Along with being Donate a Day’s Wages to Charity Day, Frog Jumping Day, Apple Pie Day, Leprechaun Day, Night Shift Workers Day, and Receptionist Day, today is also Emergency Nurses Day. Many years ago there were no emergency nurses. There weren’t many “ordinary” nurses either. Rural people were pretty much on their own in dealing with medical problems as they arose on their farms or in small towns such as Hartselle was in its early days. This column will identify some of the products that were available—whether they were effective or not is another matter—to help cope with medical emergencies affecting both humans and domestic animals.

Rabies vaccine for the prevention of rabies or hydrophobia. The treatment consists of injecting twenty-five doses for 21 successive days [H.K. Milford Co.]
Price for complete treatment $50 Our method is heartily welcomed by the
patient, as the disadvantage of a forced trip to a strange place or
sanitorium involving loss of time and  extra expense is avoided
Gombault’s Caustic Balsam (horse remedy)
Antiethylene (a counterpoison to alcoholism in horses)
Tenealgin a new vermifuge (worm destroyer for domestic animals)
Beckwith’s Hog Cholera Remedy (charred coffee)
Bibron’s Rattlesnake Poison Remedy [Bibron’s Antidote] (alcohol)
Centaur Liniment (for man and beast)
Dr. Osborn’s Golden Ointment (scalds)
Antibrule (burns, scalds) (formaldehyde)
W. Scott Marshall’s Convertible Physicians’ Buggy-Case Saddle Bags
Hypodermic Syringes
Urinary Test Cases
Gelineau’s Anti-Convulsive Syrup (convulsions)
Newton’s Distemper Cure
Magnetic Worm & Mice Destroyer
Lyons’ Poisoned Cheese
Piper’s Poisoned Cheese
Parson’s Sure Death to Rats
Stonebraker’s Devil among Rats
Woodlark’s Skookum Rat Killer
Stuart’s Roachchaser
Uhlich’s Volcano Roach Paste
King of Oils Liniment (swellings)
Great Eastern Healing Balm (wounds)
E. L. Washburn, M.D. (bandages)
B & B Corset Surgical Dressing
(zinc-oxide plaster fitted with shoe-lace hooks and laced with tape
to  prevent dislodgment of a dressing and exposure of the wound)
Seabury & Johnson’s Surgical Dressings, Antiseptic Gauzes (wounds)
Wounds Ferropyin (gaping wounds)
Bruise Remedies (“black eye”)
Collaform (intended as a formaldehyde vulnerary for wounds)
Traumaticin (chloroform-soaked covering for wounds)
Sallade& Co.’s Mosquito Bite Cure
Dwight’s Mosquito Tablets
I. & L. Mosquito Chasers
Insect Bite Remedy (opium)
Kern’s Insect Annihilator
Peterman’s Roach Food (cacao)
Jackman’s Bug Antidote
Dr. Porter’s Antiseptic Healing Oil (insect stings)
3-D Insect Destroyer
Insect Death
Insect Slayer
Ceylon Fly Chaser
Dutcher’s Fly Killer
Fly Away Fly
Marshall’s Shoo Fly
Tough-on-Flies
Zanzibar Fly Chaser
C. & W. Athletic Oil
Chloroform Apparatus for Amateur Operations (Chas. Lentz & Sons)
Baker’s Poison Oak Cure
Moore’s Poison Oak Remedy
Brod’s Poison Cure
Dr. Osborn’s Golden Ointment (burns)
Hubbard’s Corn Huskers Lotion (frostbite)
Dr. McGown’s Sarsaparilla (jaundice)
Dr. Miles’ Extract of Tomato Pills (jaundice)
Richardson’s Jaundice Bitters
Madison Absorption Method (scums)
Note that emergency medicine is not limited to the acutely ill.  It is basically a post-World War II development.  Today emergency medicine is recognized as a hospital-based system. In the case of our ancestors a hundred or so years ago this was not the case. Most of them did not have access to hospitals and the limited assistance they were able to provide at that time.

Medical care, to the extent that it existed at all, was primarily home-based.  When trained doctors were not available, which was usually the case, reliance was had on bonesetters, herbalists, or midwives. Medical emergencies such as shock, hemorrhage, respiratory failure, and sepsis frequently went untreated because people had no clue as to what they could do when these traumas occurred. The primary determinant of whether the victim of a medical emergency lived or died was whether he or she had family or friends to provide care.
There was no such thing as a hospital emergency room—even if a hospital was accessible. Also, hospitals themselves were looked on as places for the poor and disadvantaged. People much preferred to be cared for at home than in a charity hospital. To be admitted to a hospital was to acknowledge that one was a “charity case.”   Beds in hospitals were generally in large wards. Surgery, if required, took place at the patient’s bedside. It was only later that patients and their attending physicians would have access to operating tables, instruments, dressings, and hot and cold water.
Before industrialization came to Morgan County, men who were injured in industrial accidents were generally taken to their homes to be cared for until they either recovered or passed away. Only the passage of time would cause business leaders to see that the health of their workforces—such as those employed in the L&N shops in Decatur—was a crucial element in the profitability of their industrial enterprises. They would recognize, if belatedly, that a new system that could evaluate, treat, and return workers back to their jobsites was indispensable.
During the Civil War open chest wound treatment began as did blood transfusions. These could not be done at home and medicines that came in bottles or boxes were either of no help or were counter-productive.
It would take a considerable amount of time before the domestic medicine approach to medical care would be abandoned as the preferred approach. New technologies such as lab resources and later the radiologic would become available to the residents of urban-rural counties like Morgan. The terms “shock,” “cardiac arrest,” and the use of adrenaline were unknown until then.
The medicines listed here were used because the ill or injured and their families had no other alternatives. “There was no medically valid body of knowledge or techniques” that could be applied in the case of a specific patient.