George Emory Goodfellow (December 23, 1855 – December 7, 1910) was a physician and naturalist in the 19th- and early 20th-century American Old West who developed a reputation as the United States' foremost expert in treating gunshot wounds. As a medical practitioner in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, Goodfellow treated numerous bullet wounds to both lawmen and outlaws. He recorded several significant medical firsts throughout his career, including performing the first documented laparotomy for treating an abdominal gunshot wound and the first perineal prostatectomy to remove an enlarged prostate. He also pioneered the use of spinal anesthesia and sterile techniques in treating gunshot wounds and is regarded as the first civilian trauma surgeon.
Goodfellow was known as a pugnacious, "brilliant and versatile" physician with wide-ranging interests. He not only practiced medicine but also conducted research into the venom of gila monsters; published the first surface rupture map of an earthquake in North America; interviewed Geronimo; and played a role in brokering a peace settlement in the Spanish–American War. He was a skilled boxer, and in his first year at the United States Naval Academy he became the academy's boxing champion, though he was soon dismissed for his involvement in a hazing incident against the first African-American to attend the institution. In 1889, he got into a fight with another man and stabbed him, but was found to have acted in self-defense.
Goodfellow treated Virgil Earp and Morgan Earp after they were wounded in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. His testimony later helped absolve the Earps and Doc Holliday of murder charges for having shot and killed three outlaw Cowboys during the gunfight. He treated Virgil again when he was maimed in an ambush and rushed to Morgan's side when he was mortally wounded by an assassin. Goodfellow left Tombstone in 1889 and established a successful practice in Tucson before moving to San Francisco in 1899 and opening a medical office there. He lost his practice and all of his personal belongings in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and subsequently returned to the Southwest, where he became the chief surgeon for the Southern Pacific Railroad in Mexico. He fell ill in 1910 and died later that year in Los Angeles.
Early life and education
Goodfellow's father, Milton J. Goodfellow, came to California in 1853 to mine for gold. His mother, Amanda Baskin Goodfellow, followed two years later, arriving in San Francisco on the steamship . Goodfellow was born on December 23, 1855, in Downieville, California, then one of the largest cities in the state. His parents also had two daughters, Mary Catherine ("Kitty") and Bessie. His father became a mining engineer and maintained an interest in medicine. Goodfellow grew up around California Gold Rush mining camps and developed a deep interest in both mining and medicine. When he was 12, his parents sent him across the country to a private school in Pennsylvania. He returned to California two years later where he attended the California Military Academy in Oakland. He was then accepted to the University of California at Berkeley, where he studied civil engineering for one year before he applied to the United States Naval Academy. In 1870, he was living with his family in Treasure City, Nevada, where his father was a mining superintendent.
Dismissed from Naval Academy
Goodfellow declined a congressional appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, and instead accepted an appointment from Nevada congressional representative C.W. Kendall to attend the United States Naval Academy, arriving there in June 1872. He became the school's resident boxing champion and was well accepted by his fellow midshipmen. Like many of his fellow cadets, he took exception to the presence of the academy's first black cadet, James H. Conyers.
While marching, Goodfellow and another cadet began kicking and punching Conyers, who had been shunned and constantly and brutally harassed since his arrival. Goodfellow later knocked Conyers down some stairs. News of the incidents and the constant hazing experienced by Conyers leaked to the newspapers, and a three-man board was convened to investigate the attacks. Goodfellow denied any wrongdoing and Conyers claimed he could not identify any of his attackers. The board nonetheless concluded, "His persecutors are left then without any excuse or palliation except the inadmissible one of prejudice." The review board believed the academy needed to give Conyers a fair chance at succeeding on his own merits, and recommended that strong measures should be taken. In December 1872, Goodfellow and two other students were dismissed from the academy.
Goodfellow immediately set about trying to get reinstated. His mother Amanda wrote a personal letter to First Lady Julia Grant, who was known to consider blacks as inferior and whose family had owned slaves before the Civil War. Amanda closed her letter by reminding the first lady of their mutual friends. Goodfellow also appealed to his mother's uncle and United States Attorney Robert N. Baskin for assistance. Baskin interceded with his friend, President Ulysses S. Grant, who promised to reinstate Goodfellow, but the uncle left his office and Grant was busy seeking re-election. None of the efforts for reinstatement proved fruitful.
Medical education
Concerned about disappointing his father, Goodfellow sought out his cousin, Dr. T.H. Lashells, in Meadville, Pennsylvania, and read for medicine. He found he had a ready aptitude for the medical field and moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where an uncle lived. He attended Wooster University Medical School and on February 23, 1876, he graduated with honors.
Goodfellow briefly opened a medical practice in Oakland. He was soon invited by his father to join him in Yavapai County, Arizona Territory, where Milton was a mining executive for Peck, Mine and Mill. Goodfellow worked in Prescott as the company physician for the next two years until he secured permission to serve with George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry. His orders to join the unit were delayed, however, and he missed the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876, at which most of the unit was destroyed. Instead, Goodfellow joined the U.S. Army as acting assistant surgeon at Fort Whipple in Prescott. In 1879, he became for a brief period the contract surgeon at Fort Lowell near Tucson.
Family
On November 4, 1876, Goodfellow married Katherine ("Kate") Colt, daughter of Henry Tracy Colt, the proprietor of Meadville's Colt House, whom he had met while reading medicine in Meadville. Ironically, she was a cousin to Samuel Colt, inventor of the Colt revolver, a weapon that would later play a significant role in Goodfellow's medical practice. The Goodfellows left Meadville immediately after they were married, during the week of November 9, 1876, and traveled to Oakland, California.
The Goodfellows had a daughter, Edith, born on October 22, 1879, in Oakland. They also had a son, George Milton, born in May 1882 in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, who died from "general bleeding" on July 18. Kate Goodfellow died on August 16, 1891, at her mother-in-law's home in Oakland. Goodfellow and his daughter Edith caught the train to Oakland from Benson, Arizona, and when his wife died, he and Edith returned to Tombstone before he relocated to Tucson and took over the practice of his deceased friend, Dr. John C. Handy. Goodfellow married again, to Mary Elizabeth, sometime before March 1906.
Medical practice in Tombstone
In 1880, Goodfellow decided to open his own medical practice. On September 15, he canceled his Army contract and he and his wife moved to the silver mining boomtown of Tombstone, in Cochise County, Arizona Territory. The town was less than a year old, but its population had exploded from about 100 residents in March 1879, when it consisted mostly of wooden shacks and tents. By the fall of 1879 more than a thousand miners and merchants lived in a canvas-and-matchstick camp built on top of the richest silver strike in the United States. When Goodfellow arrived the town had a population of more than 2,000. There were already 12 doctors practicing in Tombstone, but only Goodfellow and three others had medical school diplomas.
At age 25, Goodfellow opened an office on the second floor of the Crystal Palace Saloon, one of the most luxurious saloons in the West. It was also the location of offices for other notable officials, including County Coroner Dr. H.M. Mathews, Deputy U.S. Marshal Virgil Earp, attorney George W. Berry, Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan, and justice of the peace Wells Spicer. When he was not busy tending to patients, Goodfellow walked down the outside stairs to the saloon below, where he spent many hours drinking, playing faro, and betting on horse races, foot races, wrestling and boxing matches. He reportedly got along well with all of the town's diverse social classes, from the hardscrabble miners to the wealthy elite, as well as characters like the notoriously drunk lawyer Allen English.
Goodfellow lost his office when the saloon and most of downtown Tombstone burned to the ground on May 26, 1882. The building was rebuilt and the Crystal Palace earned a reputation for its gambling, entertainment, food and the best brands of wines, liquors, and cigars. Goodfellow cared for the indigent and was reimbursed by the county at the rate of $8,000 to $12,000 per year.
Tombstone was a dangerous frontier town at the time and the scene of considerable conflict. Most of the leading cattlemen as well as numerous local outlaws, including the Cowboys, were Confederate sympathizers and Democrats from Southern states, especially Missouri and Texas. The mine and business owners, miners, city lawmen including brothers Virgil, Morgan, and Wyatt Earp, and most of the other townspeople were largely Republicans from the Northern states. There was also the fundamental conflict over resources and land, of traditional, Southern-style, "small government" agrarianism of the rural Cowboys contrasted to Northern-style industrial capitalism. The Tombstone Daily Journal asked in March 1881 how a hundred outlaws could terrorize the best system of government in the world, asking, "Can not the marshal summon a posse and throw the ruffians out?" Goodfellow later famously described Tombstone as the "condensation of wickedness."
Treatment of O.K. Corral lawmen
During the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral on October 26, 1881, Deputy U.S. Marshal Virgil Earp was shot through the calf and Assistant Deputy U.S. Marshal Morgan Earp was shot across both shoulder blades. Doc Holliday was grazed by a bullet. Goodfellow treated both Earps' wounds. Cowboy Billy Clanton, who had been mortally wounded in the shootout, asked someone to remove his boots before he died; Goodfellow was present and obliged.
After the gunfight, Ike Clanton filed murder charges against the Earps and Doc Holliday. Goodfellow reviewed Dr. H.M. Mathew's autopsy reports on the three outlaw cowboys the Earps and Holiday had killed: Billy Clanton and brothers Tom and Frank McLaury. Goodfellow's testimony about the nature of Billy Clanton's wounds during the hearing supported the defendants' version of events, that Billy's arm could not have been positioned holding his coats open by the lapels or raised in the air, as witnesses loyal to the Cowboys testified. Goodfellow's testimony was helpful in exonerating the Earps and the judge ruled that the lawmen had acted in self-defense.