6/8/2013:
Poor roads and unreliable transportation made it hard for country doctors to reach their patients … especially back in 1917. On this date that year, the Bismarck Tribune reported one doctor had set an unofficial record on a rainy June day.
Doctor W. C. Wolverton of Linton, started his day in Hull, twenty miles south of Linton, helping a man who had been thrown from a horse. The doctor then headed fifty miles northwest for a consultation with a doctor in Livona. Dr. Wolverton's day wasn't over yet: he had one last stop in Strasburg, visiting a patient with tonsilitis. All together, the good doctor traveled a hundred miles on that rainy day … no small thing on the muddy roads of 1917.
Dakota Datebook written by Derek Dahlsad
Sources:
"Doctor Drives 100 Miles To Care For Patients In A Day", Bismarck Tribune, 6/8/1917.
The North American Journal of Homeopathy, Volume 68, American Medical Union, 1920.