Sullivan, Glenda (2010)
"Plantation Medicine and Health Care in the Old South," Legacy: Vol. 10: Iss. 1, Article 3.
Available at:
http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/legacy/vol10/iss1/3
No family was exempt from the tragedy of death. Children
were often treated with the same medical procedures as adults, and
unfortunately suffered the consequences when medical treatment
failed. In 1848, William Whitsitt wrote the following lines in his
diary after the death of his seven-year-old daughter, Martha Jane,
due to whooping cough:
But one consideration yet wrings the hearts of her
bereaved parents with unutterable anguish. And
that is the fact that she did not die a natural death.
To die is natural. This is very true. But to be eaten
up by calomel is not natural… poor Martha Jane
was killed by degrees, eaten, destroyed, murdered,
butchered by calomel and that, too, administered by
a regular bred physician.9
These comments indicate not only the failure of a widely used
medical treatment to cure a common ailment in the South, but they
also show the lack of confidence of the father in the physician’s
chosen method of treatment for his daughter...
