Bad “doctors” could kill them
Historian Bethany Nemec gives two examples of doctors who were dangerously incompetent. She cites a case where an eight-year-old boy had his leg crushed by falling from a wagon. His “doctor” wrapped the leg in linen and put a loose splint on it. Nine days later, his leg was gangrene and being eaten by maggots. The boy died after an attempt to amputate the putrefied leg.
But in most cases, people had to serve as their own (and highly untrained) doctors, despite their limited or lack of medical knowledge. Abigail Hathaway King recalls her mother’s illness, “Mrs. Knapp, one of the members of the wagon train, died of cholera, and Mother laid her out. Mother took the cholera. Father didn’t know what to do, so he had her drink a cupful of spirits of camphor. The other people thought it would kill her or cure her. It cured her.”
