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Amazing tales related in "Frontier Medicine"
"Frontier Medicine : From the Atlantic to the Pacific, 1492-1941" Medical history has become over the past twenty years one of the most interesting sub-fields of American and world history as it shows, at its best, the plight of suffering of people in combat against pathogens and trauma and the efforts of physicians, nurses, and others to better the world one life at a time. In doing so, the history of medicine also becomes the history of towns, cities, states, nations, and cultures. It displays the trajectory of human evolution forward, away from superstition and towards science. Best of all are works of medical historiography that are set in geopolitical settings which themselves are complex, dynamic, and full of change and drama. What better setting then for any theatre of history would there be than the American West? David Dary, an accomplished historian of the American West with a number of books already under his belt, takes on the unique history of medical practice in all its varied forms in the American Frontier in his new book "Frontier Medicine" published this year by Knopf. As the title would aptly suggests, "Frontier Medicine" examines clinical praxis in the American West, but it also takes on the broader, more complex, story of Euro-American medicine as such evolved in the United States from the early efforts of the Spanish up to Federal efforts around the onset of World War II. In other words, this book has approached the concept of "frontier" to not only include the Wild West but every part of the United States where, at the time, an outward push was being made by the white man into Indian lands or where rural towns were growing without the benefit of the medical resources enjoyed by larger cities back east. At one time, we are reminded, Ohio was as much of a frontier as Texas or California. As Dary is more of a specialist in the West covering medicine rather than a specialist in medical history covering the West, he is adept at reading the political and social histories at hand, yet his grasp of the nuances of medical science and related topics is also very impressive. We learn of some very telling examples of how medicine came to be the allopathic practice it is today in the United States, such as the story of a midwife named Anna Bixby who came to important conclusions about the origins of milk sickness (from a plant known as snakeroot) nearly a full century prior to other doctors and scientists making the same observations and the mainstream medical community treating these conclusions as valid and essential to publish. Milk sickness, the result of toxins found in snakeroot being passed via cow's milk to humans or young calves that consumed such milk, reportedly took the life of President Lincoln's mother and countless others in the midwestern frontier and while allopathic physicians were by and large at a loss to explain the situation, Indian medicine women and folk healers at least knew that snakeroot was involved. Anna Bixby, after consulting with local Indian women, implored people in her community to not drink milk until the winter when cattle were less apt to be feeding on snakeroot which is found in wooded areas but not open fields nor hay harvested for winter consumption. In the story of Anna Bixby, we have but just one amazing and important tale related by Dary in this book. Beyond touching yet perhaps somewhat expected stories such as that of Bixby, we also learn facts such as that as early as the 1820s many American states already had strict regulations for physicians much like they do today, but after a strong popular movement before the Civil War towards the power of the "common man" and away from a class-based professional system, many of these states did away with formal regulations and allowed most anyone to hang out his shingle and practice medicine, leading to the rise of snake-oil salesmen and other quacks. Superstition played a leading role in how the everyday man and woman in frontier America viewed illness and healing: In example, Dary reports of a woman who was bedfast due to an illness she believed to be the work of a witch whom she had offended and, in turn, this witch had "placed a frog in her stomach". Her doctor did not, of course, believe this nonsense but after realizing that the woman would not believe her distress to be caused by anything other than frogs and witchcraft, the good doctor caught a toad and presented it to the woman after forcing her to vomit, thereby claiming the "frog in her stomach" had been removed. The woman, apparently hopped right out of her bed and thanked and praised the doctor for his work, with an immediate return to her health. While we may today chuckle at such tales, they do illustrate how illness was, even in rather recent times, viewed by the masses without great concern to actual scientific explanation. A vast parade of varied healers come forth from Dary's pen: Chinese doctors versed in the old ways of herbs and eastern medicine in California, Native Americans who had depended on the same healing practices for centuries, allopaths who were bringing the newest technologies and techniques from Europe to America and quacks who were looking for a quick buck made off the desires of Americans for fast and easy cure-alls. In these men and women, Dary provides an overview not only of medicine but of society and a searching commentary on how the West evolved. By not restricting his scope to only the frontier as we commonly see such in terms of the "Wild West" but through his inclusion of the progress of American society and medicine alike from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, Dary offers a very strongly structured overview of American medical practice. Of course, for one volume to cover so much, some detail must be left out in places: I was surprised, in example, to find Dary only mentions the Marine Hospital Service (the forerunner of the Federal Public Health Service) in passing despite this service being the first Federal-level action towards public health care and thus very important in the history of American health care. However, in telling the stories of figures as varied as Anna Bixby and Thomas Dyott, Dary brings to life many aspects of American health care which really demonstrate how painful and complex a journey it has been from simple surgeries and herbal cures to the scientific approach we have today in our nation which can rightfully boast to have the most effective and advanced health care system in the world. To consider that such a high level of scientific care evolved in what is, all things considered, a short period of time, is amazing and no book I have yet encountered tells this epic story in as entertaining a manner as Dary's "Frontier Medicine".
MIKE WALKER is a writer based in Gainesville, Florida, who writes about topics germane to ecology, the life sciences, and history for this and other news media. He also has published original research on translation theory in peer-reviewed journals and poetry in literary journals. He may be reached at: cloudrace@prontomail.com |
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