- Narrator: As the city grew,
its prospects attracted a young doctor from Norway,
named Adolf Gundersen.
And medical care in the city would soon undergo a revolution.
- Erik Gundersen: The story goes
that he saw an ad in a medical journal
put there by a man he knew in medical school
named Christian Christensen.
And Christensen was looking for a partner
because he got too busy.
And Christensen was in La Crosse.
- Narrator: The frontier city Gundersen found
was much rougher than the one he left.
- Erik Gundersen: He was used to Oslo,
which is, after all, a capital city,
and La Crosse, was not.
La Crosse was known for sawmills.
And there were about an equal number of hotels
that were of dubious reputation, some of them.
And there were about five breweries.
So the culture here was pretty rough.
- Narrator: Lumberjacks, steamboat workers,
lumber raftsmen, railroadmen, hard working and tough men,
often with time on their hands and money in their pockets,
frequented the waterfront.
- Erik Gundersen: It was a rowdy town.
The jails were busy, a lot of brawling down on the waterfront.
- Narrator: Adding to social friction
was the mix of nationalities.
The largest immigrant groups,
the Germans and Norwegians, lived and worked
with Yankee settlers, African Americans,
Bohemians, Syrians, Lebanese,
Greeks, Irish, British, French, and others.
- Ed Hill: You have this mix of people,
all being thrown together, sometimes with intense rivalry
for jobs, and a lot of alcohol consumed in those days.
- Narrator: Despite extensive training
in Norwegian medical school,
Gundersen received little respect from La Crosse citizens.
- Erik Gundersen: They had little regard for doctors.
So they had little regard for him.
- Narrator: Gundersen complained in letters home
that he received no more respect than a doctor two blocks away
who called himself "White Beaver,"
and spent part of his time performing in wild west shows.
It was true.
At a time when Americans
were fascinated by tales of the Wild West,
Buffalo Bill Cody brought his melodrama "Prairie Waif"
to the La Crosse opera house.
And his good friend White Beaver Powell performed in the cast.
Frank Powell learned herbal medicine from his mother,
the granddaughter of a Seneca Indian Chief,
and attended two years of medical college
at a time when no license was required to practice medicine.
When White Beaver moved to La Crosse in 1881,
his adventures as an Army doctor with Buffalo Bill were already
part of dime novels and plays.
- John Satory: In the dime novels, and things,
he was written up as a frontiersman.
He was supposed to have been involved
with the capture of Sitting Bull.
- Narrator: The flamboyant doctor added to his own legend
by fabricating stories about himself.
He paid newspapers fifty cents a line
to run news stories he had written
about the success of his cures and surgeries.
Powell became the most famous man in town.
And his practice,
due to his heavy self-promotion and advertising,
thrived.
- John Satory: There were a lot of people
that said he was an outstanding doctor.
He was able to cure things that no one else was able to cure.
Some people thought he had magical powers.
But then again,
Frank Powell was a person who liked to embellish himself.
So it's not always known, really,
the whole truth about the stories of Frank Powell.
- Narrator: White Beaver transferred his popularity
to the political arena,
and easily won election as the mayor of La Crosse,
and served four terms.
Mayor Powell threw a Fourth of July picnic
for all the city's children,
and welcomed the visits of his friend Buffalo Bill,
who brought his Wild West show to town.
- John Satory: Buffalo Bill would come to La Crosse
and do a few shows.
They were very good friends.
And that's when Buffalo Bill
invested into Frank Powell's medicine company here.
So then they were both really marketing these medicines.
- Narrator: White Beaver manufactured his own patent medicines,
combinations of different herbal treatments.
- John Satory: He practiced with herbs.
He would put on the bottle, like, take so many drops.
And if it didn't work, take so many more.
Problem is that most of the mixture
was either alcohol or opium and alcohol,
and so of course,
after a while it always made you feel good.
- Narrator: In Norway, Adolf Gundersen studied
for seven years at a university medical school.
After that, he spent additional time
observing prominent European surgeons of the day,
acquiring the knowledge and skills
to carry out the latest innovations in surgery.
- Erik Gundersen: Other doctors elsewhere, pioneers,
were figuring out that there was such a thing as appendicitis,
and that this abscess.
which formed down in the lower right abdomen,
was due to an inflamed appendix.
That was a revelation.
And Adolf latched on to this pretty fast.
He knew that was true.
- Ronald Numbers: He was reputed to have had a hundred or more
successful appendectomies in a row,
which made him something of a legend out there.
If you're going to have a surgeon cut into your body,
which was still a fairly novel idea,
and he has a 100 percent success, that's very good.
And a ruptured appendix,
not only was it painful but it could kill you.
- Erik Gundersen: The train that would deliver patients
right to the Lutheran Hospital came right to the back door.
So, that they called that "appendicitis express."
- Narrator: In La Crosse,
A. Gundersen, as he was called, found the freedom to advance
far beyond what he could have done in Norway.
- Erik Gundersen: In Europe,
the young men didn't have much freedom,
and where here he had a lot of freedom.
He liked that.
He also was a pioneer in other things here,
in prostate surgery, in surgery for ectopic pregnancy.
He was aggressive, he was an aggressive surgeon.
He believed in doing.
- Sigurd Gundersen: And technically extremely capable.
I have a great picture of a man
who had a big parotid tumor on the side of his head.
And he went down to Chicago
to see some people down there who were great surgeons.
And they said,
"Well, if we operate on that you'll bleed to death."
He came back here and A. Gundersen took it off,
and this guy lived for a long time after that.
And the family, when he died,
sent me this picture to record what he had done.
- Erik Gundersen: He was known as an aggressive, authoritarian man.
The nurses just ran when they saw him coming,
if they felt everything wasn't just perfect on their floors.
They would hide in the closet, for instance,
because you know, you get the picture.
He was so tough on everybody, and on patients, too.
If they didn't do what he told them,
what he wanted them to do or told them to do,
then he would just dismiss them.
- Narrator: Soon after he arrived in La Crosse,
Adolf returned to Norway
to marry his childhood sweetheart, Helga.
- Erik Gundersen: And then, he talked her
into coming back to La Crosse.
Amazing, because she was a teacher,
and she really loved Norway.
Then they had this big family beginning right away.
You know, they had eight children,
and all boys, except at last, a girl.
- Sigurd Gundersen: But she was energetic as a devil.
And my father would tell you
that she had more energy than any of her children.
She would wear them all out by doing what she did.
A phenomenal person.
- Narrator: Of the family's seven sons,
six became physicians.
- Erik Gundersen: They all went off to good medical schools,
Colombia, Harvard, then headed back here after that.
There were two that didn't come back.
Four that did.
- Narrator: His sons convinced Adolf
to move out of his crowded second-floor office downtown.
- Erik Gundersen: And finally, he agreed to move
and build a new clinic.
And they built right next to the hospital.
And they moved in in 1930,
right in the beginning of the Depression.
- Sigurd Gundersen: And in the cornerstone out there,
the paper talks about the crash of the stock market.
And so, they used to put their cars out in front
so it looked like they were busy.
- Narrator: After weathering the hard times,
the family went on to form one of the first group practices.
And the multi-specialty clinic would continue to grow,
eventually becoming a regional medical center.
In the years since he arrived in the rough lumber town,
Adolf Gundersen helped to bring
revolutionary advances in medical care to La Crosse.
And during that time,
the city would undergo equally profound changes.