Wednesday, February 10, 2016

MEDICINE ~ TEXAS STYLE & a GIVEAWAY!


I'll admit it ~ I loved watching Doctor Quinn -- Medicine Woman. It was an addiction for a while. (I am over it now thanks to the 12-Step Process ;-) As a nurse, the medical facts on that show fascinated me up until the end when it became more of a "disease of the week" type drama. Then I missed the romance that had drawn me in the first place and my viewings tapered off.

Although the nineteenth century has been termed "The Golden Age of Medicine" the doctors of the Texas wilderness still practiced medicine much as it had been practiced since the Middle Ages using the ancient Greek theory of the four "humors." Blood was thought to come from the heart, phlegm from the brain, yellow bile from the liver, and black bile from the spleen. According to this theory, disease and sickness occurred because of an imbalance in one of the humors. If one was in excess, it had to be removed or equalized, hence the use of emetics to induce vomiting and the practice of cupping or draining a certain amount of blood to remove the "harmful humor."

Wounds and bacterial infections caused the majority of deaths and disabilities. Doctors of this time battled malaria, yellow fever, pneumonia, cholera, dysentery, post partum infection, tuberculosis, measles and small pox. They could splint fractures, suture wounds, perform amputations and drain infections (and all with unsterile technique.) For medical instruments, many had only stethoscopes. Other tools--saws and knives came from the kitchen.


For a treatment to be effective, most thought it had to have a foul smell or taste. Powders were sought over tablets, and colored tablets over white ones. Some medicines in use at the time included quinine, calomel, blue mass pills, belladonna, ipecac, columbo, asafetida, boneset, squill, pokeweed, hog'sfoot oil, castor oil, digitalis, lobelia (or Indian Tobacco.) There were many home remedies and poultices and plasters were common--some producing enough heat to burn the patient.

Morphine or laudanum was often prescribed for pain relief. Also, paragoric (camphorated tincture of opium) was used to inhibit diarrhea, coughing, and to calm fretful children. The concept of drug dependency was not considered. Anesthesia with nitrous oxide, also know a s laughing gas, was not used for surgery until 1844, although one New Orleans doctor used ether several years earlier. Before this, the most sought-after surgeons were the ones who worked fast so that the pain would be less. In 1947, chloroform was first used for pain during delivery.


Here are a few home remedies used back then. DO NOT TRY THESE! I have no idea as to their efficacy or safety, but I found them interesting to read about. Information was obtained from A Pinch of This and a Handful of That: Historic Recipes of Texas 1830-1900.

Snake and Spider Bites -- Beat onions and salt together, wet tobacco, mix thoroughly. Split the wound and apply at once.

Warts -- Take a persimmon stick and put as many notches on it as you have warts. They will go away.

Sores -- (1895) Powdered alum is good for a canker sore in the mouth. Never burn the cloth bandage from a sore; you must bury it for the sore to heal.

Knife Cuts -- (1853) Clean wound well and apply a piece of fat bacon or fat back. Strap it on for several days.

Puncture Wounds (Nails, Gunshot) -- Put some old wool rags into an old tin can, pour kerosene over the rags and light. Then smoke the wound. This also works with chicken feathers.

Boils or Infection -- (1890) Salve: Take one part hog lard, two parts quinine and mix.

Bleeding from the Nose -- Bathe the feet in very hot water, while at the same time drinking a pint of cayenne pepper tea or hold both arms over the head.

Other bleeding -- Place a spider web across the wound.

All I can say is that I am glad to be in a time and place that has better medical advancements.  I'm sure we will look back in another hundred years and say the same about NOW!

                      Have you heard of an unusual remedy? 


*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * 
GIVEAWAY:
My newest release is a sweet, western historical set in early southern California. I am happy to say that no one gets bitten by a rattler in this story! To see an excerpt click HERE.

"Sometimes the one who got way is just waiting to step back in and sweep you off your feet." 

For a chance to win a copy of 

Familiar Stranger in Clear Springs

please leave a comment! For extra entries into the contest, please "Like" my Page on Facebook and let me know. Giveaway ends February 12th at midnight. (Continental U.S. only)

To Purchase this book:     H  mini_amazon  mini_bn  mini_kobo  indybound   mini_google 


20 comments:

  1. Hi Kathryn,
    Like you, I'm a Registered Nurse. I'm both appalled and fascinated by the treatments our 19th century forebears believed in, trusted in, and had so little else to try. I have phenomenal respect for physicians in the era who had to diagnose and treat with so few resources, tools, methods, and barely emerging understanding of bacteriology. Fascinating! Thank you for sharing your source...I might have to locate a copy for myself.
    Wishing you all the best with your new release,
    Kristin Holt

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  2. Thanks for stopping by Kristin! Here where I live there is a medical school and they have a small library with a showcase filled with instruments from the 1800s. Some are unbelievable and others are fairly close to the same thing used today. It is a fascinating journey medicine is on...

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  4. Interesting ways to treat things back then

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    1. Hi Cheryl! Thanks for stopping by! I can get so sucked in by research on things like this.

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  5. I just was mentioning to Kristen Holt yesterday, I think, that I am extremely interested in finding out information and great research sites about medical practices, especially from 1867 to the 1880's. I don't have the extra money to buy the books on Amazon that look like they might be great sources; but if either of you know of a couple of books with valuable information on medicine during this time, I sure would be thankful for the suggestions. I have looked all over the Internet and have found some good sites, but there are really not that many that I have found. I'm writing a Western pilot where I need a lot of this kind of info. Somewhere, I have the name of the book that they consulted most with on Dr. Quinn. I still love that show because I adore Sully. Lol! I found that they did some crazy episodes, though, about actual cases. The plastic surgery one was the hardest one for me to believe. Lol!

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    1. Hi Connie, Thanks for stopping by and commenting! I don't remember the episode about the plastic surgery--which perhaps is good since you didn't think it very believable. I was hooked on Sully too. The show had a great run. Another book I used for research is one I happened upon at my town's library book sale titled Early Texas Physicians 1830-1915 that had biographies.Copyright 1999.

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  6. Sorry I misspelled your name Kristin. The writing on my iPad was so small.

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  7. Always looking for more authors who write in the 1800s time period. I like learning about everything they used back then. Obviously a lot of treatments didn't work, b/c they were changing the "treatments". When I was a child, the treatment for snake bite, was to cut an X on the fang marks and suck the venom out with your mouth. Ewww, my parents had a small snake bite kit that had a plastic cylinder that you would apply to the wound to "suction" the wound.

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    1. Hello Mrs. Boone4, I have heard of that snake bite remedy before. Now they say that that was a dangerous thing to do. I'm not sure why, but assume it was too easy to get the poison in your own bloodstream through your mouth and didn't do much to help the victim. Ewww is right! Thanks for stopping by and commenting!

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  8. Very informative post, Kathryn. I made several notes and plan to get a copy of A Pinch of This and a Handful of That for my research shelf. As a western historical romance writer, I'm pleased to find the home remedies because a doctor was not always available on the prairie. Thank you for writing this.

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    1. You are welcome, Agnes. As with the book mentioned here, you may have some luck looking through cookbooks. Older ones have sections for common remedies. I'm glad you popped in!

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  9. As usual, a fascinating post. I reference Dr. Keith Souter's book "The Doctors Bag" for medical procedures from the past. Like your post, informative reading. Doris/Angela

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    1. Thanks Doris! I appreciate you checking in here and supporting!

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  10. Such an informative post. Thank you for sharing all this great information!

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    1. Hi Shanna! Thanks for stopping in to chat! I have to be so careful--always get lost in the research and although I don't use half of it in my actual manuscript, it sure gives me ideas for scenes LOL.

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  11. i would love to win the book i love romance books

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  12. My Giveaway for Familiar Stranger is at an end. Thank you everyone for commenting and participating! With the use of a random number generator...the winner is Connie White! Connie--please contact me at
    kathryn @ kathrynalbright dot com with your snail mail address and I will send you your book!

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  13. Congratulations Connie! You are one lucky person to get one of Kathryn's books. Doris/Angela

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