Polk Library receives donation
Published 4:36 pm Friday, November 20, 2009
Doctor and humanitarian Lewis Rathbun shares his stories of his life in womens medicine throughout the 20th century in his new memoir, A Doctor All My Life (Grateful Steps, 2009).
In the 1960s, Dr. Rathbun, his daughters and their horses were well known in Tryon. Taught riding by the late Arthur Reynolds, the Rathbuns competed in Tryon horse shows and were members of the Tryon Hounds.
One of the first Ob-Gyn specialists in Asheville, he demonstrated optimum qualities of a physician – thoroughness, dedication, altruism.
A Doctor All My Life charts Rathbuns course in medicine through the dawn of the antibiotic era, Civil Rights and womens movements and the manifold technological developments in gynecology and obstetrics.
His personal journey takes the reader from the rural region of western New York to the halls of Harvard University to a battleship in the South Pacific and finally to Asheville.
Dr. Rathbun, 96, has three grown daughters, Lexie, Linda and Laurel, and lives with his wife, Betty, in Asheville.