Carroll Behrhorst, MD: lessons from the third world

Abstract

The visitor to Guatemala City encounters most of the hallmarks of modern society, including contemporary office buildings, stores selling the latest stereo equipment, and traffic-clogged streets. Outside the capital, however, one enters a mountainous, rural landscape, and the "traffic" changes to long-distance diesel buses belching smoke and traditionally garbed natives walking with prodigious bundles on their heads and backs. Just 50 km from Guatemala City is the town of Chimaltenango, entered via a dirt road flanked closely on either side by windowless huts of stucco, wood, or corrugated tin. In the town square colorfully clothed Cakchiquel Indians sit and talk, sell homemade tortillas or ceramic pots, or load their produce, including baskets of live chickens, aboard the ubiquitous buses to sell in Guatemala City. To this town came Carroll Behrhorst, MD, from a small town in Kansas more than 15 years ago to set up a medical practice. Behind him