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  • If you were an early settler in the Wild West,

  • and you got sick, you had three health care options.

  • One, find a doctor, and hope their strange potions

  • numbed your pain.

  • Two, figure out how to cure your own ailment.

  • Or three, die.

  • Of course, if you were able to find a doctor,

  • you'd probably die anyway, because they sort of just

  • winged it as they went along.

  • Today, we're going to discover what

  • it was like going to a doctor in the Wild West.

  • But before we cut into this here story,

  • we reckon you subscribe to the Weird History Channel

  • and holler at us about a Old West thingamajingins you'd

  • like to hear about.

  • Now, take a swig of whiskey, and bite down on this here rag.

  • We're going to go see a doctor in the Old West.

  • Now, you have to remember the state of medicine

  • in the Old West.

  • It wasn't so much of a science yet

  • as it was a way to make money.

  • Sure, you had a lot of doctors in it for altruistic reasons,

  • but for the most part, medicine was a cutthroat business.

  • When a new physician established an office in a smaller

  • town that already had a doctor, things

  • could get ugly fast, as they'd usually become territorial.

  • Two doctors in one town meant they'd have to split profits.

  • One of the more infamous incidents of dueling doctors

  • took place when a Dr. Edward Willis

  • moved to Placerville, California, which

  • was then called Hangtown.

  • Upon his arrival, Dr. Willis pitched

  • a tent that would serve as his home and medical office.

  • He then hung a sign above his door

  • announcing his services as doctor and surgeon.

  • None of this was cool with Doc Hullings, the first doctor

  • to open a medical practice in the burgeoning mining camp.

  • Hullings immediately walked over to the new doctor's tent

  • and ordered him out of town.

  • Dr. Willis calmly told Hullings he wasn't going anywhere then

  • turned his back on him, and then ordered him out of his tent.

  • Incensed, Hullings stormed out and came up

  • with a plan, which wasn't so much of a plan

  • as it was just him showing up several days later

  • with a backup of several well-armed Hangtown gold

  • miners.

  • Hullings demanded Willis produce a diploma, which he promptly

  • did.

  • Hullings tore it in half and tossed it to the ground.

  • Mr. Paul Clam, a friend of Dr. Willis,

  • was there and witnessed the exchange,

  • and then punch Doc Hullings.

  • Hullings escalated the fight, challenging Clam and Willis

  • to a duel with pistols.

  • This duel was held in an abandoned mining pit.

  • After the Sheriff yelled "Fire," both men shot,

  • and both men went down.

  • Clam was badly wounded from three body shots.

  • Doc Hullings was slightly more wounded.

  • He was dead

  • According to miners' law, any man

  • who abandoned his claim also gave up all rights to his land.

  • Since Doc Hullings was dead, He had technically

  • abandoned his claim, and Dr. Willis instantly

  • became the town's sole physician.

  • His first job was to save Mr. Clam's life,

  • and his first official act was to sign Doc Hullings's death

  • certificate.

  • Doctor was an extremely vague title people gave themselves

  • in the Wild West.

  • While some had formal training, one

  • didn't need a fancy degree or any real formal hands-on

  • experience.

  • All you needed was a bag full of unsterilized surgical tools

  • and the ability to convince people

  • you knew what you were doing.

  • And because there was a shortage of medical professionals

  • on the frontier, becoming a doctor

  • was as simple as calling yourself a doctor.

  • For example, in 1827, a janitor performed the first cesarean

  • section in the West.

  • John Richmond worked as a janitor at a medical school,

  • and while he was there, he'd listen in on lectures

  • and take mental notes.

  • Eventually, he quit his janitorial gig,

  • then called himself a doctor and performed a c-section

  • without ever observing one or cutting into a human body,

  • for that matter.

  • Richmond wrote, "Finding that whatever was done

  • must be done soon and feeling a deep and solemn sense

  • of my responsibility, with only a case of common pocket

  • instruments, about 1 o'clock at night,

  • I commenced the cesarean section.

  • The patient never complained of pain

  • during the whole course of the cure."

  • That said, Dr. Richmond might have exaggerated a bit,

  • as the accounts of the c-section has been debated.

  • While the woman survived the shady procedure,

  • the child did not.

  • And in her 2018 book Cesarean Section, An American History

  • of Risk, Technology and Consequence,

  • Jacqueline H. Wolf wrote.

  • "The mother begged him to stop.

  • She couldn't endure the pain."

  • As barbaric as Richmond's attempted c-section was,

  • it's the first published account of an attempted

  • to cesarean performed in the United States.

  • For every John Richmond, there were formally

  • trained doctors who had an idea of what they were doing.

  • But even these medical professionals

  • relied on dangerous and highly-experimental treatments.

  • Dr. Daniel Drake, a founder of Ohio's first medical college,

  • strongly advised bleeding for patients whose

  • pulse is nearly imperceptible.

  • If the doctor's lancet couldn't induce blood flow from a vein,

  • Dr. Drake recommended cutting the jugular vein in the neck.

  • Yes, the majority of patients who

  • underwent blood letting through their jugular

  • had a prognosis you'd probably predict.

  • They perished.

  • Blister treatments were another one

  • of the more confusing treatments these doctors regularly

  • performed.

  • This questionable practice called for a doctor

  • to cover a portion of the skin with crushed chili

  • peppers to produce hyperemia.

  • The chili paste would produce a very powerful

  • counter-irritation so that the pain of the blisters

  • would override the painful condition being treated,

  • sort of like hitting your head with a hammer

  • if you had a stomach ache.

  • Purgation was another go-to treatment

  • these Old West doctors liked to suggest to their patients.

  • If a doctor suggested you purge, you

  • would be ordered to swallow calomel, a mercury-based drug

  • that made you evacuate your bowels

  • with the velocity of a broken frozen yogurt machine.

  • The hope here was that the purging would get rid

  • of the black bile in one's stomach,

  • but it rarely healed anyone.

  • As medieval as medicines seemed in the Old West,

  • it's no surprise that common folk

  • were alarmed by some of the practices

  • these new doctors sprung on them.

  • When doctors sliced open human bodies

  • or performed unorthodox surgeries

  • to save patients' lives, it really freaked people out.

  • One frontier doctor reported that he

  • opened the throat of a child choking with diphtheria

  • and kept the windpipe open with fish hooks.

  • Now, imagine it's 1875, and you see this.

  • You'd probably flip out, too.

  • It's no surprise that some people

  • believed doctors were performing satanic rituals.

  • In another case the famed surgeon Dr. Ephraim McDowell

  • performed a messy operation on a 45-year-old Kentucky

  • woman named Jane Crawford.

  • McDowell was summoned to the Crawford farmhouse

  • to assist in what was thought to be a long overdue childbirth.

  • McDowell soon found that Crawford wasn't pregnant.

  • She was suffering from a massive ovarian tumor.

  • Dr. McDowell then suggested the removal

  • of the tumor, a surgery that had never been attempted before.

  • Eventually, Dr. McDowell was able to extract Crawford's ,

  • tumor all 22 pounds of it.

  • That said, he had a difficult time

  • with some of the townsmen, who thought he was

  • doing the work of the devil.

  • Superstition and taboos contributed to the talk

  • that McDowell was doing something otherworldly

  • in his office.

  • His patient survived a 25-minute procedure without anesthetics,

  • but accusations of satanic practices