Medical History

WELCOME!

Thanks for visiting Notes from the Frontier! This blog is for history lovers fascinated by the American West
and pioneer and Indian life on the frontier. I started this new blog in 2019 and it grew very quickly
to more than 100,000 readers! Today it has nearly 400 posts.
I spent many years of researching my just-released debut historical novel, Blood to Rubies
about Chief Joseph and his heroic struggle to save his people in 1877. (It's already bestselling and award-winning! Press the blue button below for more info.) During my research, I discovered that so much of what we'd been taught in history books and by Hollywood was just plain wrong. So I decided to start a history blog. And it's been a pure joy and a life's passion project for me.
We'll cover many topics: from "soiled doves" to slavery, firearms to freak show, home brew to homosexuality, tough men and tougher women, cowboys and Indians, childbirth and death, dreams and desperation, myths and the truth. And, as they say, truth is stranger than fiction!
It's sure to be a wild ride! So hang on to your hat and let's GIDDYUP!

SPECIAL NOTE: Go to the Directory to view more specific categories .

Here's me, author-to-be, Deborah Hufford, at 16 and the Dayton Rodeo Queen in Iowa (which was the U.S. National Rodeo of the Year that year! My childhood horse was named Sundance, and was a celebrity among all the children in my small farming town. He even carried the Iowa governor in our rodeo parade one year.

When Sundance died at the ripe old age of 30, our town newspaper ran his obituary. I was so lucky to have the best horse in the world 💙

Take a wild ride into America’s past.

5 min read

Civil War Surgery

While war weapons during the Civil War had advanced in destructiveness, medical technology had not kept pace.

7 min read

Rabies on the Frontier

Rabies reached epidemic stages in some cities and territories in the 1800s and early 1900s and Americans were hysterical with fear.

6 min read

A Pioneer In Early Crime Forensics

Until recent history, mayhem was as much a part of crime forensics as it was of crime itself.

5 min read

Footbinding & Prostitution in the 1800s

The tradition of foot-binding, also called “lotus feet,” was a thousand-year-old tradition in China that was brought to the United States.

5 min read

America's Goat-Gonad Guru

You simply won’t believe this one. You’ll say this is just nuts and you’ll be right—goat nuts!

7 min read

The Dark Secrets of Jamestown

Recent archeological digs that started twenty years ago at Jamestown have revealed shocking facts about life at Jamestown.

4 min read

Sex Myths of the 1800s - Part 2

The Victorians believed that hysteria in women could be relieved by massage—manual or mechanical—to the point of “paroxysm,”

4 min read

Sex Myths of the 1800s - Part 1

The Victorian era (1837-1901) was a time of incredible contradictions—especially when it came to sex.

6 min read

1800s Funeral Technology

The nature of battle casualties and the job of collecting the wounded and the dead was overwhelming.

5 min read

Freak Shows of the 1800s

Although "freak" shows began to show up as entertainment in the mid-1500s in England, they reached their apex of popularity in the US.

2 min read

Electric Corsets

In 1800s America, corsets took a strange turn toward the bizarre, even the fetishistic. The smaller the waist, the more feminine the woman.

3 min read

Death on the Trail

The Oregon Trail has been called a 2,000-mile-long graveyard.

3 min read

1800's Birth Control

Life was hard on the frontier, especially for women.

2 min read

Scalping

Contrary to Hollywood, scalping has been practiced by warring people-especially whites- throughout human history.

2 min read

Cocaine Candy

In the 1800s, opium was very popular, introduced first by Chinese immigrants working on the railroads.