Doctoring in the Wild West
characters of Tombstone, Arizona. One was Virgil Earp, who was shot in the arm and the back. The doctor removed the buckshot and pieces of broken bone. His left arm never had much capability after that. Goodfellow frequently attended hangings as coroner, to be on hand to pronounce the victim dead. When an earthquake hit nearby Sonora, Mexico, he rode there and treated hundreds of injuries. He wrote many articles for scientific journals about his experiences.
Railroad doctors frequently had to tend to men who were scalded from the engine's steam. They amputated limbs and fingers crushed in couplers. By this time late in the 19th century, these doctors were aware of the nature of infection. Fortunately they had plenty of hot water from the train's boiler to treat wounds. These doctors frequently had to extract cinders that blew into the train windows from passengers eyes. He used a toothpick wrapped in cotton to extract the foreign body.
Some areas didn't have doctors, but only the local "old woman" with her folk remedies. One remedy was to preserve your teeth and fight bad breath by drinking your own urine. Another was to tie snakeskins around the neck to cure a sore throat. They applied a plug of chewing tobacco to a cut on an arm. They drank cockroach tea to cure lockjaw. To cure a headache, tie a rope used in a hanging or suicide around your head.
Doctors of the west had many obstacles to overcome. But ultimately better transportation, better training, and technological advances increased the doctor's ability to treat his patients with a higher success rate. Many of these men pioneered studies and procedures that changed medical thought across the country. They had a tough job in a tough part of the country, but they performed it mostly without complaint and for sometimes very little reward beyond job satisfaction.
(SOURCE: Doctors of the American Frontier, Richard Dunlop, Doubleday & Company Inc., Garden City, New York, 1965)
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