Frontier Medicine
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- 7,99 €
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- 7,99 €
Publisher Description
In this intriguing narrative, David Dary charts how American medicine has evolved since 1492, when New World settlers first began combining European remedies with the traditional practices of the native populations. It’s a story filled with colorful characters, from quacks and con artists to heroic healers and ingenious medicine men, and Dary tells it with an engaging style and an eye for the telling detail. Dary also charts the evolution of American medicine from these trial-and-error roots to its contemporary high-tech, high-cost pharmaceutical and medical industry.
Packed with fascinating facts about our medical past, Frontier Medicine is an engaging and illuminating history of how our modern medical system came into being.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Scurvy, contaminated water and challenging environments were among the medical problems faced by frontier settlers, who resorted to the rough-and-ready treatments of herbal and traditional medicines, quack concoctions and whatever worked. This is the story prolific western writer Dary (The Oregon Trail) provides in a deeply researched, anecdotal history. Fourteen chapters range from "Indian Medicine" and "In Western Towns" to "Quacks" and "Midwives and Women Doctors." A skilled storyteller, Dary fills each chapter with tales of doctors (not always well trained) and patients, colorful events, important discoveries and a seemingly endless pharmacopeia of herbal recipes and drugs, beliefs and often gruesome medical procedures. Dary agrees with today's experts that doctors in that era who practiced "heroic medicine" bleeding, purging, administering emetics and toxic metals such as mercury and arsenic did more harm than good. Fortunately, even quacks were too expensive for most settlers, who preferred home remedies. Dary argues that traditional Native American treatments were less harmful and probably more effective. Readers looking for a more insightful history of medicine should choose one by Roy Porter, but this collection of stories of frontier healers will satisfy many readers. 81 illus.
