Lizzie Borden Society Forum

I'm unsure about how much information exists on this, but the thought crossed my mind while considering Lizzie's purported attempt to purchase prussic acid and whether Andrew's family was given to outdated remedies (such as diluted prussic acid for stomach ailments) about whether Sarah had modern medical care for her uterine congestion or whether she was like Abby...denied a doctor because of the expense. There may not be much to say on this, but it does make me wonder. Generally, people get into a pattern of behavior and it doesn't change all that much over time.

Well, of course Sarah died in 1863, a world away from the sort of medical treatments (primitive though they seem to us today) that people expected in the 1890's. I don't know much about the medical facilities in small-town America at that period (and Fall River then would have been quite a bit smaller. Its prosperity followed the Civil War.) However, doctors made up their own medicines and if you didn't want those you were probably restricted to snake oil salesmen at local fairs, the limited wares at the town pharmacies and home remedies. When Sarah died the Civil War was still raging and many younger doctors were probably away at the war.

Andrew came from a generation and a background in which a great deal of faith would have been put in home remedies, I think. All the same, when Sarah became quite ill I can't imagine Andrew denying her the services of a doctor. Its odd that we don't know the name of Sarah's doctor or more about her final illness. She died at home, (after a two year illness that must have been a strain on the household) as was usual and perhaps the doctor decided quite early that there wasn't much that could be done and just recommended keeping her quiet and without too much pain.

I wonder whether the birth of Lizzie was a straightforward one. Might there have been some internal damage which had an effect?

I think it was a little of both. The old folks liked the old remedies (and some of them do work better than the stuff doctors give you!) and Andrew was tight with his money. He wasn't going to spend money on a doctor for menstrul cramps.

Accepted medical remedies were frequently so horrific that people avoided doctors and mistrusted them. There were few treatments that actually cured anything so in the end the patient either got better on his/her own or not. In the American Revolution there was a strange practice~if I remember it correctly~ or treating a gunshot wound by bandaging the gun. The rationale behind this was a bit fantastical but the soldier who was treated by doctors was likely to get worse due to infection, etc. Those who chose the folk remedy had the better outcomes. Fast forward to our Civil War and we see again that medical efforts frequently spread disease and increased agonies.

Possibly also Andrew turned his back on the medical profession such as it was, after losing his wife and one daughter. I can to a large extent understand his feelings after living 40 years with a diagnosis of mental illness (panic attack), even though I had clear signs of heart disease. A couple years ago when my heart rate went up and didn't come down, the same doctors panicked and said I was dying! I have very little respect for the medical profession though I was a terminal care nurse many years ago.

Yes, I believe even today it's been estimated that about two thirds of people attending doctors surgeries get better on their own eventually, no matter what sort of treatment they receive. All the same, I think if Sarah was alive today she'd probably be saved.

I shouldn't tempt fate by boasting, (touch wood, fingers crossed) but the last time I was in a doctor's surgery for anything was 2011 when I went on holiday to Asia and so had to get shots, malaria pills etc.

What we have now is surgery and imaging machines. I have had good luck with surgery, especially since surgery saved my arm. Heaven knows what Sarah had. Congestion of the uterus could have been anything from endometriosis to ovarian cancer.

Considering everything I don't see any reason why Andrew would have been wrong to avoid doctors in that time. Many ills do turn around on their own.

Hysterology: a Treatise, Descriptive and Clinical, On the Diseases and the Displacements of the Uterus – Edwin Nesbit Chapman - 1872

This is a free eBook on Google and contains everything you want to know about uterine congestion and its treatments in mid to late 1800s, plus a lot you might not want to know.