DOCTOR SEES PROGRESS AND PROBLEMS

When talking about the medical history of Cape Girardeau, one cannot overlook the distinguished career of Dr. James Kinder.

Kinder has practiced pediatrics for the past 45 years in Cape Girardeau. At 75 years of age, he gives no sign of retiring soon.

"I want to keep practicing medicine as long as I can," Kinder said. "I enjoy the kids and my work."

Kinder still has an office at 1435 Mount Auburn Road.

"People often ask me if I'm accepting new patients," Kinder said. "I tell them I am; my patients eventually outgrow me or don't want to come to an office where there is a bunch of screaming babies."

The doctor is the son of a Cape Girardeau pharmacist. He graduated from Cape Central High School at the age of 15.

Kinder said the he became a doctor for two reasons. "I enjoyed working with people and helping people. I've always been interested in scientific study."

He attended Southeast Missouri State University for two years and then finished his undergraduate studies at Washington University, graduating in June 1941 at the age of 23.

He joined the Army ROTC while in school and was called up to serve in the Army Air Force in 1942, just after completing a one-year internship at a St. Louis hospital.

In August 1943, he was assigned to the Chinese Air Force as a flight surgeon.

As a flight surgeon, Kinder said he flew on missions with Chinese and American crew members. At one base there was a cholera epidemic among Chinese workers. The disease did not spread to the troops.

He returned home in the fall of 1945 and started pediatric training in 1946 in St. Louis.

Following two years of training, Kinder opened his practice in Cape Girardeau in 1948 in a building at 826 Themis that he shared with other doctors.

In 1949, '50 and '51, without a vaccine, the doctor dealt with a polio epidemic that hit Southeast Missouri and Southern Illinois.

In 1955, Kinder moved his office to the Medical Arts Building at 937 Broadway, where he maintained his practice until 1988, when he moved to the Pediatric Associates building.

During his long tenure as a medicine man, Kinder said much has changed.

"Medicine was originally a privilege for both the doctor and for the patient," Kinder said. "That has since evolved into medicine being a right and a responsibility - not of the parents, but of the government.

"I think that's terrible," Kinder said. "Insurance has helped ease this burden, but now even they are being blamed for problems in the health care system."

Another burden doctors have been increasingly made to bear is the high cost of medical malpractice insurance, Kinder said.

"(Malpractice insurance) used to be $50 to $100 per year," Kinder said. "Now doctors are paying $4,000 per year for low-risk specialties and as much as $40,000 per year for things like neuro-surgery or obstetrics."

Kinder said that progress in the field of the care of premature babies over the past 50 years has impressed him most.

"When I first started, the attitude toward premature babies was a hands-off matter; you don't want to rock the boat," Kinder said. "We were taught that tiny babies were very fragile and not to be handled.

"Now doctors have ventilators to ease the stresses of respiratory diseases premature babies can develop," Kinder said. "It's amazing, but it's also costly."

Kinder is a doctor seven days a week, 24-hours a day.

"If I'm not in the office or at home, I call the emergency room at Southeast Missouri Hospital to tell them where I am," Kinder said. "That goes if I'm at the movies or just out to get a hamburger."

Missourian staff writer Mark Bliss contributed to this report.