were getting a little high, and one of them went out completely, hurt himself, woke up and didn’t have any pain. That was started by a dentist. The first operation using ether was in 1846 in a general hospital.
And chloroform, became popular because the queen of England was given Chloroform in 1909 to deliver King Edward, and later on local agents became popular. We always knew about morphine, but local agent like cocaine were used to great effect. One of the discoverers became an addict in the late 1900s, then they started to use more general anesthetics, but ether was so unpleasant to take, patients dreaded it. There was nausea and vomiting after it, so they used some agents to make people sleepy, like ethyl chloride was sprayed onto a mask. Too much of it was dangerous. Then came vynathane that was pleasant.
Then the gas machines came out. A man by the name of Gwathmey, from Toledo, was one of the first to make a gas machine that used nitrous oxide. That made it more pleasant to go to sleep. People were terrified going to sleep, when they finally developed Pentothal to put ‘em to sleep, because then you could eat other agents were not sole anesthesia agents. They were not relaxing, they were to relieve pain and help put you to sleep, but it didn’t relax you.
So we learned about different drugs - Pentothal, and Valium now, that we use as a preliminary to putting them to sleep. We’ve progressed from open drops on a mask to a gas machine, to Valium.
Medicine, in general has progressed in a lot of ways. X-ray machine was crude, and many of the old x-ray technicians lost fingers because they didn’t know to protect themselves with lead shielding. The first electrocardiogram that I saw when I was a medical student was brought into town by a Doctor Nelson, a very good surgeon and a good friend of mine. It was a huuuuuge machine. Now they’ve got a little - bitty machine they attach it and they take it - it has a light here and a flash here.
Dr. Nelson was an excellent doctor.
Then there were some diseases that I saw during my time - Smallpox. Malaria was seen during the time of the Spanish - American War and when they were building the Panama Canal they realized that the mosquito was the cause of it. Polio was dreaded and in the middle 1950s our place was filled with people in Drinker respirators - so called Iron Lung - the whole body was placed in it, only the head out. Children’s Hospital was the center for treatment.
I graduated at an early age - I was very young, and I thought it would be to my advantage to take some extra work. I interned for a year at St. Francis Hospital and as a resident for two years in pathology and anesthesia, then when I went out into practice I did get a lot of Jewish patients, chiefly because I could speak Yiddish to them. A lot of them appreciated that because they spoke Yiddish at home.
In my early practice, I did (childbirth) deliveries at home - the bad cases you went to the hospital but I did a lot of deliveries and other procedures in (the patient’s) home. That was during the days of the depression, in the early to mid - 1930s, and people were sent to the hospital at the drop of a hat. You had a fracture, you gave a little liniment, a little nitrous oxide, reduce the fracture and put a cast on ‘em.
Many a wound I used to take ‘em to the Emergency Room and sew ‘em up. They accepted what you did, they’re not going to sue you. In a kid, I would put _______________ on it. Hospital work, general practice, deliver babies at night, you worked 24 hours a day. You had office hours every day and even came in Saturday morning!
We charged $25 up to $50 depending on how well - off they were, and that included all the pre - natal care and six weeks post -operative care, hospital visits and all that.
Speaking of taking care of old Jewish people, there was an old gentleman who was quite well know, and he came to my office sort of downcast, long - faced, and to cheer him up, I told him in Yiddish, "Ver viten yor kucht ois azey vi hott nit die maedel zi kaches - Sir! You don’t have the strength of a young girl!" He said, "Mein kind," after all, he was older than I was. I was a youngster. "Not that I don’t have kaches for a maedel - not that I don’t have the strength of a young girl, I don’t have the strength for a young maedel."
Then other things you try to make a living with, you found little things __________.
Dr. E. J. Gordon, who was a good friend of the family, gave me a job at the Jewish Infants Home, which was on Rich Street, next to the old Schonthal Home. Dr. Edelman used to take care of them, but he was very, very busy and he was like throwing me a bone, but which I accepted very much, and that was one of the things that made me like children very much - pediatrics - and I took care of those children at the Jewish Children’s Home.
Occasionally there were things we had to do outside the hospital. The surgeons at St. Francis asked me to give the anesthetic for a woman who lived out in the country, who we operated on her on the kitchen table. Give her anesthetic, I brought stuff along with me, and I had gone one time to Marion, Ohio, to give an anesthetic for a bad gall bladder. One of the residents at St. Francis was practicing and this was a big case for him.
Other incidents - we were staying with a family in Clearwater, Florida. A friend of mine who was a resident at St. Francis with me had a patient in Dunedin, ten miles north of Clearwater, called me one time - he knew I was in town, I’d had dinner with him - he had two bad cases - an 85 - year - old man with gall bladder difficulty and a newborn baby who did not have a connection between his stomach and his small bowel, called pyloric atresia.
Naturally, I did the baby, kept it warm on a heating pad, took its temperature, found a vein on the back of his hand, gave it blood in small doses. The surgeon was a trained man from Mayo’s and he did the operation successfully in an hour or so.
David Canowitz speaks:
A couple of stories that happened within the family. Dad always brought home Jewish residents and interns from Children’s Hospital, especially on a Friday night or yontiff - this one time there was this very shy doctor from Mexico. His name was Juan Berkowitz. He spoke Yiddish with a Spanish accent. He was extremely shy. Dad had been carving a turkey at table and had this platter piled high and he passes it to Dr. Berkowitz at first who takes one little piece.
Dad says, "Don’t be so shy, take more," whereupon he takes his knife from one end of the platter to the other, he scooped everything off his plate. Dad said, "My eyes popped out of my head, I didn’t know what to do."
The other story happened with dad was when Ethel Neustadt (sister of Aaron’s wife, Naomi) had two of her sons (Jim and Charles Neustadt) in Mexico City and they were involved in a very serious auto accident. Charles was okay, Jim was in a coma with a fractured skull and other injuries. They called Dad, and he was getting ready to go down there, because knowing the type of medical services and inadequate equipment down there, he was going to go down there. This was in 1958 or 1959. Just before he was ready to go to the airport, he gets a call from the doctor down there, it turns out the surgeon down there had trained at Ohio State University and it turns out the anesthesiologist had been a resident under Dad at Children’s.
(Dr. Canowitz refers to a video tape recently given to him containing a tribute by esteemed colleague, H. William Clatworthy. On this tape, he asks to view it. His son suggests that they view it after this interview is over.)
The Jewish neighborhood at the time that we came here in 1913 was around Washington and Donaldson, and another Jewish neighborhood was around Parsons between Livingston and Whittier. I started school at Siebert Street School and then went to Fulton Street School. Fulton Street School was considered one of the best schools in Columbus. My sister - in - law, Hannah Neustadt, when she started to teach in Columbus, taught at Fulton Street School. There was an old teacher there that used to tell her, "When the bell rings at 3 o’clock, you scram. Don't come in before 8 o’clock, because you’ll see this place all full of scribbling and all that and it’s not fit, but (she did not know Hannah was Jewish) she said, "Fulton Street School was the best school in the city of Columbus. You know why? It was 95% Jewish kids." On the holidays they closed the school.
I was not a goody - goody boy. Harry Mellman, who was a good friend of mine - his birthday and bar mitzvah were a month ahead of mine - we were kicked out of Sunday School for acting up. The superintendent at the shul thought he was going to stick us up on the second floor balcony, in that room where the women were, and give us a licking, but we didn’t stay there. I never went back. I did have my bar mitzvah at Agudas Achim, Harry Mellman had one there a month before. Rabbi Neches was the rabbi at the time. ( fact checked okay. M. B. )
As a youngster I got into all kinds of difficulties, some of which I deserved capital punishment, which meant a good lickin’. For example, my brother Joe caught me riding on the back of a street car on the trailer that connected the street cars one to another - he caught me as he was going home for lunch. He dragged me to the back porch and beat the heck out of me! Harry Mellman and I got into a lot of difficulties. Louis Gertner lived in that same area and swiped some cigarettes from my brother Rudy, and ran behind the Blind School - that was where we smoked ‘em. But the stuff got on our hands, and as our mothers smelled them and as I reached for some food, she knew what the hell was happening. I was not a goody - goody boy. But one thing was sure. Learning and going to school was the important thing.
For instance, when I was in the third grade, we had these desks where the person in front of you sat. The little girl had gone to the blackboard, and as she came back, I lifted up the seat and she fell down and hit the floor. The teacher saw me do it, came over, and gave me one across the face that made my ears ring. I was tickled to death that she did not tell my sisters, who were in the other grades, what happened, cause my brothers Joe and Rudy sure would beat the heck out of me!
When we finally graduated South High School and had gone on to the University, there was a course in organic chemistry. It was just an elective course on Saturday morning at ten o’clock every Saturday that was years! So a bunch of us Jewish boys - Mel Goodman, Sammy Goldstein, myself, there were a couple of Jewish boys from Cleveland who roomed in the same area, we all walked to the Ohio State University and back. Youngsters. The Jewish boys did very well. From Fulton Street School we went to Mound Street School, and I skipped a grade or two. Several of us Jewish boys got that promotion. Mound Street was called an intermediate school. Now they call it a middle school or junior high.
And from there we went to South. I graduated from South when I was fifteen years of age. We knew that studying was the most important thing in life, and when Sammy Goldstein and I finally got into medical school in 1925 after only two years of pre - med. We studied at each other’s homes. One night at his house, and one night at my house. We were given a lot of cooperation from the family. Nobody disturbed us, we had the dining room to ourselves. That’s where the Jewish parents came in. The Jewish parents and the families co - operated. There was no distraction of t.v. radio, or anything like that. This was a time for learning.
Sammy Goldstein passed away about a year ago. He practiced here until 1950. He did not enter the army, he had some difficulty with his feet. Milt Goodman and I went. Then Sammy went to practice in Florida, but because he was from "out of state," he had to take an internship there for a year so that he could take his medical boards, and he made #1 in the year he took the medical boards, and he was connected with the Miami General Hospital there.
Our grades were exactly the same, I don’t think there wasn’t a half a point difference in our grades in the medical board examination. But one thing that taught me a good lesson - as a freshman in chemistry, and the problem was with Helium. The atomic weight of Helium is 1.006, and I made the equation at 1.06 and everything else was correct, and I ran up to the professor and complained, and the professor, and he taught me a good lesson. He said, "What are you planning to do?" And he says, "I want to be a doctor." Professor said, "When you’re a doctor you had better put the decimal point in the right place, or else you’re going to get into trouble. And that’s a true story. Oh yeah.
And in exams our chairs were far apart. There was no cribbing and no cheating. They wouldn’t stand for that.
Modern times now, as I see it, after not being in practice almost 20 years - my practice ended in 1979. Doctors rarely make house calls anymore. They send you to the Emergency Room. And the next day when they get the information, you go back to his office. I don’t know whether that’s good or bad. It’s good for the doctor, but not so much for the family.
If something was wrong with you, many the night I slept on the couch. If a guy had a coronary or something like that, we didn’t send him to the hospital. They gave him morphine and ____.
The other thing is this about lawsuits now - sometimes in self - defense the doctor has to over - do things.
I’m ninety years old - there’s an old saying, "The old and the dying harvest their memories with an abounding zeal." And some of the memories may be worthwhile to me. They may not be worthwhile to anybody else, but, for example, the children’s home. To me that was a big thing. It gave me a little extra money. Dr. E. J. Gordon was quite influential at the University College of Medicine and naturally, Dr. Gordon was a one time Temporary Dean of the Medical School at the University. He was always a Professor of Medicine. He was in charge of the out - patient clinic and we became great friends - friends of the whole family, particularly, if it weren’t for Eva, a good friend of the Neustadts. He was a ____ . Years ago we had a doctor name of Dr. Fisher, that was during the 1913 flood. Dr. Edelman was my doctor and later on we became quite friendly to the extent that if I had to have a pediatric consultation he would sit in for me, and later on when he got to be more and more disabled, and afraid to drive at night, I was living then at the Park Towers, and I picked him up at night and carried him to dinner meetings and brought him back, and we became quite friendly.
As a matter of fact, --
This concludes this interview with Dr. Canowitz for the Columbus Jewish Historical Society.
