Country Doctors of Arkansas

Country Doctors of Arkansas

presented by Dr Sam Taggert, author, MD

Country Doctors hold a special place in our lives. Most of these men and women are originally from small towns and make the conscious decision to return. Each little town has its own story with diverse characters and dramas. The country doctor often acts as part of the glue that holds these small towns together, acting as the father confessor, a priest of technology and the narrator of the town story. We will discuss their evolution over the last two centuries and ask questions about the future.

Sam Taggart is a family doctor, raised in the White River Delta in Augusta, Arkansas. After medical school at UAMS, he completed a Family Practice Residency. He retired in 2013 as the senior partner and founder of Family Practice Associates of Benton. In 2012 he wrote a book describing a narrative history of health and disease I Arkansas over the last 200 years. The book is The Public’s Health.

In 2015, he created the Arkansas Physician’s Oral History Project. As a part of this project, he went around the state interviewing country physicians to create a video record of their lives and the practice of medicine in rural Arkansas for the last 75 yrs. In June of 2021 he published Country Doctors of Arkansas, as one of the products of that study. In April 2023, he published For Every Family, A Family Doctor a narrative history of the modern family medicine movement in Arkansas since 1947.

He and his wife, Dr. Annette Enderlin are presently working on a book called Against the Odds: Arkansas Women in Medicine before 1972.

CHAT