Tuesday Trivia Tie-in #11, Is there a Doctor in the house?

Welcome to Tuesday Trivia Tie-in. Each Tuesday readers are invited to share a blog post about one of their collection and a bit of related trivia.

I will also be linking to
Ruby Tuesday, At Work Of The Poet


Rednesday At It's A Very Cherry World, and


Color Carnival
Diann tells me that this feature needs a face lift, a new image, so I will be doing a bit of remodeling in the near future. If you have any suggestions, feel free to let me know.

Tuesday Trivia Tie-in was inspired by a great deal I got on an entire rack of ties at an indoor flea market. Added to the ties I already had, I realized I had quite a collection of neat ties. So I started this blog party to show off my collection.

I'd like to invite you all to join. Remember, you don't have to show a tie. Everyone is invited to link up and show off one of your treasures: your pictures, your flowers, your pets, your kids, your parole officer,or anything else that you want to show off, and tell us some interesting information related to it.

My posts will always be about one of my ties, but your posts can be about anything. The point is to share something you have that you want to show off, and add a little background information.

My tie this week is a doctor tie,


from Children's Hospital of Illinois.



I had hoped to hear back from Childrens Hospital of Illinois, bacause I wanted more background info on this tie, but they haven't answered my emails.
So all I know about it is it was designed by Adam, age 10, and was made by TyGy Neckware.





As soon as I saw it I thought about my good friend, Dr. Jed, who graduated from Med school last year and has a daughter who was born the same week as our Little Princess. This just seemed like just the tie for him. Of course any time I give anyone a tie, it is with the stipulation that I be allowed to take some pictures of it first. He was even kind enough to let me use some of his "Doctor Stuff" to make my pictures look more authentic.



Harvey Lee Ross, a settler who lived in Fulton County Illinois area in the early to mid 1800's wrote in his memoirs, what he remembered about medical treatment in his youth.

I found it so fascinating I'm going to quote a bit of it:

In early times in Fulton county there was no such thing as a drug store. The merchants kept a supply of medicine in stock among their dry goods and groceries. The doctors never gave prescriptions, but carried their medicines around in medicine bags and dosed it out to their patients.

When a doctor was called to see a patient the first thing he did was to examine his tongue, then feel of the pulse at the wrist; then he would have the sick one set up in a chair to be bled. The sleeve of one arm would be rolled up to the shoulder, and the arm extended out to full length, and the hand grasped around the handle of the a broom-stick to hold the arm steady and in proper position.

A cord would then be tied tightly around the arm half way between the elbow and shoulder, and then the patient was stabbed in a blood vessel of the arm. At first a thumb-lance was used, but the spring-lance came in as a great improvement. They usually took from a pint to a quart of blood, dependent upon the age and size of the sick one. After the bleeding the patient would be given an emetic, and after he had been thoroughly vomited he would be given a dose of calomel and jalop, and then a walloping dose of castor oil. After all those horrors the patient would be taken through a course of blistering. A blister 6x10 inches would be placed upon the breast, with smaller ones on the arms and legs; if the patient was very sick a portion of the hair would be shaved off the head and one of those horrible blisters applied to the head.

The doctors made their own blister-plasters. They carried in their medicine bags a package of Spanish flies, a small cake of tallow and some pieces of canvas. The tallow would be carefully spread over the canvas, the Spanish flies sprinkled over it and pulverized with a caseknife. These flies were large and yellow, resembling yellow wasps. The plasters would be left on from six to eight hours, causing terrible pain. They would then be removed and the blister dressed with cabbage leaves, or a bit of tallowed muslin. Sometimes the blisters would be drawn so deep that it would be two weeks before they would heal; and during the time a white substance would appear in the wound which was called "proud flesh," and it was removed by sprinkling over it powdered roasted alum, this also causing great agony.

One marvelous thing the common people could not understand was that after the patient had gone through with all this bleeding, vomiting, purging and blistering, and been reduced to the very last extremity, he was not allowed by the doctor to take any nourishing food—nothing better than a little thin gruel, a little chicken broth, or a little toast and tea; and while the poor creature, tortured with a burning thirst, might be screaming for water, he was not allowed to have one cool drop, but might have a little warm tea or slippery-elm tea water.

If under this treatment the patient was fortunate enough to get well the doctor would claim for himself a vast amount of credit for his skill that brought him from the verge of the grave; but if the poor creature died, it was laid to the decree of Providence.

It kind of puts going to a doctor today into an entirely different perspective, doesn't it?

Ok, Now it's your turn. Enter your link below. Make sure you link to your post and not just your main blog.

Be sure and join me each Tuesday for Tuesday Trivia Tie-in, where readers are invited to share trivia and show off their treasures.

For a complete list of the rules, click here.