Uploaded May 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
This session was presented by Benjamin Folger, doctoral student at the University of Oklahoma, at “Perspectives in History”: The Oklahoma History Symposium. Lebanese immigrant and physician Michael Shadid established a successful medical practice in western Oklahoma; by 1929, he earned over $15,000 a year treating farmers. During his medical education, Shadid maintained he was “bitten by some filtrable virus and turned into a reformer.” When the Depression arrived in rural Oklahoma, Shadid began fundraising and selling memberships to his revolutionary Cooperative Hospital in Elk City, charging $25 for a year’s worth of medical care. Shadid argued that Oklahomans would have better access to scrupulous health care under his model. His vision was to provide Oklahomans with improved access to hospital care and medical specialists, a rarity in western Oklahoma and most rural communities in the 1920s. Soon, doctors throughout Oklahoma pushed back against such radical reform. Shadid’s hospital sparked intervention from the American Medical Association, county medical societies, the Oklahoma Legislature, and the Oklahoma Supreme Court.
Shadid’s ideas about accessible health care appealed to the frayed strands of agrarian socialism that were rapidly declining in post-WWI Oklahoma. At least 15,000 farmers endorsed Shadid by 1939.
This session was presented by Benjamin Folger, doctoral student at the University of Oklahoma, at “Perspectives in History”: The Oklahoma History Symposium. Lebanese immigrant and physician Michael Shadid established a successful medical practice in western Oklahoma; by 1929, he earned over $15,000 a year treating farmers. During his medical education, Shadid maintained he was “bitten by some filtrable virus and turned into a reformer.” When the Depression arrived in rural Oklahoma, Shadid began fundraising and selling memberships to his revolutionary Cooperative Hospital in Elk City, charging $25 for a year’s worth of medical care. Shadid argued that Oklahomans would have better access to scrupulous health care under his model. His vision was to provide Oklahomans with improved access to hospital care and medical specialists, a rarity in western Oklahoma and most rural communities in the 1920s. Soon, doctors throughout Oklahoma pushed back against such radical reform. Shadid’s hospital sparked intervention from the American Medical Association, county medical societies, the Oklahoma Legislature, and the Oklahoma Supreme Court.
Shadid’s ideas about accessible health care appealed to the frayed strands of agrarian socialism that were rapidly declining in post-WWI Oklahoma. At least 15,000 farmers endorsed Shadid by 1939.
