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Medical Treatments On The Oregon Trail

Medical Practices

Disease posed a serious and credible threat to all whom that journeyed across the Trail. The threat of disease, in combination with the phenomenon of many immigrants taking the trail in search of healthier lifestyles, combined to create an environment that was rife with medical development and experimentation. For example, such developments involved wrapping sick patients in wet sheets overnight and hypnotism. These were adopted as most would accept any medical recommendation that promised to bring on a change in symptoms. The use of opiates in various forms was also highly prolific on the trail. These included Black Drops (an opium and vinegar solution) laudanum (an opium and alcohol mix) and Dover’s Powder (a mixture of opium and ipecac) and finally opium drops were also readily available and used by wives on their husbands to stop them going out at night. Another popular medecine on the trial was Dr Rush's Bilious Pills. These were first used on the trail by Lewis and Clarke, who are considered to be the first people to successfully cross the Oregon Trail. They are estimated to have taken 600 of these Pills on their expedition in order to stop constipation on their journey West. The problems with the spread of the use of these pills is that their primary ingredient was Mercury which damages the gut lining and kidney and in extreme cases can be fatal. The use of mercury on the trail was particularly dangerous as the effects were not fully understood and the recommended dosage was until the patient would started to drool at the mouth, this was a sign of mercury poisoning which can be and was fatal on occasion. It was during this time there was also a spread of home medicine books, and they rapidly became some of the bestselling books of the 19th century. This was a direct result of the lack of trust many held in doctors as their understanding of medical problems and the best solutions for these was highly limited, and also by the fact that seeking medical help on the trail was also dependent on fair weather and road conditions. Medical practices along the Trail were not only limited to the effects of disease and illness but also common were gunshot wounds and broken bones. The remedies for this were equally basic and often involved just bandaging the area as best as they could. For more serious injuries such as a bullet wound, the methods of extraction were basic and often involved using fingers or metal rods to remove the bullet or shrapnel.

Treatment of Cholera

The most widespread illness on the trail was Cholera, which was rife from throughout the trail's operation. George Tribble recalled in 1852, that “for four hundred miles the road was almost a solid graveyard”. Such was the impact that of the ten members of the Tribble family that started the Trail only five reached the end. The rapid speed with which a patient of Cholera deteriorated, combined with an underdeveloped scientific understanding of the disease at the time, made treatment of Cholera especially difficult on the trail.

Trained medical practitioners, known as “regulars” on the trail, engaged with allopathic treatment of Cholera. Most commonly, this meant prescribing an opiate such as Laudanum to be taken alongside the strong purgative calomel, with the medicines respectively believed to alleviate pain and facilitate the faecal expulsion of toxins. Although the antidiarrhoeal effects of opiates inadvertently helped severely dehydrated patients retain some fluids, the purgative effects of calomel and high concentration of mercury in the medicines meant oftentimes these treatments hastened fatality. Physicians on the trail also commonly performed bloodletting on cholera patients, however this too only served to worsen symptoms. Scores of less common treatments were administered by physicians, including but not limited to: mustard plasters for muscular spasms, anal injections for combatting diarrhoea, and jalap root powder for its analgesic qualities. Treatment of cholera by physicians on the trail was often ineffective, and due to overwhelming demand many groups struggled to access medical professionals.

Instead of physicians, many on the trails engaged with alternative medical treatments and home remedies. By 1850 some 150 unique cholera treatments were in existence. Many trail goers practised homoeopathy, believing that patients could be treated through small doses of a drug whose effects mimicked those of cholera. Practically this meant administering medical compounds so diluted that the active ingredient was essentially removed, and was largely ineffective. Thomsonianism was another prevalent form of alternative medicine on the trail, driven by the belief that heat restored a body’s ‘life force’ and health. Thomsonian treatments included the administration of cayenne pepper and vapour baths to restore body heat, and like other medical approaches ironically further dehydrated patients.

Another treatment for cholera employing alternative medicine was hydrotherapy, which despite being less commonly used by emigrants, was noted as being administered by Native Americans in areas surrounding the trail. It consisted of submerging patients in water or water-soaked towels, and reports detail groups of Native Americans repeatedly submerging an ill community member in a river ‘until the person dies or recovers.’

Despite the range of treatments for cholera attempted on the trail, their ineffectiveness against the perils of the disease meant that palliative care often became a carer’s dominating focus. Sarah Keyes argues that death following a cholera diagnosis on the trail was so common that quality of care for patients was assessed by emigrants not on outcome, but on the effort put into nursing. Additionally, the competitive and mobile nature of trail life meant that in some circumstances treatment was abandoned or not attempted at all so as to not sacrifice personal pursuits. During times of high risk such as the California Gold Rush, emigrants were critiqued for abandoning companions infected by cholera without attempting treatment, with trail traveller Charles Benjamin Darwin lamenting emigrants’ lack of “thought for the poor sufferer before them.”

Women's Healthcare

In a census women’s diaries by Lillian Schlissel, she found that as many as 22% of women of childbearing age were pregnant or had recently given birth whilst on the trail.

Since the 1830s in America childbearing was medicalized as an illness for women to justify greater medical care during pregnancy and birth, yet women on the trail seldom had access to physicians or trained midwives. Occasionally, a doctor could be called on if in close enough proximity. Yet women largely gave birth without professional assistance. Women’s diaries indicate that in place of doctors, fellow companion women would assist in births. One recounts how two women intended to travel to the birth of a child two miles back in the wagon train, but arrived finding that the baby was already born, whilst another recalls another woman suffering a difficult childbirth: “the child was doubled up in the womb, making it a serious and strenuous birth”. This suggests that ordinary women had knowledge of the mechanisms of childbirth enough to identify complications. An immigrant on the trial testifies to the role of ordinary women in providing birthing care: “there was no regular medical attendance, but with such care as the women could render each other there was no difficulty”.

Despite the medicalization of childbirth, women on the trail were often not given allowances in order to care for their pregnancy or prepare for birth, still being expected to carry out labor on the journey. This labor was intensive, where many women were expected to carry out both the traditional duties of home and childcare, as well as physical labor such as gathering wood and buffalo chips. The physical labor expected of them even in their final stages of pregnancy suggests that few women were able to rest in preparation for labor.

Whilst during this period it was standard for women who could afford it to take a month of rest after childbirth, women on the trail typically had far less. One account recalls the party stopping for only 3 days after birth before resuming the travel, whilst another only a day. Even if women were exempt from labor after resuming travelling, the conditions of travel afforded them little rest, where to stay in the wagon was to endure a jolting and uncomfortable ride, or else be made to walk alongside it carrying a newborn.

Whilst women were afforded little significant medical care related to their pregnancies or childbirth, they continued to treat unrelated diseases with treatments that may have been on hand. In the diary of Lavinia Porter, she recalls becoming ill with dysentery whilst pregnant on the trail. After being advised to take castor oil but finding she had none, she consumed some hair tonic as treatment.

Women’s mental health was also cared for primarily through their social connections. Lillian Schlissel suggests that they found great comfort in being surrounded by other women and were often upset when circumstances forced them to be separated. Historians Johnny Faragher and Christine Stansell remark that “female friendships, strikingly intimate and deep in this period, formed the actual bonds”.

Health Seekers

Health seekers were prominent amongst migrants travelling westward on the Oregon Trail, with many people motivated by the search for renewed health as well as financial prosperity provided by western frontier regions.

Earlier travellers noted the temperate climate of the region, which was beneficial for persons suffering from pulmonary diseases such as tuberculosis. By the early 1830s, many physicians began seeing the beneficial nature of westward climates and mountain terrain on the health, which inspired a renewed interest for migration amongst health seekers. Medical advice from leading physicians, such as Dr. Daniel Drake, advocated for a westward relocation of those suffering from chronic respiratory disorders, which were believed to be remedied by breathing uncontaminated mountainous air which contained traces of the aromatic and medicinal artemisia plant.

Health seekers on the Oregon Trail also often sought escape from crowded urban environments where diseases thrived. As western regions were less plagued by tuberculosis, and free from vaporous pollution from poisonous river waters, which were perceived as illness causing by breathing in these unhealthy fumes,  many travellers seeking improved health joined the campaign of western relocation. Unlike consumptives, these travellers were uncertain about their general health and feared they might become afflicted with tuberculosis from plagued urban areas. John E. Baur claims that during these years virtually every caravan of migrants carried health seekers searching for environmental cures, including rheumatics, dyspeptics, as well as people escaping recurring epidemics of yellow fever, smallpox, and cholera from the Mississippi Valley. By the late 1840s, consumptives were regularly travelling westward on the Oregon Trail, routinely following medical advice by camping outdoors at night and reaping the natural remedy of mountainous oxygen.

Many health seekers recalled their noticeable improvements in health and lifestyle experienced during their time on the Oregon Trail, which embedded ideas of a healthful environment influencing the severity of medical ailments in the collective American imagination of the time. The reports from consumptives who travelled on the Oregon Trail emphasised significant improvements in respiratory health, often only over a few short weeks, and gave rise to a growing spirit of optimism for the healthful advantages of the West.

In 1841, John Bidwell recalled in his book recounting his westward journey: "Those of the Company who came here for their health, were all successful. A young man by name of Walton, who, when he set out was of a death like appearance - having been afflicted with dropsy or consumption, landed in perfect health."

Many other accounts recall similar stories. In his 1844 book Commerce of the Prairies, Josiah Gregg recorded his journey of improved health while travelling on the Santa Fe Trail in 1831, where in a matter of weeks he went from being bed ridden with consumption to completing the journey on horseback. The psychological benefits of western climates for consumptives also aided in improvement physical fitness, which was required for the cross country journey on the Oregon Trail, and in itself encouraged feelings of determination amongst consumptives and health seekers who sought an improved lifestyle for themselves.