By BILL VARBLE

Dr. John Watson remembers Medical Society meetings in Medford four decades ago.

"There'd be 35 doctors there," he says. "They all knew each other. When the meeting was over they'd pass around a big box of cigars."

Watson says the order of things characterizing the Rogue Valley in the late 1950s was "forestry, followed by fruit, followed by football, fishing and hunting. Medicine was a distant fifth. Now it's close to the top."

Watson moved to Medford as a young obstetrician from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. He says two things made up his mind: "a good hospital and good friends."

The hospital was Rogue Valley Medical Center, then called Rogue Valley Memorial Hospital, a brand-new, $2.8 million, 80-bed facility out in the boondocks of east Medford on Barnett Road. Watson joined the staff in 1959.

The friends were doctors Eugene Meyerding and Don McGeary, both of whom were classmates of Watson's in the University of Minnesota medical school's class of 1946.

"They were having a birthday party for one of the doctors the day I was visiting, and somebody was on the phone and they said, `Bring him along!"' he says.

Watson opened an office above Woolworth's in downtown Medford and was on staff at RVMC until he retired 10 years ago. He built the OB/GYN clinic on Murphy Road near the hospital "because you could get to the delivery room quickly."

A lot has changed around the hospital since 1959, Watson says. Back then there were no radiation or oncology facilities, no linear accelerator, no EMI or CAT scans. Anesthesia was done by nurses. Malpractice insurance was $250 a year (by the time of his retirement, his annual premium had hit $56,000).

Doctors took turns in the emergency room, and every doctor was considered capable of taking care of "whatever came in."

There were no short stay units.

"There wasn't any great hurry to get patients out," Watson says. "Nowadays, if they're alive and warm after the operation, send 'em home."

Nobody got total hip or knee replacements.

"A lot of people died or couldn't walk again," Watson says.

The cost of uninsured patients was spread among paying patients, and nobody was turned away.

Nobody had a beeper.

Doctors didn't do the unnecessary tests and X-rays Watson says they do now in practicing defensive medicine.

Despite the absence of modern bells and whistles, Watson says, "The whole quality was great."

There was Rogue Valley Physicians Service, a doctor-owned insurance company.

"We did a good job," Watson says. "We never had any individual doctors take advantage of us. We had a board of doctors examine claims. We took care of everything. Now (with managed care) the concept has become, the less you do, the more money you make."

Competition between RVMC and Providence wasn't what it would become.

"It was wonderful," Watson says. "Doctors liked each other. You were on the board of both hospitals. Nowadays, doctors from one hospital don't associate much with the doctors at the other."

He also saw changes in the doctor-patient relationship.

"There was a respect for doctors," he says. "We didn't call our patients by their first names unless we'd recognize them on the street.

"If they asked for a second opinion it was unusual."

In obstetrics, La Maze came along, and with it husbands in the delivery room.

"The first one I let in fainted dead away," Watson says.

He opposed midwives when they became popular again in the 1970s, but he changed his mind.

"I learned to accept it and enjoy it," he says.

The idea of patient-directed care grew, and doctors lost some authority, but Watson says he'd ask patients to let him make the important decisions.

"Somebody has to be the captain of the ship," he'd say.

Watson saw the coming of an intensive care facility for newborns, the advent of drug babies, magnetic resonance imaging, computerized scanners, a family birth center, laser treatments, cryo-surgery for early skin cancers, suture machines and much more.

1950s

Community raises $1.9 million to build hospital.

Rogue Valley Memorial opens May 1, 1958, as an 80-bed hospital costing $2.8 million.

Total square feet occupied: 73,628 square feet.

1960s

East Wing addition adds 80 more beds.

Intensive care, coronary and cancer units added.

Children's dental clinic opens.

RVMC grows to 106 doctors, 550 employees.

1970s

Pediatric Pavilion, neonatal intensive care added.

Mental health services added.

Cardiovascular lab, linear accelerator, open heart surgery added.

Bed capacity: 220.

1980s

Child Development Center opens.

Digital angiography, MRI, drug and alcohol center added.

Home health and hospice services begin.

Smullin Center for education completed.

Capacity: 305 beds, 225 doctors, 1,500 employees.

1990s

North Addition completed.

Library opens.

Opening of Francis Cheney Family Place, Arthur Dubs Cancer Center.

Three Rivers hospital in Grants Pass acquired.

In 1998, RVMC has grown to 506,000 square feet.