Doctoring in the Wild West© Elizabeth Gibson
Apr 26, 2005
For many years, doctors in the west worked in very remote locations. The equipment they had to use was limited and sometimes primitive. They usually carried forceps, catheter, stomach pump, syringes, heating iron, and various bandages, and splints. Thermometers weren't available until after the 1850s. They did not have hypodermic needles so they rubbed opium or morphine on a wound. They placed their ear on someone's chest to listen to the heart. Sometimes they had to be inventive. Dr. Ira C. Smith in Virginia City, Montana built an early cardiograph using two telegraph receivers. In the southwest, Dr. Henry Holt used hardened adobe mud to set bones when he ran out of plaster of Paris. When criminals were hung or Indians killed, some doctors took the corpses so they could study human anatomy.
They did not understand how germs were spread and used techniques that had no effect on the patient's illness. Bloodletting was very common during this time and it was completely useless. Many doctors had little formal education, but did have practical knowledge. Formal education usually consisted of one year in college; only a few institutes offered a two year degree. Most doctors never went to school but apprenticed to a practicing doctor. It wasn't until 1874 that New York passed a law for medical practice. Nevada passed a similar law in 1875 and California in 1876. Common drugs were calomel for infections, quinine for fever, and digitalis for heart conditions. It was easy to run out of these drugs though, so some collected wild plants such as raspberry leaves, spearmint, peppermint, fleabane, and mustard that contained some of the same ingredients of manufactured drugs. Manufactured drugs came in bulk form so the doctor had to mix his own proportions and doses. The mountains were totally remote from medical care. Whiskey was the universal anesthetic. These men didn't get contagious diseases much, except some cholera, which was virtually untreatable. The men were commonly afflicted with lice. Kit Carson threw his infested clothes into an anthill and let the ants take care of the vermin. Doctors often had to remove Indian arrows by cutting off the arrowhead and pulling the shaft through the body. Dr. Marcus Whitman removed an arrowhead from Jim Bridger's back. The military forts of the west had doctors, and the first soldier to ever win the Congressional Medal of Honor was actually a military doctor. Bernard John Dowling Irwin received the award while his unit fought Cochise in Arizona, in 1861. These doctors used morphine to relieve pain. They frequently amputated mutilated limbs. They fought cholera mainly by isolating the sick from the healthy, then cleaning up unsanitary conditions. For scurvy, the doctors grew tomatoes and other vegetables or gathered wild plants to eat.
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