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BOOKMONGER
Two looks at medicine in America
By BARBARA LLOYD
MCMICHAEL
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Let’s consider American
health care this week.
In one of the most evoc-
atively titled books you’ll
ever come across, “Bleed,
Blister, Puke, and Purge”
focuses on the shockingly
inadequate “cures” under-
taken by the earliest Euro-
pean immigrants to North
America as they tried to
deal with everything from
broken bones to mental
illness.
Author J. Marin
Younker is a Lake Forest
Park (WA) writer. Her
writing style reflects the
decade-plus she spent
working as a librarian in
teen collections. The short,
punchy segments in this
book expose questionable
medical practices begin-
ning in early colonial
times and extending some-
times for centuries.
While the wisdom
shared by Native American
healers was of some help
in dealing with maladies
endemic to North America,
it was futile in combating
Old World scourges like
smallpox and measles.
In the early United
States, common medical
practice might involve
superstition, amputation,
patent medicine or Mes-
merism.
Even our greatest
historical fi gures couldn’t
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escape the quackery –
when George Washington
complained of a sore throat,
his physicians applied dried
beetles to his neck and
drained 80 percent of his
blood from his body. He did
not survive the cure.
Younker suggests that
the American public’s
demand for better medicine
didn’t really come about
until the protracted death of
another American President,
James Garfi eld. Shot by an
assassin, Garfi eld lan-
guished for more than two
months before dying. Hind-
sight reveals that it was the
thoroughly inept medical
attention he received
following the shooting that
likely killed him.
Following this litany
of medical malpractice,
Younker concludes with
a brief overview of how
science, medicine, and tech-
nology have coalesced to
produce great gains in med-
ical practice over the last
century. But don’t relax just
yet – her fi nal paragraph
cites a 2016 study showing
that approximately 250,000
patients in the United States
Bleed, Blister, Puke,
and Purge –
J. Marin Younker
Zest Books –
112 pp - $13.99
On the Ragged Edge
of Medicine –
Patricia Kullberg
Oregon State
University Press –
176 pp - $18.95
die every year due to errors
in their medical treatment.
“Bleed, Blister, Puke,
and Purge” is not a reassur-
ing book, but it is certainly
an engrossing one.
“On the Ragged Edge of
Medicine” offers another
medical perspective. This is
a memoir about delivering
health services to Portland’s
most destitute populations.
Dr. Patricia Kullberg
served as medical director
of the Multnomah Coun-
ty Health Department for
over two decades, and also
worked as a primary care
doctor.
In this collection of
essays, she refl ects on the
daily interactions she had
with patients whose health
was compromised by poor
choices, mental illness,
poverty, or some combi-
nation thereof. She talks
about policies, red tape,
rule-breaking and failure,
and cops to occasionally
having resorted to patient
control when she ran out of
options for patient care.
Even if physical heal-
ing didn’t happen as often
as she wanted it to, she
realized that sometimes
the human connection she
offered her patients was just
as vital.
“On the Ragged Edge
of Medicine” demonstrates
that – especially for some
populations – modern medi-
cine still has signifi cant lim-
its. This gritty and luminous
book is totally worth your
attention.
The Bookmonger is
Barbara Lloyd McMichael,
who writes this weekly column
focusing on the books, authors
and publishers of the Pacifi c
Northwest. Contact her at
bkmonger@nwlink.com
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