Customer Reviews

Frontier Medicine: From the ATlantic to the Pacific, 1492-1941 (Vintage International)

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"Frontier Medicine: from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 1492-1941" is a book which covers a much neglected part of the history of "the American West." It gives us a fascinating look at the earliest arrivals of Europeans to the shores of what later became the United States of America, and how the (often crude) medical skills of these pioneers, sometimes supplemented by herbal knowledge of the Indians, were used to treat injured or sick people.

Reading this history about frontier medicine one wonders, not just at the almost total lack in that era of any medical knowledge about diseases and how to cure them and/or the way the human body works, but that so many people still managed to survive their treatments, often more deadly than the sicknesses they were suffering from. Especially to modern eyes, one shivers to think being visited by such a "medical professional" at ones sickbed, and being "treated" by bleeding, purging either by emetic or by enema, blistering, and/or medicines (those last often with ingredients that we would consider poison today) to get the "humors" of the human body back in its proper balance. Or, for that matter, being wounded in battle because almost inevitably the wound would become infected (sanitation was almost unheard off) and the only "remedy" was amputation of that body-part - which most didn't survive.

Anyway, in "Frontier Medicine" we get an excellent overview of the very different groups of people who "came west". We start out with the Spanish, who arrived first in the Americas and who were later followed by the English and the French. The European medical knowledge of that time is covered, and how this was implemented by the pioneers and sometimes improved on by things learned from interactions with the Indians.

We learn how the fur traders and trappers, sometimes for weeks or months alone in a vast wilderness, treated themselves when they became injured. Sometimes showcasing their immense hardiness as in the case of Hugh Glass, who was mauled by a bear and left for dead by his fellow travelers when he went into a coma, but recovered and literally crawled his way to survival (having used maggots to eat out the infection out of the wound on his back). We get treated to the story of the immigrants on the Oregon Trail and how they treated those who became ill or injured during their travels to the Californian gold fields; how the soldiers who served at isolated outposts during the Indian Wars were taken care off; how on homesteads, ranches and in the early western towns the first doctors started practicing their medical profession and how they treated their patients (and how they were paid).

The Civil War is covered, and shows us the horrors of warfare and its impact on the swamped medical services of that time, which were overloaded with patients. We learn how soldiers who survived the shock of being wounded and only hours or even days later being taken to the army hospital, their wounds almost inevitably having become infected, had to suffer the amputations of their infected limbs with no anesthetics to speak off (except a drink of whisky to dull the pain as the medic sawed and hacked to cut off the limb).

We learn how midwives helped deliver babies in the colonial era and beyond, while more and more the medical profession worked to eliminate them by getting lawmakers in many states to require that anyone attending a woman in labor have formal medical training and be licensed (while females were denied medical training). And we are also told how the first women doctors started making their rounds; their struggle to become doctors immense, because they were often denied medical education and rejected at almost all the medical schools they applied to.

Strangely, the part after 1900 is only covered in just one chapter, the last one named: "Into the twentieth century". In this last chapter he mentions: "The evidence is strong that 1941 marked the end of medicine's frontier period in America". This is supposedly the reason this book covers the period of 1492-1941. Okay, that may be so, but then Dary all but neglects to give us the evidence on which this is based. A point could be made that ending this book around the 1900's would make more sense, because around the 1900's there was no more "frontier" to discover; Alaska, "the last American frontier" was purchased in 1867 and the Klondike Gold Rush took place in 1898, which was one of the last periods there was massive "immigration", although these were mainly people just after the gold, no settlers who decided to stick around as most of the '49-ers did during the California gold rush.

If for the sake of argument one extends the "frontier" period to 1941 like Dary does, then why is this not covered in much more detail? No mention is made of the Spanish-American war of 1898 in Cuba and the medical problems caused by treating injured and/or sick soldiers in an area know for its unhealthy climate and the many diseases. More soldiers were killed by diseases than by bullets or cannonballs. No mention is made of how, after the Spanish-American War, in 1900 major Walter Reed, M.D., headed the Yellow Fever Board which confirmed Cuban doctor Carlos Finley's theory that yellow fever is transmitted by mosquitoes.

And amazingly, for a book covering the period up to 1941, the First World War is not covered at all, which had a major impact on medical care to wounded and/or maimed soldiers (or those suffering from poison gas attacks) and neither is the great Influenza Epidemic of 1918/1919.

An argument could be made that he also should have covered the building of the Panama Canal, from the period the Americans took over. One of the major difficulties faced by the builders was that typhoid, dysentery, malaria, and yellow fever, among other diseases, often ravaged the workforce. It was not just the American mechanical and engineering technology that made it possible for it to finally be achieved, but most of all the amazing medical improvements (Dr. William Gorges!) that made it possible to continue building the Canal.

He makes note of some military medical personnel being awarded the Medal of Honor. Great that he pays attention for this; but then he makes the, for an historian, inexplicable mistake of calling it the Congressional Medal of Honor. This is not correct; it is called the Medal of Honor. Now, often the general public and lots of politicians call it mistakenly the "Congressional" Medal of Honor, but any serious student of American (military) history knows that this is incorrect, caused because of its award by the Department of Defense "in the name of Congress." As a historian, David Dary should not have made this mistake.

For the above mentioned reasons, I withdraw one star from this review; otherwise it is an excellent history on this much neglected part of America's frontier period that I recommend wholeheartedly to anyone interested in this subject.

In this fascinating book, author David Dary tells the story of frontier medicine in the U.S. The book starts with an examination of Native-American medicinal lore, which never had a large affect on frontier medicine, but always lurked in its background, a figure of superstitious awe. After that, the book goes through the state of knowledge (or more often lack of knowledge) in the West, from the days of settlers to the days of Western sanitariums and quack medicines.

Overall, I found this to be a very interesting book. It's the story of the growth of America, told through the story of the growth of America's ideas about health and medicine. The author did a great job of being exhaustive in his look at the history of medicine, telling so many stories that I had heard before, but many more stories that I had not. Now, you don't have to be interested in medicine to enjoy this book. Indeed, I would not normally consider myself such, but I really enjoyed all of the strange and surprising stories that the book tells.

So, let me just say that I really enjoyed reading this book, and I do not hesitate to recommend it to everyone!

Interesting for sure. Lots of information, but I was disappointed that some of the vignettes were not more thoroughly developed. The chapters about patent medicines were an eye opener! We have come a long way; maybe not as far as we think!

I'm betwixt and between regarding `Frontier Medicine.' On the one hand, the author presents a fair amount of interesting information, particularly about the `practice' (which didn't make perfect) of medicine in the Old West, `patent' medicines, most of which were patently fraudulent, and the difficult course traveled by would-be female practitioners. On the other hand, he does so in a seemingly never-ending series of vignettes and mini-mini-biographies which tend to be repetitive and yet distressingly unsatisfying. Overall, I got the feeling, as with Emily Cockayne's `Hubbub,' that having unearthed the information in his research the author decided he should include it whether or not it really added to the narrative. On the whole, the book is probably worth the read, but you won't be missing all that much if you pass it by.

Frontier Medicine: From the Atlantic to the Pacific, 1492-1941 This was a well written and researched book. Really fascinating to see how rudimentary early medicine was. Surprising the human race survived some of the barbaric practices. Interesting read!