A Saw, Pocket Instruments, and Two Ounces of Whiskey: Frontier Military Medicine in the Great Basin

During the frontier period of 1857-1893, army hospitals and doctors served soldiers and civilians alike throughout the Great Basin, that unique land of arid desolate deserts, fertile valleys, rimrock bounded plateaus, high boxed canyons, and endless mountains. Comprising most of Nevada and adjacent areas of California, Oregon, Utah, and a small portion of Idaho, the Great Basin was a rugged and vast frontier to which civilian doctors were late in coming.

The history of the military surgeons in the Great Basin provides a unique look at the frontier experience and the interplay of military and civilian life in an arid and harsh landscape. Sohn illuminates western history with his study of medical science and military medicine on the 19th-century frontier.

Military posts and forts throughout the Great Basin are treated individually in the work. Founded between 1857 and 1870, these forts were often the only points of supply and medical treatment available to either troops, settlers, or Native Americans during this period. The author details the founding, the physical layout, and medical personnel at each post. The construction and design of the post hospital is, of course, given special attention. Unique events relating to medical treatment at each post are described. The closure of each post and the physical remains to be found today are also detailed.

Physician training and knowledge of disease in the nineteenth century, as well as the methods by which physicians practiced medicine in the sometimes primitive settings found at the Great Basin forts, comprise a full chapter in the book.

The practice of medicine, limited by the number of instruments and drugs available to surgeons, differed in the Great Basin from that available to patients in urban areas. The instruments and drugs used by post doctors are itemized, as are the special concerns and obstacles faced by them.

Physicians were evaluated by the U.S. Army before being hired, either as contract surgeons or officers. This screening process helped maintain a high level of proficiency amongst post surgeons. The evaluation process is throroughly detailed by the author.

Diseases of the soldiers and civilians are discussed and treatments described. Many of these diseases were common throughout the army, but some were unique to the Great Basin setting.

Non-military activities of the physicians are also described.

Biographies of each of the Great Basin military surgeons is added as an appendix to the work, as are Bryant's letter on the Pyramid Lake War, and diagnoses of patients admitted to the Fort Churchill and Saint Mary Louise hospitals.

Dr. Anton P. Sohn is Chairman of pathology at the University of Nevada School of Medicine. He is the founder of the history of medicine program at the School of Medicine and its Greasewood Press. He is also the author of Healers of 19th-Century Nevada (Reno, 1997).