sep 4, 1849 - Health in Camps

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The result was predictable: regular outbreaks of disease, made worse by the weariness and reduced resistance of those who had been so long under strain. Cholera was familiar, but no less deadly for its familiarity. Scurvy and other diet-deficiency diseases became common. And when the miners got sick, they could hardly count on medical attention.

Doctors willing to be doctors were as hard to find in the mining camps as chambermaids at the coast; like nearly everyone else who had come west, they wanted to look for gold.

“Physicians are all making fortunes in this country,” one miner moaned. “They will hardly look at a man’s tongue for less than an ounce of gold! I have known doctors, although they are scarcly worthy of the title (for most of them here are quacks), charge a patient as much as $100 for one visit and prescription.”

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