Graysville’s First Medical Facility
A short time ago I was approached about writing an article regarding the Graysville Sanitarium.
This person had not previously known about this piece of history, and wanted to find more information about it. However, what was unknown to them was the fact that I already had the idea of writing about this historical place and had been doing research about it for some time.
In gathering my research, I found several newspaper articles in which Dr. Lester Littell gave a talk in 1976 about the two hundredth year history of medicine.
In this talk, he related information about the Graysville Sanitarium.
I also found a picture of the medical facility, and additional information relating to the history of Graysville, which I plan to write about at a later time.
Many Rhea County citizens will remember Dr. Lester Littell, who gave a talk to the Rhea County Hospital Board and the Medical Staff on July 19, 1976. He was speaking about the two hundredth year history of medicine in the United States and relating it to the recorded past of Graysville. Littell began by stating that it is well to look back at the history of medicine in the United States on the 200th birthday of our country. He told that doctors need to know how doctors before them treated their patients, and the problems which occurred during their profession.
According to Dr. Littell, during the first one hundred years of our history (1876), Dr. Harvey Kellogg, (father of cornflakes) established the famous Battle Creek Sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan. This began the world-wide chain of one hundred thirty-five Seventh-Day Adventist Hospitals. The Battle Creek had a large school of nursing and was famous for its diet, exercise and Hydrotherapy treatments.
The grandparents of Dr. Littell, Mr. C.E. and Donia Crawley Giles, traveled to Battle Creek from Graysville, Tennessee to enroll in the nursing course. Then, in 1907, the Graysville Sanitarium was established and was operated by Dr. Martin Martinson and his wife, Dr.
Stella Martinson. The Sanitarium’s operation was patterned after the Battle Creek Sanitarium. It was told that the Martinsons were graduates of the American Medical School of Battle Creek.
This Graysville Sanitarium became the first medical facility in Rhea County.
Graysville Sanitarium closed in 1913; however, Dr. Littell stated that it also had a fine nursing school, and that graduates of the American Medical College in Battle Creek were the founders of the world renown Loma Linda University. Loma Linda is a private Seventh-Day Adventist University in Southern California and the graduates of this university staff their world hospitals. Littell further said that Loma Linda University has an enrollment of four thousand students and graduates, with approximately seven hundred medical and para-medical students per year. Dr. Lester Littell and his brothers, Dr. Ned Littell of Hendersonville, Tennessee and Dr. Devin Littell of Auburn, Washington are alumni of Loma Linda.
As Dr. Littell ended his talk, he stated that it was good to look back at the history of medicine in the United States. He told that historians soon found out the problems of by-gone days are similar to the same problems doctors face today.
Dr. Littell also related that the answers to medical problems have only become different as medical progress has been made. To conclude his talk, Dr. Littell expressed the fact that during one hundred years of medicine we have come up with the same health problems.
As your Rhea County Historian, I remind you to study the past in order to live in the present and prepare for the future.
Pat can be reached at patriciaguffey45@gmail. com.
Graysville Sanitarium