Doctors of the American Frontier

I was in library in the HBLL doing research for a blog post and found this awesome book completely by accident while taking a break. It’s called Doctors of the American Frontier by Richard Dunlop. It was published in 1965 and provides really interesting insight into what frontier life was like for many people living on the American frontier during the 19th century.

I feel like often times there is a romantic ideal of what discovering the frontier was like.

                                                                   *Source: FatWallet.com
However, Dunlops paints a very vivid picture to the contrary,


The typical nineteenth-century American frontiersman was wan with fever, gaunt, and spindle-shanked. His wife was scrawny and peaked; their children were sick and fretful.
...
“Death is their doctor, and the grave their hospital,” observed Dr. Daniel Darling, a frontier physician in the old Northwest in 1842.
...
Fleas and bedbugs made nightly sallies from their nests in the cracks and chinks of frontier dwellings. 
...
Pioneers settled close to streams when they could and were pestered by flies and gnats by day and mosquitoes by night. Malarial and typo-malarial fevers sapped their strength. Nobody suspected the role insects played in spreading them. Families ate from a common platter and drank from a common plate… Severe indigestion and dysentery were common.

Doesn’t quite sound quite like the dream life I grew up watching on Little House on the Prairie… :)

 *I thought I throw some digital culture into the mix. This is remix of a classic message from the original Oregon trail computer game. Source: Carl Lewington's gaming blog