World-Famous Tumor Surgery by Dr. Ephraim McDowell

    By Tiffany Amber Stockton

In September, I shared the next to last group of state origins. Only one more post to go on those. You can read last month's post if you missed it.

Today, we're looking at a world-famous surgery performed by an amazing physician who married the daughter of the first governor of Kentucky.

EPHRAIM McDOWELL, PIONEER SURGEON

I recently had the good fortune of visiting the McDowell House in Danville, Kentucky. Bonus fact. It's also the site and town where the Kentucky Constitution was decided and signed to make Kentucky a state...the first on the western side of the Appalachians.

While waiting for our tour of the house, we stepped inside five log buildings that had been carefully maintained and restored to resemble their original condition. There was a post office, a meeting house, a jail, a courthouse, and the first apartments for the territory. Between 1784 and 1792, 10 constitutional conventions took place at the courthouse of Constitution Square. The jail had a fascinating story about a pair of brothers who had been apprehended on charges of robbery and fraud, escaped the jail, but then were found again. There was also the first bar, but that was a white clapboard building that's now a working restaurant on site.

These buildings represent the early beginnings of a state with a rich history and countless ties to the westward expansion of the United States. Those who explored this area were true pioneers, fighting through the dense forests and establishing friendly relations with the Native Americans they encountered.

In the early days of this young nation, this rugged landscape was mostly wild and untamed, and doctors didn't always have a place to call home. Instead, they traveled sometimes more than 100 miles to attend to those who needed their care. Dr. Ephraim McDowell was one such doctor, although he was also known across a large territory as a highly skilled surgeon as well. When we finally had the opportunity to begin our tour, we were led through the outdoor gardens that have remained the herb and root gardens they were when Dr. McDowell lived there. How convenient it must have been to simply step outside and retrieve the necessary vegetables for cooking or herbs for healing. It's amazing to think of those same herbs still being used today in the healing process. My favorite part was probably the apothecary shop with its wide array of tinctures, blends, and healing items.

Dr. McDowell's knowledge was likely why he was called to attend to Mrs. Jane Crawford when she realized something wasn't right about what she had thought was a twin pregnancy. However, when intense pain occurred almost incessantly, she and others knew they needed a doctor to examine her. Dr. McDowell arrived and discovered Mrs. Crawford wasn't pregnant, but had an ovarian tumor. He offered to perform the surgery to remove the tumor, but he was honest in telling her the chances of survival with or without the surgery were slim. Either the tumor would kill her, or the surgery would. It was her choice.

The doctor left, and a few days later, Mrs. Crawford followed, making the 60-mile journey on horseback with the tumor still intact. She agreed to the surgery—one that had never been done anywhere in the world at the time. On Christmas morning of 1809, Dr. McDowell performed the surgical extraction of a 22-1/2 pound tumor without the benefit of anesthetic, which wasn't known in the medical profession at the time. Everyone attending to Jane simply tied her down and did their best to keep her immobilized. Jane sang hymns and recited Bible verses to distract herself from the pain.

The surgery was a success, and Jane went on to live another thirty-two years, even outliving Dr. McDowell, who had died 11 years earlier. Another fascinating fact is learning Jane was up and moving three days following the surgery. When the doctor asked her what she was doing, she told him she was making her bed, and she had work to do. :) Tough woman!

Countless other stories were told of the McDowell family, including their involvement with politics, lawmaking, and notable influence for the state of Kentucky. There's even a bronze statue of Dr. McDowell in Statuary Hall in Washington, D.C. My mind is already buzzing with ways to incorporate this story into one of my books.

And that's all for today.

NOW IT'S YOUR TURN:

* Which choice would *you* have made? 

* Have you or anyone you know received an exploratory surgery that hadn't been performed many times? What was it? What was the result?

* How does knowledge of this surgery make you grateful for modern medicine?

** This note is for our email readers. Please do not reply via email with any comments. View the blog online and scroll down to the comments section.

Leave answers to these questions or any comments you might have on this post in the comment box below. For those of you who have stuck around this far, I'm sending a FREE autographed book to one person every month from the comments left on each of my blog posts. You never know when your comment will be a winner! Subscribe to comments so you'll know if you've won and need to get me your mailing information.

Come back on the 9th of next month for my subsequent foray into historical tidbits to share.

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BIO

Tiffany Amber Stockton has been crafting and embellishing stories since childhood, when she was accused of having a very active imagination and cited with talking entirely too much. Today, she has honed those skills to become an award-winning, best-selling author and speaker who is also a professional copywriter/copyeditor. She loves to share life-changing products and ideas with others to help improve their lives in a variety of ways.

She lives with her husband and fellow author, Stuart Vaughn Stockton, along with their two children and four cats in southeastern Kentucky. In the 20 years she's been a professional writer, she has sold twenty-six (26) books so far and is represented by Tamela Murray of the Steve Laube Agency. You can find her on Facebook and GoodReads.

Nursing in the 1860’s – with giveaway -- By Donna Schlachter

Often, when we think back to medicine in history, leeches and bleeding comes to mind. And while those techniques were used for centuries, we do see great strides made and progress in surgeries and the understanding of how the human body works.

One of the major reasons for advancements in medicine in general, and nursing in particular, was the American Civil War. Hundreds of thousands of men died in combat, but more died on the operating tables and in the field hospitals that popped up near every battle, major and minor.

Often, the only answer to the catastrophic injuries sustained on the battlefield was amputation. Nurses were often soldiers pressed into service to hold the patient down, or to administer chloroform directly from a bloodied rag that had been used for a dozen patients or more prior. Camp followers, accustomed to cooking meals and doing laundry, were often asked to carry damaged and diseased appendages outside the camp and burn them.

Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton, highly trained nurses themselves, were appalled with this situation, and resolved to make changes. After the war ended and the country entered into an uneasy truce with itself, they petitioned government to set up training schools for young women to learn anatomy, biology, physiology, and pharmacology.

However, in the uneasy years immediately after the war, when nurses were still needed to care for those recovering from their wounds, as well as to offer assistance in hospitals and medical practices, others set up shorter-term training schools which trained nurses in the rudiments of medicine, encouraging them to spend extra-curricular hours of learning and apprenticeship under trained doctors, to graduate and send them out into the cities and towns where they were sorely needed.

Many industrious young women, or older spinsters and widows, undertook this rigorous training. These informal schools filled the gap until the longer, more formalized schools admitted students in the late 1860’s and early 1870’s.

By this time, the Lister method of sanitary surgery, which included sterilizing instruments and sanitizing the patient, the doctor and attending staff, and the operating theater, were much in discussion. While American doctors initially decried the extra work, it soon became apparent that their mortality rate was much higher, and the time spent fighting infection soon convinced them to adopt the method.

Research into breathing issues such as asthma was also generating alternatives. While initially the cause of asthma was thought to be excess exercise or cold air, studies soon proved there were other causes, including allergies. Several new treatment options were adopted, including the guarded use of belladonna, and strong coffee, both of which proved successful in many cases.

Nurses were often employed in small communities that did not require the services or could not support a full-time doctor. They carried basic instruments, common medicines, and could as easily deliver a child as remove tonsils or pull a tooth.

While the role of nurses has changed a great deal since then, no doubt there are many who would never have survived without the basic medical skills taught these brave women in our history.

Leave a comment and be entered into a drawing for an eBook version of A Nurse for Caleb, as a special pre-release gift.





Resources:

Two Centuries of American Medicine: 1776-1976—Bordley and Harvey

On the Pathology of Asthma—Dr. Henry Salter

About A Nurse for Caleb (releases September 3, 2020):

In 1868, Tessa, a Mennonite nurse graduates from nursing school and is assigned to the Amana Colonies in Iowa because of her expertise in treating asthma and other breathing problems. As a former student at a women's medical school, she knows more than most about respiratory diseases. She's also had her fair share of heartbreak when, upon her mentor's death, she was forced to abandon her dream of becoming a doctor. Will she be able to use her skills? Or will her gender keep her from helping those who truly need her?

Seth, a widower in Amana, is still nursing a broken heart from his sweetheart's passing two years before. Now raising their invalid son Seth on his own, he wonders why God didn't listen to his prayers for healing for his family. Caleb has been afflicted with the same form of asthma that killed Anna, and Seth stands by helplessly as his son fades away. Can he trust God and trust medicine, or is faith in one mutually exclusive of faith in the other?


About Donna:

Donna writes historical suspense under her own name, and contemporary suspense under her alter ego of Leeann Betts, and has been published more than 30 times in novellas, full-length novels, and non-fiction books. She is a member of ACFW, Writers on the Rock, SinC, Pikes Peak Writers, and CAN; facilitates a critique group; teaches writing classes; ghostwrites; edits; and judges in writing contests. www.HiStoryThruTheAges.com

HEALING HANDS, NURSES DURING WORLD WAR II - BOOK GIVE-AWAY

ANNE GREENE here. Women served in other areas than test piloting wounded and repaired planes to be sent back into the war. For an exciting read about such women pilots, the WASPs, order my book, ANGEL WITH STEEL WINGS soon available on Amazon. LEAVE A COMMENT AND GAIN A CHANCE TO WIN A FIRST AUTOGRAPHED COPY OF ANGEL WITH STEEL WINGS. 

During WWII, women became nurses to get into the action. The Army and Navy Nurse Corps recruited 74,000 women throughout the war. Where ever men fought the war, nurses ministered. 

Nurses worked close to the front lines. They served under fire in field hospitals and evacuation hospitals, on hospital trains and hospital ships, and as flight nurses on medical transport planes. Their skill contributed to the low mortality rate among American servicemen. Fewer than four percent of soldiers who received medical care in the field died from wounds or disease. 

After the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaiian hospitals were overwhelmed with hundreds of casualties. The blood-spattered entrance stairs led to hallways where wounded men lay on the floor awaiting surgery. Nurses faced shortages of instruments, suture material, and sterile supplies. Doctors performing major surgery passed scissors back and forth from one table to another. Doctors and nurses used cleaning rags as face masks and operated without gloves.

The Japanese attacked US troops stationed in the Philippines on 8 December, where one hundred nurses served. They bombed planes, barracks, and field shops. The hospital escaped damage, but the large number of casualties overwhelmed the small staff. Japanese forces landed on the main island of Luzon and approached the city of Manila. All the nurses stationed outside Manila reached the city except for two nurses stranded at Camp John Hay, who became prisoners of the Japanese.

The Manila nurses evacuated to the island of Corregidor. The Japanese bombed the Hospital at Corregidor, scoring a direct hit on the wards and killing or seriously wounding more than one hundred patients. A nurse remembered the force of the bomb. "The sergeant pulled me under the desk, but the desk was blown into the air, and he and I with it. I heard myself gasping. My eyes were being gouged out of their sockets, my whole body felt swollen and torn apart by the violent pressure. Then I fell back to the floor, and the desk landed on top of me and bounced around. The sergeant knocked it away from me, and gasping for breath, bruised and aching, sick from swallowing the smoke from the explosive, I dragged myself to my feet." An appalling sight met her eyes. Patients blown out of their beds. Bodies and severed limbs hung from tree branches. Although the nurses expected more air attacks, they carried on.

With surrender inevitable, as many nurses as possible evacuated to Australia. Sixty-seven nurses became prisoners of war until U.S. troops liberated them in February 1945.

Sixty nurses attached to the 48th Surgical Hospital climbed over the side of a ship off the coast of North Africa and down an iron ladder into small assault boats. They wore helmets and carried full packs. Only their Red Cross arm bands and lack of weapons distinguished them from fighting troops. They waded ashore on D-day of Operation TORCH with the assault troops and huddled behind a sand dune while enemy snipers took potshots at anything that moved. They moved to an abandoned civilian hospital, where they cared for casualties. There was no electricity or running water, and the only medical supplies available were those the nurses brought. The hospital remained under sporadic sniper fire. Doctors operated under flashlights held by nurses. There were not enough beds, wounded soldiers lay on a concrete floor in pools of blood. The only sedatives available were the ones that the nurses carried with them during the landing.

 

Two hundred nurses lost their lives in service to their country. By war's end, nurses received 1,169 medals and citations. Some received the Purple Heart for outstanding performance. 

When the war ended, nurses returning to civilian life brought home valuable

skills and experiences. The Army had trained them in specialties such as anesthesia and psychiatric care. Nurses had become accustomed to taking the initiative, making quick decisions, and adopting innovative solutions to a broad range of medical-related problems. Society accepted nurses as professional members of the United States health care system. World War II changed American society and redefined the status and opportunities of the professional nurse.

Would you be interested in reading a book about Army Flight Nurses? Leave a comment for a chance to win an autographed copy of ANGEL WITH STEEL WINGS.

ANGEL WITH STEEL WINGS is a World War II romance where Steel Magnolias meet Band of Brothers. While doing her part test flying planes, Mandy McCabe escapes her dead-end life in Hangman’s Hollow, Tennessee as a Woman Air Service Pilot, WASP. Can she escape from her past? Major Harvey Applegate lost his wife to the WASP program, and he’s convinced Yankee Doodle Gals have no place flying in the war effort. He determines to protect the remaining ladies by sending them packing back to the home front. Both Mandy and Harvey experience immediate attraction, which increases Harvey’s desire to send Mandy home to safety. Can a man burdened with memories of death undertake added danger? Will their new love survive the test? One love. Two goals. Someone has to give.

 ANNE GREENE delights in writing about alpha heroes who aren’t afraid to fall on their knees in prayer, and about gutsy heroines. She writes both historical and suspense novels. She and her hero husband, Army Special Forces Colonel Larry Greene, have visited twenty-five countries.  A visit to Scotland resulted in her award-winning Scottish historicals, Masquerade Marriage and Marriage By Arrangement. Moody Press published her first book, Trail of Tears, an American historical. A Texas Christmas Mystery also won awards. Elk Lake Publishing contracted two series. Her Women of Courage Series spotlights heroic women of World War II. The first book, Angel With Steel Wings, releases May 2015. The second series, Holly Garden, PI, has the first book, Holly Garden, PI, Red Is For Rookie, releasing June 2015. Anne makes her home in McKinney, Texas. Two of her four children live nearby. Her highest hope is that her stories transport the reader to an awesome new world and touch hearts to seek a deeper spiritual relationship with the Lord Jesus. To learn more of Anne, visit her at http://www.AnneGreeneAuthor.com.  She writes a novel teaching class on her blog www.anneswritingupdates.blogspot.com