The Doctor Wore Petticoats: Women Physicians of the Old West Read Online Free Page A

to town and pleaded with Georgia to remove the offensive tooth. She reluctantly agreed.
    The cowboy took his place in one of Doctor Arbuckle Fix’s chairs and she instructed him to grab the arms tightly and keep still. She then ordered the man’s friend to hold his head in place. Once everything was in order, she began the procedure. The man wriggled and screamed as the doctor tried to coax the tooth out of his mouth with a pair of crude forceps. The man’s legs buckled and the spurs on his boots raked across the doctor’s foot. She yelped. “Watch it there,” she warned. “I’m not a bronco, you know.” Georgia went on with her work and after several more minutes, the tooth finally broke free.
    Doctor Fix’s generosity extended beyond the medical care she gave her patients. She opened her home to women teachers in the area who had no place to live and to civic organizations that had no place to meet. Missionary societies, benevolent groups, drama clubs, and library clubs gathered in her front room to plan fundraisers and special events. As an advocate of health education, she donated her time to help teach at various county schools and even donated a microscope for students to study germs and fungi.
    Georgia’s home and sanitarium were warm, inviting locations where animals, as well as humans, were made to feel welcome. Along with a few dogs, cats, and goats, a variety of birds resided with Doctor Arbuckle Fix. At one time she had thirty-three canaries, a parrot, and an owl. Children who proved they could care for a pet were given one of her birds as a present. Friends and associates boasted that she was “truly gracious to all creatures.”
    After a particularly rough and wet house call trip in 1916, Doctor Fix developed a bad cold that left her an asthmatic. Frequent trips to the dry California climate brought her some relief, but not enough to sustain her life. She eventually died from the breathing condition on July 26, 1918, in San Diego, at the age of sixty-eight. Those with her at the end stated her last words were from the book of Psalms.
    Doctor Fix’s body was brought back to Nebraska and she was buried near her home in Gering. Many local citizens attended her service. She was remembered as someone who “went about doing good.” Even in death she proved that statement to be true. She left her life savings to the community, to build a home for the needy. The inscription on her tombstone at the West Lawn Cemetery reads: IN MEMORY OF DOCTOR GEORGIA A. FIX, PIONEER PHYSICIAN. SHE PASSED AWAY IN 1918 AFTER THIRTY-TWO YEARS OF FAITHFUL SERVICE IN THE NORTH PLATTE VALLEY.

    SUSAN LA FLESCHE PICOTTE
     

FIRST FEMALE NATIVE-AMERICAN PHYSICIAN
     

     
    I have lived right with them for over twenty years practicing
medicine, attending the sick, helping them with all their financial
and domestic business and anything that concerned their personal
family life.
    —Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte, 1914
     
     
    Twelve-year-old Susan La Flesche wiped the perspiration off the brow of an elderly Omaha Indian woman stretched out on a cot before her. The woman’s sad eyes found Susan’s, and she lifted her feeble hand out for the girl to take. Susan helped the frail patient raise her head and take a sip of broth. Almost as if the effort had been overwhelming to her delicate frame, the ailing Native American fainted. Susan gently laid the woman’s head onto a pillow and dabbed her warm cheeks with a cool cloth.
    The light from a gigantic moon streamed through the open flap of the buckskin tepee situated on the Omaha reservation near Macy, Nebraska. Susan left the sick woman for a moment to peer out into the night. She lingered a bit and listened to the sounds of the evening. With the exception of the cries of the coyotes in the far distance, all was quiet. It was late, and the elderly woman’s breathing was labored. A messenger had been sent out four times to get help, but the physician, hired by the government to care