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Trust Me, I’m a Doctor: Freak Accidents on the Westering Trails

A wooden wagon wheel with spokes radiating out from a central point. — NPS Photo

Edwin Bryant, traveling overland to California in 1846, had only briefly studied medicine, and he never claimed to be a physician. But somewhere along Nebraska’s Platte River, a little boy from another party had gotten his leg crushed under wagon wheels. The child, eight or nine years old, survived but desperately needed medical attention. There being no doctor nearby, Bryant reluctantly agreed to examine him.

When I reached the tent of the unfortunate family to which the boy belonged, I found him stretched out upon a bench made of planks, ready for the operation which they expected I would perform. I soon learned…that the accident … had occurred nine days previously. That a person professing to be a ‘doctor,’ had wrapped some linen loosely about the leg, and made a sort of trough, or plank box, in which it had been confined. In this condition the child had remained, without any dressing of his wounded limb, until last night, when he called to his mother, and told her that he could feel worms crawling in his leg!

Bryant found the limb to be gangrenous and swarming with maggots. It was too late for treatment; the boy was dying. The mother pleaded with Bryant to amputate in order to save her son’s life, but Bryant told her bluntly that “all efforts to save him would be useless, and only add to the anguish of which he was now dying.”

However, another man with the wagon party claimed he had assisted in a hospital and could perform the operation with tools at hand: a butcher knife, a handsaw, and a shoemaker’s awl. Bryant detailed the ensuing butchery (with no mention of morphine or other anesthetic) in his journal, noting that once the bone below the knee had been sawed through, the “surgeon” decided that the operation should be performed above the knee, instead.

During these demonstrations the boy never uttered a groan or a complaint, but I saw from the change in his countenance, that he was dying…The knife and saw were then applied and the limb amputated. A few drops of blood only oozed from the stump; the child was dead—his miseries were over! The scene of weeping and distress which succeeded this tragedy cannot be described.

Bryant found the victim’s father, who was severely crippled and suffering from rheumatism, lying helpless in a tent nearby. He delivered news of the boy’s death and gave the man some pain medication before riding away from the disturbing scene.