While watching our favorite Western movie or TV characters eat a sumptuous meal at the local boarding house, café or sitting around the old...
Food Poisoning in the Old West
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Frontier Doc
The Great Race of Mercy
The place was Nome, Alaska. Dr. Curtis Welch waited anxiously for his prayers to be answered in the early morning hours of February 2, 1925....
Hang ’em High and Fast
Thanks to an inquiry from my electrician friend Rob Brown of Montrose, Colorado, I am treating you to a medical discussion of Old West hangings....
Diabetes in the Old West
To the frontier doctor in the 1800s, the term “diabetes” referred to the patient who produced excessive amounts of urine. The term “diabetes” is...
Wild Bill’s Disease of Passion?
In his 1986 book Deadwood, Pete Dexter depicted Wild Bill Hickok as suffering from some form of venereal disease (VD) and more so from the remedies...
Not Just a Sea Plague
"Before the railroad, in the days of stage-coaching, the Western traveler subsisted principally on fried bacon and canned tomatoes," wrote Lt. John...
Gutshot!
“You feel your belly fill up with blood. You’re bloated. You can’t move. You can’t breathe. You can’t die!” cried Clay Lomax, played by Gregory...
Noonan’s Last Stand
The proud slayers of a huge grizzly are memorialized in one of the most famous photographs in all of Western history. By August 7, 1874, when the...