Dr. Russell Dohner, famous for charging patients just $5 per office visit, has retired after almost 60 years of practicing medicine.
Dohner, who has received various awards for his service, is 88 years old.
“He has dedicated his life to healing and medicine,” said Tim Ward, director of the foundation for Culbertson Memorial Hospital in Rushville, reported the Chicago Tribune.
Dohner has worked out of the hospital since 1955, but also maintains his clinic.
Dohner is not a very public person, and declined requests for interviews.
“He is not wanting to do any interviews. He doesn’t want any kind of a reception. He just wants to retire,” Molly Sorrell, a spokeswoman at the hospital, told NBC.
Jim Devitt, one of the owners of Moreland & Devitt Pharmacy across the street from Dohner’s clinic, said that it’s “the end of an era.”
The pharmacy wouldn’t close until Dohner called them each night, because they worked in sync.
“I don’t know of anybody [who will fill his shoes],” Devitt said. “We have a new doctor that has come into town just in the last year, but I don’t think anybody will walk into his office and take over his office.”
Dr. Dohner has granted several interviews over the years, telling the Associated Press in November 2012 that when he started practicing medicine patients paid him $2 a visit. His current $5 fee was just fine, he said.
“I always just wanted to be a doctor to help people with their medical problems and that’s all it’s for,” he said. “It was never intended to make a lot of money.”
A doctor who treated him for seizures when he was a child inspired him.
“I remember waking up and seeing the doctor there and thinking, ‘THAT is what I want to do,'” he says.
Besides his low fee, he was known for not taking appointments, as well as not having computers of fax machines in his office.
