His Prescription: Call It Quits

For 50 years he was a model doctor. Now the small-town physician who was the inspiration for one of Norman Rockwell’s most beloved paintings is taking down his shingle. When he wasn’t doctoring residents like Rockwell, Donald E. Campbell, 83, the only physician in the town of Stockbridge, Mass., served as the model for several illustrations, including “Before the Shot,” in which a physician prepares a shot for a bare-bottomed youngster as the boy suspiciously examines his framed medical degrees. Phones have been ringing off the hook at Campbell’s office with patients begging him to continue practicing, but the man who was the town’s obstetrician, gynecologist, pediatrician, orthopedist, dermatologist and gerontologist says his memory is just plumb failing and he feels he must quit. “There’s nothing more disgusting than when your memory starts to go,” he said. Campbell owned the original of “Before the Shot,” but sold it for $10,000 several years ago to raise money for the financially troubled Edgecomb Nursing & Convalescent Home, which he had founded. Campbell said the only memento he has of the artist he described as “shy, genial, happy and a non-complainer” is a head study Rockwell made of him.

--It gives one paws. A former Watergate prosecutor whose dog died because of what she claimed was a misdiagnosis has unleashed the state of Illinois’ legal forces against the veterinarian. But the veterinarian’s attorneys are crying foul, pointing out that the lawyer appointed special prosecutor in the case had been dog owner Jill Wine-Bank’s personal attorney. At issue is the death in December, 1987, of Finnegan, a 7-year-old Dalmatian owned by Wine-Banks, executive vice president of the American Bar Assn. and a former deputy Illinois attorney general, after he had been treated by veterinarian Mell Wostoupal. “I did what any citizen should do: I went to the state. I have faith that the system will work,” said Wine-Banks. But Wostoupal’s attorneys are claiming she unfairly used her clout. “I don’t know that Jill used clout. My guess is she used a little yelling and screaming,” said a spokeswoman in the office of Illinois Atty. Gen. Neil Hartigan.