Cherokee Cure - An Unfailing cure for Gonorrhea -cures in 1 to 3 days and all the diseases of the Urinary Organs Medicine was still by guess and by God. No regulation of prescriptions or any drug combination existed. There was little science to even base a cure on. Louis Pasteur in France had not yet published any ideas that bacteria could cause disease, and when published in the 1860s, it was not universally known or accepted until almost 1900. A few modern medical procedures were known—vaccination against smallpox, eating fruits and vegetables to prevent scurvy. Beginning in 1850, chloroform as an anesthetic came into wide use. Imbalance in “humors” or “biles” was thought to be the agent of illness.   “Bleeding,” whether by cutting a vein or applying leeches, was often thought to be a cure. Yellow fever and malaria were believed to be caused by “foul miasmas” arising in the night air, particularly in low lying areas. One doctor even developed a completely logical ...

  SWILL MILK KILLS    May 1858, Frank Leslie's Weekly Illustrated   depicted a nearly dead cow hoisted up off the manure covered floor in a New York City whiskey distillery "dairy farm" for one last milking.      In May 1858, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, Harper Weekly’s major competitor, ran an early example of investigative reporting.   Many whiskey distilleries had a side business –dairy farming.   Well, not farming exactly unless you consider examples such as Johnson’s Whiskey Distillery on West 16 th St with three long barns housing 2,000 cows in narrow stalls fed nothing but Johnson’s used up barley and corn mash.   Heated scalding hot, it was sluiced into the troughs in front of the captive cows.        T he stalls were not cleaned, so the cows had to lie down in their own manure and urine. When they stood up twice a day to be milked, the udders were not cleaned and neither were the milkers’...

  From Harper's Magazine--Yellow Fever strikes. I t was summer when the dying started. The source outright lied, insisting there was no problem and left quarantine. Some authorities failed to report the disease or did not recognize the problem until it was too late. It was contagious. It was not contagious. Many people hardly knew they had been infected while fifteen percent of the infected died horrible deaths, insane with fever, spewing black vomit and gasping for breath.  The immigrant poor, stuffed twelve or more to a room, suffered disproportionately. Dozens of doctors and nurses died while tending the sick. Cemeteries and grave diggers would have been overwhelmed if coffins had not been in short supply. Physicians tried all manner of treatments. Nothing worked. Masks and quarantine proved to be no defense at all. Businesses closed so the remaining healthy population ran short of supplies. Banks closed, so the living had no money. News outlets ceased operatin...

                The Arsenic Waltz, 1862   In the gas light her green dress and blouse shimmered.  This sort of green would make any woman alluring--and deadly. She had about her enough poison to kill a dozen or more suitors.  There were thousands like her--every one of them poisonous. And every one of them dying.       And it was dye that led to their dying.      In the early 1820s, a German chemist invented a recipe to dye cloth a vivid, brilliant green. It shimmered, particularly in gas light which was becoming  more popular in homes.  In contrast to all the duller and less stable dyes of the era, "Emerald green" as we know it today, kept its color .  "Deadly green" would have been a more accurate name.  The secret to the dye was a combination of copper and arsenic trioxide.  As one chemist put it later, a woman's emerald green ballgo...