Thought - “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” from Mark Twain's book The Innocents Abroad.
Theme - June is Rotary Fellowship Month
Guests - Veronica Allen from San Juan Unified School District talked with us about the "Families In Transition" program. Vickie Boatwright added that we are participating in their backpack donation, purchasing supplies in June and gifting them in July. Carmichael is donating $500 to this project.
Speaker - Bob LaPerriere, the Curator of the Sacramento County Medical Society History Museum spoke on the topic of Gold Rush Medicine. Bob is a retired Kaiser Dermatologist, serves on many Boards, and has many titles.
He is Director, of the Sacramento History Foundation, and the Sacramento County Historical Society. A Founder of the old city Cemetery Committee. Chairman of the California Historic Cemetery Alliance, and Co-Chair, Sacramento County Cemetery Advisory Commission. Bob said that medicine was much less advanced in "Gold Rush" days than it is today. Most treatments were based on a physical method of getting rid of "humors". Most disorders were not understood. To become a doctor, you would apprentice with a doctor for two years. Some were "irregular" Doctors. In 1842 Oliver Wendell Holmes attacked the practice of homeopathy. Some were phrenologists. Some just hung out a shingle and practiced. The Sacramento Medical Society was established in 1868. Many treatments included amputation, purging, bleeding. Mortality was high when traveling west. People drank foul rainwater and scurvy (vitamin C deficiency was rampant). Going west, people would die of scurvy right on the roadside while others passed by. When bone fractures happened the treatment of choice was amputation - it was shown that without amputation of a body part ie limb, mortality was 100%, but with amputation it was 50%. One half million 49ers flooded into California and overwhelmed doctors and facilities. The floods of the 1850s caused lots of disease including cholera. Sacramento had a population of 8000 people, but 1 out of 5 died within six months during the flood. There was no sanitation, trash was everywhere. Cholera started with no warning and sudden onset and people died quickly. There was a malaria epidemic in 1849. The finally started quarantining people which helped quell the epidemic. Bob said that all are welcome at the Museum of Medical History which is open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and they are happy to give guided tours.
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