If there was ever a "golden age" of doctor-patient relationships it was long before the 60's or 70's (the extent of my early memory). Not that most of my doctors haven't been competent and professional; but "family" was never an adjective to describe the relationship. Maybe the author is going back a few more decades and envisions doctors making housecalls through blinding snowstorms, and even that picture is suspect.
I still can't get over how every TV commercial for a drug of any kind says, "Tell your doctor if you have liver problems" or something similar.
Shouldn't the doctor be telling ME whether or not I have liver problems? And if I *do* have liver problems, why in the heck isn't that already in my file when he sees me?
While I don't think it was snowing, my doctor came out to the house for a mere follow up. Said he was in the neighborhood anyway. Course that was the same doctor that had delivered me 5 or 6 years early, which means it would have been '55 or '56.
I remember our doctor coming to the house when I had measles back in 1962.