Bleed, Blister & Purge: A History of Medicine on the American Frontier

Bleed, Blister, and Purge traces the fits and starts of medical progress on the western frontier. With the authority of a scholar and the sparkle of an old-time storyteller, Dr. Volney Steele takes the reader from rotgut whiskey to modern anesthetics, from castor oil to antibiotics, and from barroom surgery to modern hospital operations. Dr. Steele wrote Bleed, Blister, and Purge “to shed light on and celebrate the dedication and humanitarianism of those many physicians, nurses, shamans, and people of sound practical sense who saw their patients–often friends and family–through the adversities that bedeviled them.”