Jasper Republican, Volume 2, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 November 1875 — The Primitive Doctors of Detroit [ARTICLE]

The Primitive Doctors of Detroit

Nor more than five acres of Michigan had been chopped and logged off before a doctor arrived in the State,- and they barve continued to arrive ever since that hour. The first hundred or so didn't doctor after the set rules of allopathy or homeopathy. The grand object was to give a sick man his money's worth of medicine and a little over. Drugstores were few and far between in those days and every doctor carried his medicines with him. Indeed this rule was practiced up to fifteen or twenty years ago, when physicians all at once got the notion that it was more convenient and stylish for the patient’s friends to turn out St midnight and walk from one to five miles to get a prescription filled than it was for the doctor to sit by the bed and deal out the drugs. The first doctors were very energetic _ and ambitious. If a man fell sick they called it fever’n ague and pushed powders; liquids and other things down hiß throat until a change occurred.. If he get worse they gave the disease some other name and put on mustard plasters, gave the patient calomel, kept his feet warm and doctored him on that theory until ho rallied or was still further reduced. If he got well it was a big card for the doctor. If he died the doctors for sixteen miles around would swear that the person couldn’t have been cored nohow. It can’t be ascertained that more than one of those early practitioners ever gave up a patient in despair. That pne was a resident of Wayne County and was celled to see a pioneer living seven or eight miles from Detroit. The man had some sort of low fever and the physician attended him for a month without noticing, any improvement. On the contrary the patient seemed to be sinking, and fearing to lose practice if the man died on his hands the physician decided to abandon the case. Calling the wife out-doors he said: “ I can’t come any more; I am going to Cleveland to live.” When she asked about her husband’s prospects, he replied: “He is certain to,die. I never saw such a case before. I commenced with l A’ in the alphabet of medicines, and have run him down to 1 and so forth,’ a&d haven’t moved him a peg.” The patient fell out of bed and broke his arm next day, and in three ““inOfiths was able to carry a bushel of wheat; to Detroit on his shoulder. , , < . The doctors were just as polite and gentle in those pioneer days as they are now, and, catching the spirit of the rap-idly-growing country, they frit that time was the great desideratum. A doctor living in Macomb County, when called upon to set a broken leg for a laboring man, examined the limb and said: “If I set this limb it will befive or six months before you can walk. If £ paw it off and make you a wooden leg you’ll be out splitting rails in less than three' months.” The man declined the generous offer and the doctor sighed drearily as he rolled down his shirt-sleeves. Those doctors, too, had warm and sympathetic hearts. One of them killed ’R* man in Washtenaw County by giving him, poison instead of calomel. Upon disoovering his mistake he rode out to see the widow and, after a few preliminary remarks, said: * f “ I’m very sorry, Mrs. Cotter, but 1t can’t be helped now; John was a pretty' good man, but there’s others just as good. I’m willing to do the fair thing by you, being as it was my mistake. A brother of ; mine is coming from York State next week, and he shall marry you inside of three months!”. And he did. And it was just as hard for doctors to collect their bills then as it if now. A Detroiter who had doctored in one faulty for three or four years without getting any pay started out one morning with the avowed intention of collecting something or raising a tornado. He returned after four or five hours covered with mud, hat caved in and blood on his coat collar. “Get any money of Jones?” asked a Mend. “No; but I squared up with him and left him a receipt in full,” replied the doctor, pointing to his left ear. Half of it had bCCD bitten off.—Detroit Free Press.