The Doctor Wore Petticoats: Women Physicians of the Old West

by Enss, Chris

  To fully emphasize the consequences of ending a spider’s life, the woman concluded her short tale with a warning. “Mrs. Spider has teeth sharp as needle points which slant backwards so her prey has no chance to escape. If a child kills a spider, its second teeth will be crooked.” The children stared, wide-eyed, at the woman and then back at the spider. The girls then sprang to their feet and hurried off to find another activity. The Navajo woman watched the spider for a few minutes and then returned to her shopping, satisfied with her efforts to save a living creature.

  Franc loved the customs and beliefs of the people that surrounded her. It had not been what brought her to the reservation, but it was in part why she stayed. She became a doctor to bring aid to the sick and suffering, wherever she was needed, and found her place among a people who taught her that there was more to healthcare than she had learned in school.

  Born on March 30, 1887, in Tunnel City, Wisconsin, Franc was one of three children born to Frank and Priscilla Johnson. Frank was an architect, and Priscilla was a teacher. Historians believe that Franc’s initial interest in medicine began with her parents. Both Frank and Priscilla suffered, and later died, from tuberculosis. Franc was two when her father passed away and twelve when her mother died. Their tragic deaths ignited a passion within Franc to learn about the disease and find a cure.

  After their parents’ deaths, the three Johnson offspring went to live with their grandparents on a dairy farm in Cable, Wisconsin. It was there Franc completed her primary education and attended high school, graduating in 1904. In the fall of that same year, she enrolled at the Wisconsin Sparta Normal School, and in a year’s time she had earned a teaching degree. After graduation she took a job as a teacher at a school in her hometown. The faces of the eager children who had come to learn inspired her. She longed to see that same look on disadvantaged children who wanted an education as well. That desire led her to a one-room schoolhouse on a reservation in Northern Wisconsin. For two years she taught Menominee Indian children how to read, write, add, and subtract.

  Franc enjoyed her job and the people around her and immersed herself in the Menominee culture, learning their customs and their language. A persistent cough cast a dark cloud over Franc’s time on the reservation, however. As it worsened, fear that she might be suffering from consumption forced her to make a move. She felt her health would improve if she relocated to a drier climate. News of teaching positions being offered out West through the U.S. Civil Service piqued her interest. In 1912, after passing the civil service exam, she moved to Arizona to begin a new teaching job and hopefully conquer her cough in the arid desert.

  The Navajo Reservation at Fort Defiance, Arizona, would be Franc’s home for more than two years. Her situation paid $25 a month and included room and board at the local mission and trading post. Not long after she arrived in the Southwest, she met the man who would become her husband, Arthur Newcomb. Arthur was the trading post clerk, and he and Franc crossed paths daily. After a brief courtship, the pair married on June 30, 1914. Arthur then purchased a half interest in a New Mexico trading post and moved his bride to their new home on the Navajo Reservation, where the Pesh-do-Clish trading post was located.

  When Franc first saw the business, a brilliant sun was washing over the adobe structure. A wooden sign hanging next to the building read PESH-DO-CLISH TRADING POST, and it swayed back and forth in the hot breeze. Gila monsters and jackrabbits were traveling the same desert path Franc and Arthur were using to get to their new home, nestled at the foot of the Blue Mesa Mountains. Arthur stopped the carriage in front of the two-room trading post and helped his wife out of the vehicle. Franc smiled a hopeful smile as she drank in the sight before her.

  FRANC JOHNSON NEWCOMB ON HER WEDDING DAY IN 1914.

  The post was located 13 miles from the nearest white settler, and was without any direct means of communication. Mule teams brought supplies and the mail to them once a month. Franc was apprehensive at first about the remote setting of their business, but believed in time her life at the trading post would prove to be an amazing adventure.

  She wasted no time in transforming the poorly maintained structure into a livable home. After she had dusted and swept, and filled the cracks in the walls, she battled an army of insects that fought to invade the post. A mixture of linseed oil and kerosene, generously applied to the log walls, kept the tarantulas, wood ticks, and centipedes at bay.

  The Newcombs’ Navajo neighbors were kind and genuinely glad to have them on the reservation. Franc became friends with most of the Indians who shopped at the post and, when needed, she helped care for their children and the elderly. Moved by Franc’s compassion toward his people, a medicine man named Hosteen Klah befriended the young teacher and introduced her to the Navajo’s traditional way of dealing with health issues. Franc was fascinated with the religious art of healing and attentively listened to Klah’s remedies for a variety of ailments.

  Klah’s process of diagnosis was of particular interest to Franc because the questions asked of a patient went beyond the realm of physical symptoms. “Why is he sick?” Klah would inquire. “What does he eat? What does he hide from himself?” he would further probe. “The patient may move too fast, too quick,” Klah explained to Franc. “The body will describe and reveal what the mind is doing.”

  Klah spent many evenings at the Newcombs’ home, dining with them and teaching Franc not only about medicine, but how to better speak the language. He was a wise man who respected traditions of other cultures, even bringing Franc a gift on her wedding day as was the custom among the settlers.

  Franc’s association with Hosteen Klah elevated her position with the Navajo people. She was seen as a member of the tribe, and she and Arthur were asked to attend weddings, horse races, and feasts. As Klah’s apprentice of sorts, Franc was granted access to healing ceremonies too. Such a privilege was rarely granted to women, especially white women. Franc’s first experience at such a ceremony left a lasting impression, one that she would write about quite extensively later in her life.

  The elaborate healing ceremony is held inside a dome-shaped hogan. The medicine man is seated in a place of honor, near a fire burning in the center of the room. He is surrounded by twelve or so chanters, medicine bags, prayer plumes, and rattles. Tiny particles of ground sand in a variety of colors are placed before the healer. The sand is used to create a special painting.

  The medicine man sifts the powdered sand through his fingers, making designs and images on the ground. All the images have significant meanings. Some represent animals or insects; others represent thunder or lighting. Made to strict specifications, the sand painting acts as a homing beacon, drawing out Navajo ancestors and infusing the sacred space with healing powers.

  Prayers are offered, rattles are shaken, and chants are sung. The ailing patient is then placed in the center of the complex artwork, where he rubs himself with the various grains from the images. The Navajo people believe the sand paintings helped to restore a cosmic balance to the body.

  After the ritual Franc sketched the people involved with the ceremony and made note of their various duties. She also drew the sand paintings, although she felt she could not do justice to the vibrant hues and intricate patterns she witnessed. Klah helped her not only to re-create the sand paintings, but also to understand the meaning behind each figure and image, and how it could heal the sick or hurting. In time she was able to perform the ceremony herself, which added to the respect the Navajo tribe had for her.

  In February 1920, a fierce winter storm assaulted the area. Food was scarce due to the harsh freeze that had destroyed livestock and vegetation. Sickness spread throughout the sixteen million acres of Indian land, and hundreds were dying as a result. Franc acquired medical supplies from a government doctor, along with instructions on how to handle such an epidemic. She combined that knowledge with Klah’s teachings and set out to make the sick better. In her book, Navajo Folk Tales, Franc described the dismal situation:It has been est
imated that one-tenth of the Navajo population died that winter, and I believe the estimate is far too low. After the epidemic had passed its peak, the agent at Shiprock sent out teams of men to bury the corpses and burn the death hogans.

  Franc’s reputation as a legitimate medicine woman was further enhanced by her administration of such safe products as cough syrup, cod-liver oil, and zinc ointment. Her efforts helped save thousands of Navajo lives.

  Having proven herself to be a successful healer, Franc was welcome to all sand-painting ceremonies. In 1920, six years after she had come to live on the reservation, she was officially inducted into the tribe.

  Franc was proud of her adopted family and desired to share the beauty of Navajo sand paintings with people outside of the reservation. During her time at the Pesh-do-Clish trading post, Franc had collected many ceremonial artifacts, written down hundreds of religious chants, and drawn more than 700 sand-painting drawings and watercolors. A visiting friend persuaded Franc to display the pieces in a museum. That idea blossomed into the creation of the Museum of Navajo Ceremonial Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico (now known as the Wheelwright Museum). Franc was not content to share the collection only with museum visitors so she wrote a series of books featuring sand paintings, Navajo folk tales, and facts about the culture.

  In 1935, Franc and Arthur purchased a home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Arthur commuted back and forth from home to the trading post, and Franc launched a career as a writer and lecturer on Navajo history, legends, and religion. Disaster struck the Newcombs the following year when a fire broke out at the trading post. The building and all its contents burned to the ground. The store was rebuilt, but Arthur could never get past the emotional impact left behind from the blaze.

  Ten years after the inferno destroyed some of his most precious belongings, Arthur died of cirrhosis of the liver. Franc then sold the trading post and devoted her time and money to philanthropic ventures such as the Albuquerque Little Theatre and the New Mexico Museum. She continued to author books about the Navajo influence on the Southwest, and she contributed poetry to various regional publications on the same subject.

  Diabetes and cancer ravaged Franc’s body when she was in her late seventies, and painful arthritis limited her ability to write. The last book she penned about the Indian tribe to which she proudly belonged was published on July 23, 1970. Franc Johnson Newcomb, the Navajo Medicine Woman, died on July 25, 1970. She was eighty-four years old.

  FLORA HAYWARD STANFORD

  FIRST WOMAN DOCTOR OF DEADWOOD

  Dr. Stanford visited Mr. Inman at the mouth of Nevada Gulch

  yesterday, and today she again went to visit Mr. Inman, who was

  very low. Dr. Stanford has hopes of his pulling through if he can

  hang on for a few days.

  —Black Hills Daily Times, August 1893

  The rough-and-tumble town of Deadwood, South Dakota, was home to a variety of notorious western characters in the mid-1800s. Buffalo Bill Cody, Wild Bill Hickok, and Calamity Jane were just a few of the infamous names associated with the gold-mining camp. These three legends of the West were at one time patients of the first woman doctor in the area, Doctor Flora Hayward Stanford.

  Doctor Stanford opened a practice in Deadwood in 1888 and began seeing to the healthcare needs of hundreds of prospectors, prostitutes, business owners, and their families. She entered the medical profession late in her life, receiving her degree from Boston University School of Medicine in 1878, at the age of forty. Doctor Stanford established her first practice in Washington, D.C., where she lived with her husband, Valentine Stanford, and their two children, Emma and Victor.

  Having a doctor for a wife upset Valentine’s traditional sense of family. He did not agree with his wife’s work and considered it “unseemly for a woman to be a doctor.”

  The Stanfords decided to separate after their daughter was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Convinced the dry South Dakota climate would help restore Emma’s health, Doctor Stanford decided to move to Deadwood. She left her marriage and her son behind in Pennsylvania.

  According to historical records, Doctor Stanford was a well-respected physician and the only female doctor in Deadwood at the time. She would travel to patients’ homes in a horse and buggy and administer treatment, often for little or no pay. Her standard fee was two to three dollars for an office visit and three to six dollars for a house call. Given the town’s proclivity for violence, it wasn’t uncommon for Doctor Stanford to be called upon to patch up citizens involved in gunfights. In a letter to her son Victor, she described a particularly brutal incident that left a lasting impression. “A nameless man burst into the office badly shot up,” she wrote. “I removed three bullets from his body, dressed his wounds, and permitted him to leave via the rear door of my office,” she added. Moments after the man made his getaway, the county sheriff appeared at her door, inquiring after him.

  Once the sheriff disclosed the notorious gunfighter’s identity to her, he took off after the injured man. “On several occasions,” Doctor Stanford confessed to her son, “I had removed one bullet from a man, but this was the first time I had ever removed three at one time.”

  In spite of the expert care Doctor Stanford lavished on her daughter, Emma’s health did not improve. In hopes that a move further west would help her condition, Doctor Stanford closed her office and relocated to Southern California. Emma’s condition continued to deteriorate however, and she died in 1893.

  Grieving and alone, Doctor Stanford returned to Deadwood, the place she called home, and resumed her practice. She simultaneously operated a second practice in Sundance, Wyoming, as well. The distance between Sundance and Deadwood was 50 miles, and Doctor Stanford traveled back and forth on horseback to tend to patients in both locations.

  In 1897, she purchased a homestead on the Double D Ranch in Wyoming. In addition to maintaining her two medical practices, she was also now working her land.

  The labor involved in keeping up with all three projects was overwhelming at times, and her health began to suffer from the effort. On February 1, 1901, Doctor Stanford died of heart complications at age sixty-two. Funeral services were conducted at her graveside with her son Victor and many of her friends and patients in attendance. A Deadwood Pioneer Times article, published shortly after her death, lamented the loss:Notwithstanding that she has busied herself with her profession and domestic life, yet she has taken a lively interest in public affairs, she has been prominent in the work of the churches and societies, and her name has been associated in one way or another with almost every laudable enterprise in the city where her assistance was welcome. She was for a number of years a member of the Board of Education of Deadwood, and in that capacity she rendered a valuable service. . . . Tenderly the last offices were performed and the form of her who had been mother, friend, and medical advisor to numbers of struggling and benighted souls was lowered into the narrow home amid a flood of silent tears.

  A plaque honoring her contributions hangs in the main reading room of Deadwood’s public library.

  FRONTIER MEDICINE

  In the early 1850s, pioneers invaded the majestic plains west of the Mississippi, hauling with them every conceivable provision necessary for life on the new frontier. Among the supplies the emigrants brought along were tents and bedding, cooking utensils, furniture, tools, and extra clothing. Most, if not all, of the items listed could be abandoned if necessary to lighten the load and make room for essentials such as food and medicine.

  Women on the wagon trains were responsible not only for preparing the food and making it last through the journey but were also in charge of overall healthcare for the others. Armed with herbal medicine kits and journals filled with remedies, women administered doses of juniper berries, garlic, and bitter roots to cure the ailing. These “granny remedies,” as they were called, were antidotes for a variety of illnesses from nausea to typhoid. They were a combination of superstition, religious beliefs, and advice passed down from genera
tion to generation.

  Not only did female doctors have to withstand prejudice against their sex, they also had to fight against barbaric remedies that had been passed down from generation to generation. Myths—such as believing a person could preserve his teeth and eliminate mouth odor by rinsing his mouth every morning with his own urine, or that mold scraped from cheese could heal open sores—had to be dispelled.

  Some medicines, like herb teas and drawing poultices, brought relief, but most had no effect at all. Indeed many of these remedies did more harm than good. Arsenic, for example, was used to treat heart palpitations and syphilis. Cod-liver oil and onion stew were used to help tuberculosis sufferers, and egg whites and beeswax were used to treat burns. Many of the remedies were based on false notions acquired from ancient books, which instructed sufferers to cure sore throats, for instance, by wearing a piece of bacon sprinkled with black pepper around the neck.

  A list of frontier remedies assembled by the Missouri State Historical Society shows why historians refer to this time period as the “Golden Age of Medical Quackery.”

  The hot blood of chickens cures shingles.

  Tea made from the scrapings of stallion hooves cures hives.

  Wrap legs in brown paper soaked in vinegar to relieve aching muscles.

  Gold filings in honey restore energy.

  Carry a horse chestnut to ward off rheumatism.

  Watermelon seeds boiled in water help eliminate kidney troubles.