Four riders surrounded the Texas Ranger, LaBoeuf (Matt Damon). Suddenly, the horseman on the Ranger’s left threw a lasso over his shoulders and...
Not-So-True True Grit
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Frontier Doc
Worms, Lice and Nothing Nice
Dr. Harold Brown (my professor at Dartmouth Medical School in 1975) wrote a masterpiece titled Basic Clinical Parasitology. He lectured that if all...
Dust, Death and Disability
Dust storms undoubtedly inspired heroic resolve in some pioneers committed to the land, while causing madness, disease and disability in those less...
Too Much Sun
In mid-January, the high country was covered with snow, three feet in places. Frontier docs like Elijah Baines had seen similar cases, but not as...
The Myth of the Single Shot Kill
Is it physically possible to stop a man dead in his tracks? For decades, Hollywood has routinely depicted bad and, occasionally, good guys being...
The Myth of the Single Shot Kill
Is it physically possible to stop a man dead in his tracks? For decades, Hollywood has routinely depicted bad and, occasionally, good guys being...
What’s in His Head?
In his 1910 treatise, Medical Education in the United States and Canada, Mr. Abraham Flexner reported the following startling words to the Carnegie...
Feel Lucky, Clint?
During the medically captivating scene in 1970’s Two Mules for Sister Sara, Hogan (Clint Eastwood) lay in pain for about 70 minutes after being shot...
Mellow-Trauma
“Mellow-Trauma” appears dozens of times in just about every Western movie where the prerequisite for success is at least one and, better yet, even...
Eye Tech in the Old West
Fictional frontier doctor Elijah Baines quietly studied his rancher patient, 57-year-old J.M., who presented with a two-year history of decreasing...
Sawbones, Literally
Let’s revisit those beginning scenes in Dances With Wolves, when Lt. Dunbar (Kevin Costner) is lying, bootless, with an injured right foot in the...
An Insane Treatment
A 1967 ABC episode of The Big Valley illustrated the institutional horrors faced by mentally ill persons and those “undesirables of troublemakers”...