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Show O Early Day Medical Practices IB THE GREEN SHEET rf Thursday, August 8, 1985 jjreguyiie - Use Of Herbs, Isolation Established Pattern In Utah by Ralph H. Goff Green Sheet Staff Writer MURRAY. A worse set of Ignoramuses do not walk the earth, Brigham Young said of the medical profession. This statement was made only a few years after he and the first company of pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. In 1869 the same year the transcontinental railroad was completed with the driving of the golden spike - Harpers Weekly reported his claim that at Salt Lake they had no sickness till the doctors came. Then they, being too lazy to delve and hoe like others, made people ill, in order to get a living by doctoring them. To the pioneers of this area arriving in the Mountain West from Nauvoo and other parts of the world, a hospital was a place for people to go to die. To their way of thinking, people who went to hospitals usually came out in a casket. While most Utahns today accept modern medicine, a significant number even now have severe reservations about orthodox medical practices - an attitude which has its roots in the history of the settlement of this state. Though there were some doctors in the valley in the first few years, most practiced botanic medicine, as opposed to the heroic medicine -- practiced in the large cities of the East. This situation paralleled the condition of medicine in much of the frontier of the United States at the time. By the time of the settlement of Utah, American medicine was a combination of two major influences. The first was the historical train of western medicine, descending from Egyptian and Greek practices through Europe and especially Great Britain. The second was the impact of Native American medicine. Orthodox medicine at that period in history tended toward heroic measures. Massive doses of such medicines as arsenic, strychnine and chloride of mercury - all of which are deadly poisons were administered routinely. Blood-lettin- g was also common practice, not only in the United States, but throughout Europe as well. Leeches were employed to drain away bad blood from a patient, which according to accepted medical practice at the time, made room in the body for new good blood to develop. But it was the acceptance of native medicines and herbs, especially by practitioners on the frontier, which ultimately led to a major schism in medicine and the creation of the or herbal school of botanic medical thought. Though there were many self--- - taught doctors in America, the one who probably had the most impact on the medical profession during the early 1800s was Samuel Thomson. At the age of 4, Thomson made what he would later view as a medical discovery - a plant called lobelia or Indian Tobacco would make a person who chewed it vomit. He wrote that he often gave the plant to his childhood friends just to watch them throw up. with insight Combining this medical knowledge he learned from the Indians in New England, he developed what he believed to be a new system of medicine. In reality, his system was merely a new method of treatment because it accepted some of the same premises as the medical practices. then-existin- g Medical science at that time believed that human beings were comprised of four elements - fire, water, air and earth - and that four humours existed in the body corresponding to these elements. This belief was based on the teachings of the ancient Greeks. An imbalance of these humours was seen to be the major cause of most diseases, along with an acceptance that some illnesses were the will of God. Thomson accepted both of these premises in his medical teachings, while discouraging the use of coffee, tea, alcohol and tobacco. In 1809 he applied for a patent on his system which he received in 1813. A second patent was awarded in 1823 and a third in 1835. Thomson published a book describing his methods, and sold the book and rights to his patents -along with the right to assume the title Doctor - beginning in his native New England. A few years before his death, he claimed to have sold 100,000 licenses over his lifetime. "The use of herbs for medical purposes was a legacy handed down from generation to generation, often in handwritten family records." His system spread to western New York and the frontier settlements in Ohio. In a short time in many states at least half the doctors were students of his school. In Ohio it was s claimed that were "Thomsonian. Given the history of the Mormon trek westward through Ohio, Missouri and Illinois and the acceptance of the Word of Wisdom and I 0 SID&D I'SQ con U I eUlGJT--1 doc- tor book was one of the most treasured possessions any family could own, taking its place alongside the family Bible in importance. When children became ill, for examble, it was the mother of the family who usually took care of them the best she could, brewing her own medicines over a campfire or stove by boiling twigs, leaves, bark and other wild ingredients. other health-relate- d pronouncements as doctrine, it is not During a scarlet fever epidemic in surprising that when Brigham 1865, many people died here because the medical knowledge available at Young and the Utah pioneers settled here, the Thomsonian school of that time was not equipped to handle medicine was well represented. or diphtheria, small that disease Both Levi and Willard Richards -t- pox, cholera and a number of other wo early pioneer physicians who ar- diseases which we now consider of rived with the first settlers were little threat. Thomsonian practitioners, as was Herbal medicine and home remedies were the Priddy Meeks, another early physician in the southern part of the terin frontier medicine here in 1847 not only in Utah, but throughout the ritory. Almost all medicine in the good western parts of the United States old days here in Utah was based western being generally primarily on these Thomsonian everything this side of the Apmedical techniques. The use of palachian Mountains. herbs for medical purposes was a The medicine of grandmas day was quite different than the legacy handed down from generasterile atmosphere squeaky-cleation to generation, often in handfound in modern hospitals. A built-iwritten family records. Some families, though, brought prejudice against medicine in printed books with them in their general, combined with Utahs covered wagons and hand carts as relative isolation from the rest of the they crossed the plains, and these country, kept it that way for many books have become treasured years after the first settlers arrived. heirlooms to their descendants. NEXT WEEK: Utahs early Prior to the development of scien hospitals. three-quarter- - - state-of-the-a- rt -- n g 590 W 6960 SO. techniques, the tific medical openlyoneldaeek |