I was hospitalized recently with a horrendous belly ache that started to move north. That’s when my husband, fearing I was having a heart attack, called 911. I was in some hellish pain, and the EMTs agreed doctors should have a look, so off I went to the new (and still shiny!) Lutheran Medical Center.
It turned out to be nothing much, but the experience left me wondering about my options had I lived in the Wheat Ridge area in the mid-1800s during a time when pioneers were still carving out lives on the frontier. Research results were pretty grim, as one may have expected.
Ambulances didn’t exist. If the condition was bad enough, I would have had to “ride for the doctor,” either on a horse or in the back of a wagon. If there was a local area doc, he might be persuaded to make a house call. His black bag would carry common drugs of the day, including paregoric (an intestinal soother) and laudanum for pain, quinine to ward off malaria, and calomel, which we now know contained mercury. If he was a good old-fashioned guy, he might also offer me a blood-letting to balance my humors. (An ancient belief still lingering in the Victorian-era offered that the body had four “humors” thought to be blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile; their intricate balance determined a person’s health and personality.)
In truly serious situations I might be transported to the nearest fort, which would have a surgeon on staff who was up to date on the latest treatments. The nearest fort to this area at that time was Camp Weld, just west of what is now downtown Denver, a ten-mile day’s ride from here.
Neighbors might help me by offering homemade concoctions. Herbal and plant remedies were always popular, passed down through generations, brought from the “Old Country” or gleaned from indigenous people in the area. Opium-based medicines, like laudanum and paregoric, were legal and widely used. Alcohol served double duty as a disinfectant and a painkiller “to take the edge off” upcoming painful treatments. However, one remedy takes the cake for gastric problems: the tobacco smoke enema, which was administered exactly the way it sounds. Fortunately, it has fallen out of favor, but I’m willing to believe that it’s the source of today’s popular warning about blowing smoke.
Getting sick was just plain risky back in pioneer days. Belly pain like mine was hard to diagnose; it could mean infection, dysentery, appendicitis, cancer – the list goes on. “Indigestion” was often listed as cause of death on death certificates when it was actually a heart attack. There were no standardized medications and some were dangerous; in most cases sanitation was poor. I’m just glad I received treatment from highly educated people who knew what they were doing. Modern medicine may not be perfect, but compared to the 1800s’ frontier, I’ll take a shiny new hospital every time.
