At a mid-18th century North American fur trading outpost, would there be a person who lived there with a medical background to treat the residents? Would they be a medical doctor by profession, or would they be a layman with a rudimentary understanding? Would it be likely for a young person at an outpost to be trained in basic medical knowledge in case the mentor were to die? What is the likelihood that they would keep a journal of their patients?
Very unlikely. If there was anyone at all, it would probably be a layman with some knowledge of what we would today call first aid. Frontier folk were generally pretty self-sufficient. No. 50/50.
You might find this interesting: https://colonialnorthamerica.library.harvard.edu/spotlight/cna/feature/medicine-in-colonial-north-america It's not perfectly on point with your question, but gives a decent account of the state of medical practice in the 18th century. As for the presence of a person with medical training at a fur outpost: there are a number of reasons a trained person might appear in such a place. Maybe the doctor got drunk, killed a highly placed patient with poor handling, and had to flee the wrath of the person's family. Maybe he reluctantly trained as a doctor under pressure from his family and took off to the outpost because he longed for adventure in the wild. Maybe he went on a dare, in search of a young relative who went and was never seen again, or to get over a broken heart. Maybe he thought making a fortune in furs would be easier than working 20 hour days for patients who paid in eggs or not at all. If you want a medical person at your outpost, you can get him there.
Fortunately for me, this medical person that I require at a frontier settlement is a footnote in my overall story, and I really just need there to be documentation of a particular medical case to give insight into the mythos of the overall story itself.
You gave me some really helpful suggestions! And your cadence even sounds like the narration of another character in my story. This was greatly appreciated!
could be that he was a military doctor and hes left the forces and works as a fur trader or something like that...
There are any number of reasons that could be invoked to explain why there might be a person at a trading post who had some medical knowledge. My understanding of the original question was that the OP wanted to know how likely it would have been to find such a person at a trading post, and the answer IMHO remains "highly unlikely." But highly unlikely is not impossible and, since I assume we're talking about a work of fiction, there are possibilities to explain why such a person might be found at a trading post. https://www.americanheritage.com/doctors-frontier https://www.ohsu.edu/historical-collections-archives/stories-frontier-settlement-doctors https://www.nps.gov/jeff/learn/historyculture/medrush.htm Mid-18th century means around 1750, so the time period in question is actually before the American revolution. There simply weren't many people other than native Americans in the regions where fur trappers mostly operated, so the likelihood of finding even a self-proclaimed doctor would have been very small.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Your medic has no medical training, went up north to make his fortune trading furs but a combination of delicacy and chronic TB made him unfit for that work. Privileged but disgraced in the Old World, let's not speak of that. He's literate. No-one else is so introduces himself as a doctor and no-one knows better, he realises the most important part of practicing medicine is adoption of the god complex. He can't diagnose or treat beyond what he picks up as he goes but can document, so writes copious notes on all those suckers who come through his door. He gets drunk and spills all to the teenage son of the beer house owner and teaches him to read and write when that tremor puts a stop to his record-keeping, allowing him to meet his potential as a plot device for more interesting characters.
You definitely read my post the correct way, and you confirmed my suspicions, and every one here has offered some pretty good ideas to reasonably explain away the unlikeliness of the situation. I am always amazed by the incredible amount of creativity some of the more experienced contributors on this forum are able to pull from just a little bit of context
Both before and after the American Revolution, the areas where fur trapping thrived were (except for the period when under French control) largely the province of the Hudson's Bay Company. Their territory was mostly in what is now Canada, but extended into American lands in what are now Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and parts of Montana and Wyoming. Since the Hudson's Bay Company was English and the time is set before the revolution, those areas would have been under English sovereignty and control. A possible premise might be that the doctor was a younger son of a wealthy family that was either invested in the Hudson's bay Company, or the father was a social friend of a major stockholder in the company. The younger son studied medicine in London, found himself in some sort of legal imbroglio possibly involving the death of someone from another prominent family (or perhaps something as mundane as the death of a prostitute -- take your pick), so the doctor's (or would-be doctor, as the case may be) family sent him off to the Hudson's Bay Company territories both to save his skin from prosecution and also to quiet the rumour mill that would have persisted if he had remained in England. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hudsons-Bay-Company
Who were those people at the trading post trading with? Along with the white trappers, they'd be trading with native Americans who had their own traditions for medicine and healing. And the larger groups would surely have had specialists in things like splinting bones or applying healing herbs and such. That would be another resource. Your doctor might have had an interesting sort of hybrid education, taken from many sources, which would have allowed him to treat and even save some patients. My father read a book about medical practices in colonial times. (I would have asked him which one, but he died seventeen years ago.)One of the interesting things he told me was that the farther you were from populated areas, the higher your life expectancy was. Of course, very sick people don't usually strike out into the wilderness to start a new life but, even after taking that into account, your odds of survival were were better, not only because you were removed from many sources of contagion, but because the medical practices of the day like bleeding patients and feeding them arsenic and mercury probably led to outcomes that were more fatal than simply leaving them untreated. So that's food for thought... having a "doctor" around the trading post might have done more harm than good.
What about the natives? Would any of the indigenous population such as healers or shamans or whatever be in the trading post and serve as a healer to the community?
You mentioned fur trading, do keep in mind that there were very, very few permanent "fur trading" stations back then and those that did exist were primarily destinations for the native trappers.
You can look at: https://www.canadashistory.ca/archive https://www.canadashistory.ca/magazines And: https://www.gov.mb.ca/chc/archives/hbca/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson%27s_Bay_Company I know the current issue of "Canadian History" is talking about the importance of salt to food preservation on the fur trade routes operated by the Hudson's Bay Company.
The patient is a woman from the Indigenous trapper population, shot by her white husband. From what I have read, the tribes married their women to the European trappers as a form of negotiation for economic resources. Being integrated among the European population and with the native populations not being as familiar with injuries from firearms, I figured that it would not be as viable. As well, I need the medical person to write in English and be confused about what he witnessed. The supernatural phenomenon that arises from this injury is my explanation as to why this station becomes more permanent and eventually becomes a village. Maybe my timeframe is off, but I need this area to be established prior to the 19th century in order for the subsequent events to happen.
I have forgotten much more than I ever knew about the exact (or even approximate) time line of the westward expansion of the colonies in the New World. That said, before the 19th century means the 18th century -- the 1700s. The American Revolution was fought from 1765 to 1791. The French and Indian War was fought in the very middle of the 18th century (1754 to 1763). At that time, the disputed territory wasn't any farther west than Lake George (NY), and Pennsylvania. The dominant business entity was the Hudson's Bay Company. Their area of operations was a region called Prince Rupert's Land, which was loosely defined as lands whose rivers drained into Hudson's Bay (hence the name of the company). The trading posts weren't of the "general store" type trading posts we see in western movies set in the 19th century, they were literally outposts where the trappers (French, British, and Indigenous) could bring the furs they had collected over the winter and sell them. That said, the medium of exchange was typically European/British tools, firearms, textiles, and food staples. In the mid-1700s (before the American Revolution), the fur trapping and trading was generally in what is now Canada, around Hudson's Bay, and in an area surrounding the Great Lakes. The Hudson's Bay Company eventually spread to British Columbia and the Northwest Territories -- but not by the mid-18th century. Sorry for the digression. The point was, these fur trading outposts were called "out"posts for a reason. They didn't generally have settlements around them, they were established and maintained for one reason and one reason only: to trade manufactured goods for furs. So historically I don't think there would have been much likelihood of finding a trained medical professional at a trading post in the mid-18th century. (I also don't think there was much "European population" for this Indigenous wife to have been integrated into.) But there are any number of reasons you could concoct to explain how such a medical person just happened to be there for your story. Perhaps the trading post is near a harbor or anchorage for a Hudson's Bay Company ship (they had their own fleet, I believe), and the ship's doctor decided to make use of the layover time to travel inland to see what a trading post was like. Or, perhaps the factor (that's what they called the proprietors of the outposts) sent word to an anchored ship to send the ship's doctor when the wounded woman came to or was brought to the outpost.
