by Enss, Chris
Sassafras tea thickens the blood.
The juice of a green walnut cures ringworms.
Treat chapped hands with salve of kerosene and beef tallow.
Use a mashed potato poultice to draw out the core of a boil.
To remove warts, rub them with green walnuts, bacon rind, or chicken feet.
Use the ointment of crushed sheep sorrel leaves and gunpowder for skin cancer.
Mashed snails and earthworms in water are good for diphtheria.
Common salt with scrapings from pewter spoons for treating worms.
Boiled pumpkin seed tea for stomach worms.
Scorpion oil as a diuretic in venereal disease.
Tea made from steeping dried chicken gizzard linings in hot water for stomachaches.
Use wood ashes or cobwebs to stop excessive bleeding.
Brandy and red pepper for cholera.
Use mold scraped from cheese or old bread for open sores.
Carry an onion in your pocket to prevent smallpox.
Wear a bag of asafetida around the neck to cure a cold.
The oil of geese, wolves, bears, or polecats are good for rheumatism.
Use the salve of lard and brimstone for an itch.
Mashed cabbage for ulcers or cancer of the breast.
Use two tablespoons of India ink to eliminate tapeworm.
Onions boiled in molasses are good as a laxative.
Warm brains of a freshly killed rabbit applied to a teething child’s gums will relieve the pain.
Scratch gums with an iron nail until it bleeds, then drive the nail into a wooden beam to relieve toothaches.
Owl broth cures whooping cough.
The blood of a “bessie bug” dropped in the ear will cure an earache.
Oddly enough, rattlesnake bites were handled in the same manner as audiences have seen cowboys treat them in films. The bite wound would be sliced open and the poison would be sucked out. If this were done right away, the patient had a good chance for survival.
Before dentists arrived on the frontier, pioneers suffering with toothaches generally sought help from barbers. If a doctor was available, he would provide whatever care was needed. Generally, the problem was dealt with by extracting the offensive tooth using a pair of crude pliers. Whisky and other alcoholic beverages were the only form of anesthetic available at that time.
Most emigrants who made their way west did not practice any kind of dental care. As a result rotten teeth and bad breath were commonplace. Toothbrushes were available in country stores by the late 1850s, as well as soap and chalk toothpastes. However, not everyone used them. Dentists wouldn’t become common on the frontier until the 1870s. The average citizen was completely toothless by the time he or she reached fifty.
ADVERTISEMENTS AND WOMEN PHYSICIANS
If I had had cholera, hydrophobia, smallpox, or any malignant
disease, I could not have been more avoided than I was.
—Doctor Harriet Hunt, first woman to practice
medicine successfully in the United States, 1835
The difficult trek across the plains and deserts of the frontier, to Rocky Mountain destinations and beyond, was viewed by the first women physicians as just another obstacle to overcome on the way to achieving their goal. They wanted to practice medicine and believed they would have a chance to do that in the mining camps and cow towns in the West. Initial attempts to practice their profession sent shock waves through the deeply patriarchal society.
Doctor Elise Pfeiffer Stone was subjected to a barrage of ridicule and criticism after an article about her practice ran in the March 5, 1888, edition of a Nevada City, California newspaper:LADY PHYSICIAN—MRS. E. STONE, WHO IS, WE LEARN, A THOROUGHLY EDUCATED AND ACCOMPLISHED PHYSICIAN, HAS ESTABLISHED HERSELF IN SELBY FLAT, AND OFFERS HER SERVICES TO THE LADIES OF NEVADA AN VICINITY. SHE IS A GRADUATE OF A GERMAN UNIVERSITY AND HAS ENJOYED CONSIDERABLE PRACTICE, SPEAKS SEVERAL LANGUAGES &C.
Doctor Stone’s medical knowledge was challenged publicly and frequently by male colleagues who insisted women were not smart enough to be doctors. Eight months after opening her practice in the Gold Country, her professional reputation was slandered by a local physician. In a lengthy article found in the Nevada Journal, Doctor Stone articulately responded to her critics:In all my professional career I have not had occasion to defend myself against slander intended to injure my professional reputation before; I have practiced for some time as Physician and Midwife in Germany my native home; in N.Y. City and in Buffalo, N.Y., and have been in the high estimation of the profession and the public so far as I am known, which a reference to Dr. L.A. Wolfe of N.Y. or Professor White of Buffalo will testify. The circumstances which calls forth this card [article] is certain false and slanderous remarks which have come to my ears from one calling himself a physician. The last I heard was a sarcastic remark that “he would like to see me in a difficult case of midwifery.”
Now it is sympathy with my sex at the cruelties practiced on them by men in medical practice for want of knowledge in the profession, that chiefly induced me to remain here, and if that gentlemen or any other will be kind enough, to present me with a difficult case, I will attend it with a great deal of pleasure, that he and the public may form and estimate of my capacity. I have attended 2000 cases of midwifery, among which, I presume, I have had as difficult cases as have fallen to the share of any physician in the country, but how I performed my duties and with what results, I leave others and time in this country to testify; suffice it to say, I challenge any one or number of physicians to prove me inferior, in female practice, to any physician in California. My diploma can be seen at my residence, which will testify that in midwifery, medical operations, and the use of instruments in all forms required in medical practice, I have perfected my studies to the satisfaction and unanimous approbation of the whole board of professors. Medicines and supporting instruments of all kinds required by females to be had at my residence.
THIS CONTROVERSIAL ADVERTISEMENT APPEARED IN MANY WOMEN’S MAGAZINES IN 1891. IT SHOWS THE PROGRESS WOMEN WERE MAKING IN MALE-DOMINATED FIELDS, INCLUDING THE MEDICAL PROFESSION.
The doctor who impugned Elise’s reputation was unable to “prove her inferior” in female practice. He refrained from speaking out against Doctor Stone again.
In time, women physicians would prove to rugged pioneers that they were fully capable. Their abilities eventually became so well respected that the arrivals of female doctors were listed in daily newspapers. However, the mention of their presence out West came with just as much insult to their “feminine” qualities as it did praise for their skills as physicians. An 1864 California newspaper article hinted that women physicians were essentially stripped of their “gentler qualifications” by virtue of their career choice:Among the arrivals in San Francisco by the last mail steamer was Miss Sarah Pellet, M.D., a graduate of Oberlin College, a regular educated physician, and an accepted lecturer upon “Women’s Rights” and kindred subjects. Miss Pellet is, we suppose, of the style of women denominated “strong minded,” and is said to possess a decidedly intellectual cast of thought. The recent Women’s Rights gatherings and conventions in the Atlantic cities have brought out a large number of the class spoken of, who are stumping it through the Atlantic towns and cities, detailing the real and imaginary wrongs of women, and proclaiming her inalienable right to drive omnibuses, command steamboats, preach, make laws and boots and horse shoes, and enter upon all the fields of life which have been heretofore monopolized by the sterner sex.
These women (for they scorn the term “ladies”) are usually gifted with a greater degree of masculine intellect than the majority of their sex; while from their very appearance it will be at once seen that they are woefully lacking in those gentler qualifications which constituted the charm of “Heaven’s last, best gift to man.” The inculcation of their doctrines has only a mischievous tendency, and none for good; making a married man’s foes those of his own household, and setting up a claim
for supremacy where, by the law of nature and of God, obedience is due. Sorry should we be to see the time when “strong minded” women shall take the place of those gentle beings who now, through the civilized world, sit like angels at the domestic hearth, calming the stronger passions of man, and pouring the healing balm of consolation into the wounds which hard rubbing with the world inflict upon those who are called to battle with it.
In the beginning, the prejudice female doctors encountered was displayed by women as well as men. Many women felt they would be better served by male doctors, who were taken seriously as professionals. A female doctor, by contrast, was considered merely a healer—unable to determine what was really wrong with a patient.
In hopes of dispelling that stereotype, women touted their expertise in a variety of publications. The following ad, for instance, appeared in a February 24, 1882, San Francisco newspaper:TO THE LADIES—MADAME COSTELLO, FEMALE PHYSICIAN, STILL CONTINUES TO TREAT, WITH ASTONISHING SUCCESS, ALL DISEASES PELICULAR TO FEMALES. SUPPRESSION, IRREGULARITY, OBSTRUCTION, ETC., BY WHATEVER CAUSE PRODUCED, CAN BE REMOVED BY MADAME C IN A VERY SHORT TIME. MADAME C’S MEDICAL ETABLISHMENT HAVING UNDERGONE THOROUGH REPAIRS AND ALTERATIONS FOR THE BETTER ACCOMODATION OF HER NUMEROUS PATIENTS, SHE IS NOW PREPARED TO RECEIVE LADIES ON THE POINT CONFINEMENT, OR THOSE WHO WISH TO BE TREATED FOR OBSTRUCTION OF THEIR MONTHLY PERIODS. MADAME C CAN BE CONSULTED AT HER RESIDENCE, 34 LISPENARD STREET.
Female doctors not only advertised their businesses but emphasized medications geared specifically for women. California’s Daily News ran the following advertisement on April 12, 1843:MRS. BIRD, FEMALE PHYSICIAN, WHERE CAN BE OBTAINED DR. VANDENBURGH’S FEMALE RENOVATING PILLS, FROM GERMANY, AN EFFECTUAL REMEDY FOR SUPPRESSION, IRREGULARITY, AND ALL CASES WHERE NATURE HAS STOPPED FROM ANY CAUSE WHATEVER. SOLD ONLY AT DOCTOR BIRDS, 83 DUANE STREET NEAR BROADWAY.
By the turn of the century, women physicians had begun to secure a place for themselves among their male peers. They infused a feminine dimension into a profession that arguably would have been less compassionate and more clinical without them.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chris Enss, an award-winning screen writer who has written for television, short subject films, live performances, and for the movies, is the author of Hearts West: True Stories of Mail-Order Brides on the Frontier, How the West Was Worn: Bustles and Buckskins on the Wild Frontier, and Buffalo Gals: Women of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. She is also the co-author (with JoAnn Chartier) of With Great Hope: Women of the California Gold Rush, Love Untamed: True Romances Stories of the Old West, Gilded Girls: Women Entertainers of the Old West, and She Wore A Yellow Ribbon: Women Patriots and Soldiers of the Old West. The Cowboy and the Senorita and Happy Trails she co-wrote with Howard Kazanjian.
Enss has done everything from stand-up comedy to working as a stunt person at the Old Tucson Movie Studio. She learned the basics of writing for film and television at the University of Arizona, and she is currently working with Return of the Jedi producer Howard Kazanjian on the movie version of The Cowboy and
the Senorita, their biography of western stars Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. Her research and writing and reveals the funny, touching, exciting, and tragic stories of historical and contemporary times.
