What do you think?
Rate this book
Frontier Medicine: From the Atlantic to the Pacific, 1492-1941
In his new book, David Dary, one of our leading social historians, gives us a fascinating, informative account of American frontier medicine from our Indian past to the beginning of World War II, as the frontier moved steadily westward from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific Ocean.
He begins with the early arrivals to our shores and explains how their combined European-taught medical skills and the Indians’ well-developed knowledge of local herbal remedies and psychic healing formed the foundation of early American medicine.
We then follow white settlement west, learning how, in the 1720s, seventy-five years before Edward Jenner’s experiments with smallpox vaccine, a Boston doctor learned from an African slave how to vaccinate against the disease; how, in 1809, a backwoods Kentucky doctor performed the first successful abdominal surgery; how, around 1820, a Missouri doctor realized quinine could prevent as well as cure malaria and made a fortune from the resulting pills he invented.
Using diaries, journals, newspapers, letters, advertisements, medical records, and pharmacological writings, Dary gives us firsthand accounts of Indian cures; the ingenious self-healings of mountain men; home remedies settlers carried across the plains; an early “HMO” formed by Wyoming ranchers and cowboys to provide themselves with medical care; the indispensable role of country doctors and midwives; the fortunes made from patent medicines and quack cures; the contributions of army medicine; Chinese herbalists; the formation of the American Medical Association; the first black doctors; the first women doctors; and finally the early-twentieth-century shift to a formal scientific approach to medicine that by the postwar period had for the most part eliminated the trial-and-error practical methods that were at the center of frontier medicine.
A wonderful—often entertaining—overview of the complexity, energy, and inventiveness of the ways in which our forebears were doctored and how our medical system came into being.
He begins with the early arrivals to our shores and explains how their combined European-taught medical skills and the Indians’ well-developed knowledge of local herbal remedies and psychic healing formed the foundation of early American medicine.
We then follow white settlement west, learning how, in the 1720s, seventy-five years before Edward Jenner’s experiments with smallpox vaccine, a Boston doctor learned from an African slave how to vaccinate against the disease; how, in 1809, a backwoods Kentucky doctor performed the first successful abdominal surgery; how, around 1820, a Missouri doctor realized quinine could prevent as well as cure malaria and made a fortune from the resulting pills he invented.
Using diaries, journals, newspapers, letters, advertisements, medical records, and pharmacological writings, Dary gives us firsthand accounts of Indian cures; the ingenious self-healings of mountain men; home remedies settlers carried across the plains; an early “HMO” formed by Wyoming ranchers and cowboys to provide themselves with medical care; the indispensable role of country doctors and midwives; the fortunes made from patent medicines and quack cures; the contributions of army medicine; Chinese herbalists; the formation of the American Medical Association; the first black doctors; the first women doctors; and finally the early-twentieth-century shift to a formal scientific approach to medicine that by the postwar period had for the most part eliminated the trial-and-error practical methods that were at the center of frontier medicine.
A wonderful—often entertaining—overview of the complexity, energy, and inventiveness of the ways in which our forebears were doctored and how our medical system came into being.
381 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
19 people are currently reading
177 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
August 16, 2013
Interesting topic but poor execution, I could not get through this author's wandering and redundant writing style. Plus, I wanted to hear more about nurses!
December 31, 2014
Thus far I am disappointed in this book. It's not that I am not learning anything, it's that I am not enjoying the process as much as I might like. I have preferred Finger's Doctor Franklin and Angelic Conjunction to this book. Some of my current concerns involve the understated tuberculosis epidemic in Europe and America, the fact that he states that at the time of the Civil War people were taking asprin in addition to self medicating with alcohol (asprin, a buffered form of an acid found in willow bark, was invented in 1897). The glossary does not include the weirdly named remedies of historical medicine, and frankly I cannot always easily recall the agent in Glaubers' salts. The index is far less than complete.
There is no mention of the skirmish in the colonies between homeopathic (our term) and heroic medicine-many of the colonists preferred to avoid bloodletting and purging. Where it is mentioned, it is seen as a form of economy or scarcity of medical personnel. It was not until the AMA took charge that other forms of medicine were subdued, and that was long after the Civil War.
I do not care for the divisions in the chapters because they do not reflect a chronological development. What's more, the wagon train doctors read like research turned quickly into a journalistic report, but not much tied to the technicality of practicing medicine, with the exception of the removal of arrowheads. There is no mention that Civil War doctors, in addition to performing deadly operations, were also in charge of branding deserters. He does not mention the minne balls which made Civil War wounds so deadly. And not all Civil War doctors were ignorant of the need for sanitation-Listerism was a fad that was promulgated by a female doctor, who doesn't bear mention in this book. Actually Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell is mentioned in the establishment of sanitation, but only in the chapter on women's medicine. I don't recall an discussion of Dr. Mary Walker in the book, a Civil War surgeon and doctor who spent some time as a Confederate captive.
Having completed this book, I am further distressed to find that TB was only discussed in terms of Westward Ho! for the invalids without much discussion on how dirt floors, spitting and a lack of air circulation contributed to it's reign of terror. See The White Plague if you are interested. Or it's foothold in Britain and Europe, it's steadfast company in colonial times until the 1940s. It was the fear that drove people to seek out the Kellogg cure, which is discussed at length in the latter part of the book.
Generally speaking this is a book by an author more familiar with settlement issues, gold miners and cowboys than he is conversant with medical history. If you want to write a novel about wagon train doctors, gold camp doctors or soddy house medicine, read someone's diary, not this sprawling over view. Especially if your protagonist is female, there are far better books. This one states that women relied upon their neighbors for midwifery, and that someone was always available, which was sometimes sadly not the case. I haven't any interest in writing a novel-I was more interested in medical folkways in the American colonies, but it's always interesting to explore the whole social landscape of American medicine, unless of course this was the book you pulled down.
There is no mention of the skirmish in the colonies between homeopathic (our term) and heroic medicine-many of the colonists preferred to avoid bloodletting and purging. Where it is mentioned, it is seen as a form of economy or scarcity of medical personnel. It was not until the AMA took charge that other forms of medicine were subdued, and that was long after the Civil War.
I do not care for the divisions in the chapters because they do not reflect a chronological development. What's more, the wagon train doctors read like research turned quickly into a journalistic report, but not much tied to the technicality of practicing medicine, with the exception of the removal of arrowheads. There is no mention that Civil War doctors, in addition to performing deadly operations, were also in charge of branding deserters. He does not mention the minne balls which made Civil War wounds so deadly. And not all Civil War doctors were ignorant of the need for sanitation-Listerism was a fad that was promulgated by a female doctor, who doesn't bear mention in this book. Actually Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell is mentioned in the establishment of sanitation, but only in the chapter on women's medicine. I don't recall an discussion of Dr. Mary Walker in the book, a Civil War surgeon and doctor who spent some time as a Confederate captive.
Having completed this book, I am further distressed to find that TB was only discussed in terms of Westward Ho! for the invalids without much discussion on how dirt floors, spitting and a lack of air circulation contributed to it's reign of terror. See The White Plague if you are interested. Or it's foothold in Britain and Europe, it's steadfast company in colonial times until the 1940s. It was the fear that drove people to seek out the Kellogg cure, which is discussed at length in the latter part of the book.
Generally speaking this is a book by an author more familiar with settlement issues, gold miners and cowboys than he is conversant with medical history. If you want to write a novel about wagon train doctors, gold camp doctors or soddy house medicine, read someone's diary, not this sprawling over view. Especially if your protagonist is female, there are far better books. This one states that women relied upon their neighbors for midwifery, and that someone was always available, which was sometimes sadly not the case. I haven't any interest in writing a novel-I was more interested in medical folkways in the American colonies, but it's always interesting to explore the whole social landscape of American medicine, unless of course this was the book you pulled down.
June 30, 2012
This books spans American medicine from before the nation existed (Natives, trappers, colonists) through the end of the snake oil period of the 1930s. The bit about the Lewis and Clark exhibition was particularly interesting. They took serious pains to be medically prepared, and it paid off when they only lost one man (who likely died of a bust appendix, which they wouldn't have been able to treat anyway).
May 21, 2018
This work of non-fiction gives an overview of American frontier medicine from the Native Americans through the beginning of World War II. Drawing on research from a variety of sources including diaries, letters, advertisements, medical records, and pharmacological accounts, Dary provides an overview of medicine as practiced by fur traders, on the Oregon trail, among soldiers, on homesteads, by midwives, and insight into the use of quack medical practices.
The theme of this book illustrates that early American medical training was poor and unregulated and whether or not early Americans received timely, helpful, or appropriate care was largely up to luck and circumstances. Many Americans, particularly those living in isolated conditions on the frontier, took it upon themselves to learn rudimentary medical practices that could save their lives in the event of an accident. Antiquated practices such as bloodletting prevailed for many years and the advent of widely pedaled patented medicines, which may or may have any helpful effect, muddied the water of medical practice.
The topic of this book was clearly quite broad and, as a consequence, this book very much functions as a survey of early American medicine. Rather than providing deep insight into any one topic, it briefly overviews many topics, all of which could easily have their own book devoted to that particular subject. At times, the scattered nature of the book made it tedious to read. In particular, the chapter on Indian medicine was so fragmented that each paragraph leaped to another element of Indian medical practices, making it aggravating to read and extremely disjointed. However, given that one chapter is devoted to all Native American medical practices, I'm not sure how Dary could have improved the narrative flow.
The aspect of this book I appreciated the most are the anecdotes the author included that help illustrate the medical know-how (or more frequently lack of) of the day. For instance, it was incredible to read about the doctor who operated in 1809 to remove a massive tumor from his patient's ovaries. The patient was forced to endure this procedure with no anesthetic or pain medication other than prayer and watched as her intestines "rolled onto the wooden table beside her" (58). Remarkably, she survived the procedure. Dary also gives an overview of Hugh Glass, the mountain main whose attack by a bear was detailed in the movie The Revenant. I also appreciated the author's description of his grandfather who was a general practitioner in the nineteenth century and who likely inspired the writing of this book.
The theme of this book illustrates that early American medical training was poor and unregulated and whether or not early Americans received timely, helpful, or appropriate care was largely up to luck and circumstances. Many Americans, particularly those living in isolated conditions on the frontier, took it upon themselves to learn rudimentary medical practices that could save their lives in the event of an accident. Antiquated practices such as bloodletting prevailed for many years and the advent of widely pedaled patented medicines, which may or may have any helpful effect, muddied the water of medical practice.
The topic of this book was clearly quite broad and, as a consequence, this book very much functions as a survey of early American medicine. Rather than providing deep insight into any one topic, it briefly overviews many topics, all of which could easily have their own book devoted to that particular subject. At times, the scattered nature of the book made it tedious to read. In particular, the chapter on Indian medicine was so fragmented that each paragraph leaped to another element of Indian medical practices, making it aggravating to read and extremely disjointed. However, given that one chapter is devoted to all Native American medical practices, I'm not sure how Dary could have improved the narrative flow.
The aspect of this book I appreciated the most are the anecdotes the author included that help illustrate the medical know-how (or more frequently lack of) of the day. For instance, it was incredible to read about the doctor who operated in 1809 to remove a massive tumor from his patient's ovaries. The patient was forced to endure this procedure with no anesthetic or pain medication other than prayer and watched as her intestines "rolled onto the wooden table beside her" (58). Remarkably, she survived the procedure. Dary also gives an overview of Hugh Glass, the mountain main whose attack by a bear was detailed in the movie The Revenant. I also appreciated the author's description of his grandfather who was a general practitioner in the nineteenth century and who likely inspired the writing of this book.
March 3, 2021
I have mixed feelings about David Dary’s book Frontier Medicine from 2008. The book is dense with detail based on meticulous research, but his narrative suffers within individual chapters because of the details. I read it because I wondered if field medicine before the 20th century was comparable to the first EMS skills starting in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I still wonder because Dary wrote more about the people practicing medicine and historical context that shaped those people than what they actually did.
That said, he did offer me some examples of early treatments, some which were icky, difficult, or awkward. In the awkward category, I learned about the three types of bloodletting: using a lancet, starved leeches, or cupping. I also learned that barbers (members of the Barber-Surgeon Guild) performed bloodletting when physicians weren’t available, which is linked to the red stripe on barber poles to this day. A difficult moment came in 1809 when a doctor removed a 23-pound tumor from a non-anesthetized woman’s ovary. They both survived the ordeal and she recovered.
You want the icky one? William Bent (Bent’s Fort) had such a bad case of diphtheria that he could neither swallow nor talk. In fact, his Cheyenne wife (probably Owl Woman) forced a hollow quill down his swollen throat to feed him by blowing broth from her mouth into the quill. A Cheyenne man used a thread of sinew to string several sandburs together, covered them in fat, and forced the greasy thing down Bent’s throat. When the fat melted away, the doctor pulled the sandburs out and removed the dry diptheritic membrane. Bent recovered enough to swallow soup and a few days later was eating solid food. Yeah, icky.
One of the greatest benefits of Frontier Medicine is that it examines history from a different perspective: wellness and medicine. That I liked. I appreciated the histories of vaccinations, especially Cotton Mather’s role in adding religious support for inoculations to combat smallpox in the Boston area, stories of patent medicines, and the roles of midwives. The details were overwhelming though and transformed some chapters into slogs through tangents, dates, and name-drops.
That said, he did offer me some examples of early treatments, some which were icky, difficult, or awkward. In the awkward category, I learned about the three types of bloodletting: using a lancet, starved leeches, or cupping. I also learned that barbers (members of the Barber-Surgeon Guild) performed bloodletting when physicians weren’t available, which is linked to the red stripe on barber poles to this day. A difficult moment came in 1809 when a doctor removed a 23-pound tumor from a non-anesthetized woman’s ovary. They both survived the ordeal and she recovered.
You want the icky one? William Bent (Bent’s Fort) had such a bad case of diphtheria that he could neither swallow nor talk. In fact, his Cheyenne wife (probably Owl Woman) forced a hollow quill down his swollen throat to feed him by blowing broth from her mouth into the quill. A Cheyenne man used a thread of sinew to string several sandburs together, covered them in fat, and forced the greasy thing down Bent’s throat. When the fat melted away, the doctor pulled the sandburs out and removed the dry diptheritic membrane. Bent recovered enough to swallow soup and a few days later was eating solid food. Yeah, icky.
One of the greatest benefits of Frontier Medicine is that it examines history from a different perspective: wellness and medicine. That I liked. I appreciated the histories of vaccinations, especially Cotton Mather’s role in adding religious support for inoculations to combat smallpox in the Boston area, stories of patent medicines, and the roles of midwives. The details were overwhelming though and transformed some chapters into slogs through tangents, dates, and name-drops.
March 12, 2010
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. 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.
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. 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.
March 24, 2020
I love details and tangents. Not sure there was a single page that didn't have me thinking, "I didn't know that!" I was constantly sharing information from this book. Very, very fascinating.
July 17, 2013
I did enjoy this book, although I have to say it was less through the skill of the author and more a result of the sheer interestingness of the topic. A history of medicine on the American frontier would, one would expect, be filled with gunshots and explosions, gruesome amputations and wild and wacky remedies, replete with many moments of 'ewww, they didn't!' And this was, don't get me wrong. It covers Native American traditions, Chinese medicine, midwives and women doctors, mountain men and mountebanks, quacks and pharmacists. You even learn the medicinal roots of Coca-cola and Dr Pepper.
In the hands of a more skilled writer this could have been a 5-star read, but too often Dary descends into short potted biographies of doctors scattered across the frontier, and he jumps too abruptly from one topic to another without any kind of logical segue. And I find it criminal that in a book about the evolution of medicine in America, he makes no mention at all of the 1918 influenza, a pandemic that began in America and killed between 3-5% of the WORLD's population. Nor does he cover wartime medicine in any era other than the Civil War, ignoring the Spanish-American War, and both World Wars, despite the fact that his timeline supposedly goes up to 1945.
So overall, an interesting read on a fascinating topic, but flawed and some serious omissions.
In the hands of a more skilled writer this could have been a 5-star read, but too often Dary descends into short potted biographies of doctors scattered across the frontier, and he jumps too abruptly from one topic to another without any kind of logical segue. And I find it criminal that in a book about the evolution of medicine in America, he makes no mention at all of the 1918 influenza, a pandemic that began in America and killed between 3-5% of the WORLD's population. Nor does he cover wartime medicine in any era other than the Civil War, ignoring the Spanish-American War, and both World Wars, despite the fact that his timeline supposedly goes up to 1945.
So overall, an interesting read on a fascinating topic, but flawed and some serious omissions.
March 6, 2016
Another [noun] who did [something related to the last anecdote] was [name]. Born...
If I see another second sentence beginning "Born..." I might have an apoplexy myself. This is the most boring interesting book I can remember reading. There is a lot of interesting stuff in here, and even more potentially interesting stuff--sometimes that potential is tantalizing. But as a historian, the author seems to have simply collected all his anecdotes, created some broad categories, and then within each category simply piled all the anecdotes on top on one another and--that's it. I would have liked much more discussion on theories about why certain remedies worked or did not work and what relation they bear to the scientific medicine of today. I would have liked to have learned more about some of the people and rather less about some others. It's simply not necessary to know the names and where they were born of some of the minor contributors--their contribution alone would be sufficient.
Perhaps I was wrong to read this cover to cover. Perhaps it would be more satisfying to dip into it from time to time...
If I see another second sentence beginning "Born..." I might have an apoplexy myself. This is the most boring interesting book I can remember reading. There is a lot of interesting stuff in here, and even more potentially interesting stuff--sometimes that potential is tantalizing. But as a historian, the author seems to have simply collected all his anecdotes, created some broad categories, and then within each category simply piled all the anecdotes on top on one another and--that's it. I would have liked much more discussion on theories about why certain remedies worked or did not work and what relation they bear to the scientific medicine of today. I would have liked to have learned more about some of the people and rather less about some others. It's simply not necessary to know the names and where they were born of some of the minor contributors--their contribution alone would be sufficient.
Perhaps I was wrong to read this cover to cover. Perhaps it would be more satisfying to dip into it from time to time...
May 15, 2009
I am enjoying this read immensely. However, as much fun as it is for me to read wacky medical accounts that are listed with very little in the way of transitions, Dary would have done better for himself had he created a story chronologically, instead of topically, with so many different subdivisions. I ma enjoying myself, but it isn't a smooth ride with any kind of discernable arc.
Earlier: I can't WAIT to find time to read this one. Don't worry, I will tell you ALL about primitive surgery and how to not lose days of travel in Oregon Trail.
Earlier: I can't WAIT to find time to read this one. Don't worry, I will tell you ALL about primitive surgery and how to not lose days of travel in Oregon Trail.
January 13, 2014
I did not care for this book. While the subject matter would seemingly be full of promise, the execution was poor. My biggest complaint is the lack of organization and the need to list every doctor he could find information about. Instead of concentrating on one or two doctors for the subjects he found interesting, and then using those doctors' stories as the framework for a discussion on those subjects, the author proved his point by repeating the same idea over and over again. Very dry and disappointing.
March 28, 2015
I thought this book was interesting, have kept it around for years and read at least part of it more than once, which gets it 4 stars. My husband also enjoyed it. But... this book is too dense to find information. When I read it the first time I enjoyed the author's peripatetic style because I like the trivia and facts he brought to each section. Now that I want to go back and reread interesting tidbits I am having a hard time finding them. It's better as an armchair read on a fascinating topic.
December 24, 2024
it’s been some years since i’ve read this so my review is based on what i remember. this book takes an often meandering, comedic route on delivering the information in a way that can be redundant if you tried to sit down and read it all in one go. i read this section at a time over several months and it was such a fun take on quackery when it got to that stage of history. it wasn’t perfect by any means, but as a introductory look at frontier medicine it served its purpose well. its best read a chapter or two at a time over a prolonged period.
January 10, 2017
Better approached as a selection of interesting anecdotes. There didn't really seem to be much of a chronology or overarching purpose, and I feel like I'd read a lot of this material before, and covered more effectively, in other works focusing on more specific themes. But worth a read and useful for ideas on other things to read on related subjects (e.g. the frontier, the advancement of medicine, advertising).
May 11, 2014
The interesting bits were REALLY interesting, but the boring bits were REALLY boring. Some sections seemed to wander all over and back forth and have no direction. Decent, but could have been better. One can only read so many stats and numbers. Bonus points for the descriptions of the no anesthesia ovary-ectomy. Totally cool!
Want to read
August 26, 2009Will pick this up again--right now it's languishing in a pile because I'm reading fiction instead.
----------
Most recent fact learned: Meriwether Lewis died of syphilis! Or, more precisely, a self-inflicted gunshot wound due to madness/depression following from same.
----------
Most recent fact learned: Meriwether Lewis died of syphilis! Or, more precisely, a self-inflicted gunshot wound due to madness/depression following from same.
July 8, 2014
Informative and interesting but rather dry with far too much excess information (such as where a medical pioneer grew up when that didn't influence his techniques). The book could honestly have been half as long if all of the "fluff" was removed.
February 1, 2009
Some good observations of medicine past and present and oogie descriptions of medical practices, but read too often like an outline.
March 16, 2009
This book was very interesting. I'm glad that we live in the times of medicine that we do now.
Want to read
February 6, 2009A birthday gift from Kate
Want to read
March 13, 2013page 139. Have to stop here as it needs to go back to the library and I can't renew it. It's pretty good so far, but I am a little annoyed by the redundant writing style this author seems to have.
Read
August 19, 2009ok. some interesting facts, but writing style is rather boring.
December 12, 2010
Interesting topic, however, it didn't always flow well from one subject to the next and some of the chapters were not knit well together.
August 25, 2012
Entertaining and interesting read on the evolution of modern medicine. An occasional detour into arcane recounts and Kansas folklore but otherwise enjoyable.
February 5, 2009
Should finish this one in a couple of days.
Read
January 11, 2010What I learned from this book? Never travel without laudanum and powdered whiteroot.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews