From the bench and bar we turn to the medical profession. It is hard to express the debt of gratitude which these pioneer communities owe to their physicians. Among those who have completed their work and passed on, the minds of all people of old Walla Walla would turn with profound respect and veneration to Dr. N. G. Blalock as justly entitled to be called the foremost citizen of this section, and among the foremost of the State of Washington. Conspicuous among the great physicians who have passed away, Dr. John E. Bingham would be called up by all the old-timers as a man of extraordinary ability, great attainments in general knowledge, and a skillful and successful practitioner. Many others, gone and still living, have made noble contributions to the upbuilding of the region covered by our story, but limits of space forbid special mention.
Among the living representatives of the medical profession undoubtedly the man whose name would come at once to the minds of all in his section of our field is Dr. G. B. Kuykendall of Pomeroy. We have had occasion frequently in these pages to refer to this foremost of the physicians of his section of the state. Prominent both by reason of his medical ability and his peculiarly genial and attractive personality, Dr. Kuykendall has also been one of the leading historical students, and one of the especially gifted writers in this section of our field. In this chapter we give a contribution by this well-known and well-loved physician of Garfield County:
REMINISCENCES OF MEDICAL PRACTICE IN GARFIELD COUNTY, WASHINGTON, IN PIONEER TIMES
Forty years as a measure of the earth's geological changes, or of the history of the world, are as but a moment—as the lightning's flash or the fall of a meteor. The same lapse of time in the life of a physician, during the early settlement of the Inland Empire, seems long when viewed in retrospection. A sketch of those forty years would be a vitagraph of the most active period of his life and also the panorama of the building of an empire.
Four decades ago, the larger part of all this country was a wilderness—a typical western frontier.
In those days, when the physician started out in the country to visit his patients, he rode over a region covered with tall grass, swept into wavy undulations by the western winds. As far as the eye could see there were but few human habitations; and seldom a fence to mar the landscape or obstruct the way.
The doctor's mode of travel then, on medical trips, was usually on the "hurricane deck of a cayuse horse," and his armamentarium was carried in the old-time saddle or pill bags. Often the jolting and jostling of the bottles therein caused the effluvium of ether, valerian and other odoriferous medicaments to exude and make the air redolent with their perfume. We had to carry our medicines with us, and a pretty good supply of them, too; for we never knew what we should find or how many sick we might meet before our return.
In the pioneer days of this country, the "settlers" had small houses and but few conveniences as we now know them. Mostly they lived in domiciles of one room, and there were few indeed that had more. When sickness came it always found them unprepared.
Dust, flies and impure water were the curse of the sick, and made it impossible to give then proper sanitary environments. Dust in those days was much worse than now, as roads were then in the making by the easiest and quickest route. They passed up and down the bunch-grass hills and across the sage plains, the soft, ashy soil being ground into dust of prodigious depth by "single-track" summer travel. Freight wagons, incoming settlers and caravan trains kept the roads so dusty that the traveler was greatly inconvenienced.
Homesteaders at first procured water from the little gulches near their homes or from shallow wells of seepage water. In either case, it was nearly always impregnated more or less with alkali and loaded with organic matter. The result was that every year, after the country had a considerable population, typhoid (then called mountain fever) appeared, and every summer and fall there were numerous cases. People, then, had not been educated to the necessity of proper care of the body and knew scarcely anything of disease germs, antiseptics or sanitation. Bath rooms, hot and cold water in the home, existed only in memories of the past or dreams of the future.