Oral History Program Joseph Morrell Interviewed by Kathy Paschal 10 May 1971 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Joseph Morrell Interviewed by Kathy Paschal 10 May 1971 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Morrell, Joseph, an oral history by Kathy Paschal, 10 May 1971, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: May 10, 1971 I interviewed Dr. Joseph R. Morrell. He was born in 1879, in Logan, Utah. After graduating from the Rush Medical College in Chicago in 1904, he returned to Utah where in addition to keeping up his large practice and being the company doctor for Utah’s three major railroads, Dr. Morrell was also active in civil affairs. He served as member and chairman of the Utah State Board of Health and member and chairman of the Utah State Board of Medical Examiners. He was a brother-in-law to the late President David O. McKay and a very active member of the Mormon Church himself. KP: You state in your book, Utah's Health and You, that early Utah doctors came under much criticism by some LDS leaders because to call a doctor showed a lack of faith in the members of the church. Did you experience difficulty in this area? JM: Well, I think it wasn't so much a question of faith. It was a question of the ability of the doctors at that time. There were so few things that had been utilized in medicine, either as drugs or other facilities such as surgical things that were very rudimentary. There wasn't any drug that could cure or prevent any kind of disease. Not until 1935 did we have a drug that would influence or prevent infection or help in a cure. When the sulfa drugs came into use for the first time, we were able to see pneumonia patients respond to treatment, or meningitis patients respond to treatment. There wasn't a drug that would cure any kind of infection. Pasteur, over in Paris way back in the 1870s, had been able to learn something about infectious disease that was contracted from animals, hydrophobia, and he was able to work out a preventive treatment that would prevent this disease and cure some of them if it were given. But that was the only drug that was 1 known, and that wasn't a real drug. It was a type of preventive condition that later was developed in the prevention of diphtheria and scarlet fever and other infections, but that was much later. A toxin for curing and preventing diphtheria came into use about the beginning of the century. Soon after that we knew how to prevent diphtheria, and later on how to prevent scarlet fever. But nothing was known in the way of a drug that would cure these conditions until very much later, along in the 1930s, '35 and ‘36. KP: How do you think the medical facilities of Utah, when you started practice, compared to the rest of the United States? And how do you think they compare today? JM: Well, I think that the conditions were about the same in Utah as they were in any of the farming states. In large cities like New York, of course, they had doctors who had much better training in certain respects than any who were available in these western states, but altogether there was very little difference. The average doctor was not well trained in medicine so that he could actually cure people until well along in this century. When I started practicing in 1907, we didn't have any drug that would cure anything. We had some drugs that would probably help a little, but nothing that would cause an outright cure or would prevent the condition from developing. That was true everywhere. You had better surgeons in some of the big hospitals in the East, and when I was trained in Chicago, they had better hospitals there in 1900 when I started my medical education than we did out here. It was sometime after that we had hospitals that could render better surgical service here in Utah. KP: Did you do a lot of your practice by horse and buggy? JM: I practiced three years with a horse and buggy. 2 KP: I noticed when I was reading your history that you served a mission in the southern states from 1897 to 1900. In our class, we have been studying polygamy, and I was wondering if this hurt you or if you gained any criticism because of the practice of polygamy while you were on your mission during this time. Did it come up very often? JM: Well, of course it always came up in discussions when you were talking to strangers. It was never a difficult thing to explain. I could always explain intelligently why polygamy was practiced. There was a need for the rapid development of the church. The church was slow naturally in developing, and that was one way of increasing our membership. That was one reason why polygamy was practiced. There were other reasons. We always believed that polygamy was given by revelation from the Lord to Joseph Smith, and that there was a reason for it. It was accepted and practiced. It was never practiced by a very large percentage of people, not more than 3 or 4 percent of the marriages at any time were polygamous marriages. There was biblical evidence of it having been approved by the Lord in biblical times, so that it was not a new thing in religion by any means. But when it became a matter of law in this country, and laws were enacted that made polygamy a crime, then of course the church yielded to it. In 1890 President Woodruff issued what was called the Manifesto, in which members of the church were not permitted to have more than one wife. KP: Did you know any families that practice polygamy? JM: Yes, I knew a lot of them. In my own neighborhood I had next door neighbors where two or three families lived adjoining each other with a common husband. They were all treated just as individual families. They were taken care of, and the husband did not at any time feel that he was breaking any law, any moral law, by having more than one 3 wife because he took care of his families. He educated them. Many of those people were among the finest families that I ever knew, both the husband and the wives, so that it wasn't a matter of moral principle because there was a great deal higher degree of morality shown in those polygamous marriages than in many others where there was indiscriminate moral conduct. There was never any charge like that made against a man for practicing polygamy. KP: Where were you born and where did you grow up? JM: I was born in Logan, Utah. KP: Were your folks some of the first to settle that valley? JM: My grandparents were among the earliest settlers of the valley. They settled in Logan in the 1860s or latter 450s, when the first residents settled over in Wellsville in Cache County. KP: Dr. Morrell, I also understand that during your career you were the doctor for the three leading railroads here in town. JM: I was appointed surgeon for the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1908, and for the Union Pacific in 1912 or 1914. KP: How do you feel that railroads really affected Utah history? JM: Railroads had a very marked influence on conditions here because it was near Ogden that the transcontinental railroads were finally finished, and where the western and eastern divisions came together near Corinne, just a little ways outside of Ogden. They made a great deal of difference. Before that, everything had to be carried in by wagon and trucks of various kinds. 4 KP: Did it bring in a lot of non-LDS people? JM: The first invasion of outside people who were non-Mormons came with those who came in to develop the mining industry. Brigham Young had advised the Latter-day Saints not to carry on mining exploration but to develop the farms and to create a definite farming industry. He told them there was plenty of metal out in the mountains, but that it was uncertain about whether they should waste their time, or whether they should become rich in developing them, but that the risk was much greater in mining than in developing farms. So he advised them to stay on the farms, and the outside people moved in and developed the mines. A lot of them became rich, but a great many of them wasted everything they put into it and made nothing at all out of it. A few became rich but altogether Brigham Young's advice was sound because you could always develop a good farm and make it productive, and land was rich and a good farmer could make a good living and provide for his family. He couldn't always do that if he put in his time in mining exploration. Nine out of 10 wasted all of their time while a few of them got rich. KP: Were there any arguments between the LDS people and the non-LDS when they started to move in? JM: Yes, there was a good deal of dissatisfaction. Some of the Latter-day Saints felt that Brigham Young was unwise in making restriction, or advising restrictions in mining explorations... It was those few who disobeyed the counsel that was given and who left the church and went out into the mining industry, and some of them made a lot of money and most of them nothing at all. KP: What made you decide to go into being a doctor? 5 JM: When I came home from my mission in 1900, I asked my father what he wanted me to do. He was operating a clothing store, and he didn't tell me definitely that he wanted me to go into the clothing business with him. Along toward the end of the year, he asked me if I thought I would like to go into medicine. I had never thought of practicing medicine, but it made a quick impression. I told him I'd go into it and do the best I could with it. So in the fall of 1900, I went back to Chicago and entered the Rush Medical College, which was then just being joined up with the University of Chicago. KP: Not many people had the money to go into the medical profession at that time. JM: It didn't take much money to go into medicine at that time. I could get a room for $5 a month and board for $4 a week. It cost me about $50 a quarter for tuition, so that it wasn't an expensive thing at that time. Now it costs about $15,000 to get into medicine. KP: I understand that, in the beginning of the LDS Church, that a lot of Relief Society members were trained to be midwives when they came out here to Utah, and that they played an important part in medicine. JM: There were about a dozen women who were helped in their medical education by the Relief Society, and they came back and rendered a fine service for the Relief Society and for the whole community. These women were well trained and established a little hospital in Salt Lake City called the Deseret Hospital, where they trained midwives and nurses for practical nurses. So they had a very helpful influence on early medicine in Utah in the 1870s and'80s. KP: Would you consider this the first hospital in Utah? 6 JM: No, St. Marks Hospital was probably the first hospital that could be called a hospital. The little Deseret Hospital was on a much smaller scale. St. Marks Hospital was established originally to take care of the mining industry, where lead poisoning was such a great hazard... Patients were limited for the first few months to miners who were in trouble with lead poisoning. KP: When was the St. Marks Hospital built? JM: I don't remember just exactly. It was about 1872. KP: Is it a Catholic hospital? JM: No, it is an Episcopal hospital. KP: When was the first university established in Utah? JM: Very soon after the first pioneers came. The University of Deseret was established, which later became the University of Utah. KP: When was the medical department at the University of Utah established? JM: I can't give you the exact year, but it was about 1915. It was established as a two-year medical school. The first two years were given at the University, and then they finished their education at one of the eastern universities. KP: What year were you born? JM: 1879. I'm 91 years old. KP: When were you married? JM: 1907. KP: And you married...? 7 JM: Janette McKay, President McKay's sister. KP: Do you have any experiences that you could tell or relate about your relations with the McKay family? JM: They were all the most pleasant experiences in the world because they were all very high quality people who were primarily interested in education. Their religion taught them to use or utilize their knowledge for spiritual purposes, so that education to them was a means of developing them for better service for humanity. The knowledge was primarily for spiritual development as well as material development. That was always the ambition of the McKay children that I knew. They would become educated in order to make themselves better Latter-day Saints. The spiritual motive in education would be about the highest motive you could put on an education because it meant spiritual development and application, as well as material application. KP: I think the church still stresses education today. JM: Yes, I think so. They feel that an education that only has material ends or objectives is not a complete education. That unless it has a high spiritual motive that most of the training and learning is limited in its value, and that the spiritual outlet is by every means the highest attainment of the knowledge we acquire. KP: I think you were quite a lucky person to have lived when you lived, to see the growth not only in the church, but of Utah and the United States. JM: Well, I think it has been a very interesting period of time because so much has been learned from research, as well as from revelation, that has made this generation such a wonderful one where we have seen such tremendous growth and development, 8 particularly in the last three or four decades, where... more probably has been learned in science than in all previous time. KP: I understand you were politically involved in Utah history? JM: I've never had any particular interest in politics. I was appointed a member of the State Board of Health, which wasn't exactly a political appointment, but it came through the governor. Then I was appointed a member of the Medical Examiner’s Board for a few years. KP: What exactly is that? JM: That was a board that gave the examination for new doctors coming into practice. KP: Thank you very much for your time. I've enjoyed it. 9 I chose to interview Dr. Joseph R. Morrell for many reasons. He is 91 years old, a retired doctor who not only had a large private practice in Ogden, but was active for the state medical association. He was the surgeon for the three railroads in Utah, and a very active member of the Mormon Church. He has rounded shoulders because of age, and has a hard time getting around, but his mind is the mind of a man well educated in problems of the world and knowledge and appreciation for his religious belief. The biggest problem I had in my interview was getting him to relate personal experiences, he was more interested in giving opinions and facts. The two greatest things I learned to admire in this man is his love for his family and his love for learning. In talking about his reason for going into the medical profession, he said that his father suggested medicine and that was all it took, if his father wanted him to, he would, and would do his best. He felt that education was important not just for material gains, but spiritual growth as well. Even today Dr. Morrell spends most of his time in his study reading and writing. 10