The Salt Lake Sanitarian: Medical Adviser to the Saints BY SHERILYN COX BENNION What avail the largest gifts of Heaven, When drooping health and spirits go amiss?1 IN APRIL 1888 DR. MILFORD BARD SHIPP and two of his four wives, Drs. Maggie C Shipp and Ellis R. Shipp, founded a monthly maga­ zine "devoted to the prevention and cure of diseases and injuries, and the promulgation of the laws of health and life."2 The Salt Lake Sani­ tarian was subtitled "A Monthly Journal of Medicine and Surgery." It survived until January 1891, offering advice on subjects ranging from cholera to "coffeeism" and encouraging its readers to educate themselves regarding "the laws of life and sanitation."3 The Sanitarian began at a time when the field of medicine was in transition. During the early part of the nineteenth century most mem­ bers of the medical establishment practiced what came to be known as heroic medicine after Oliver Wendell Holmes gave it that label in de­ rision. It included purging, bleeding, and administering large doses of drugs. Diagnosis was rudimentary, and few effective medicines were available. The practice of medicine required neither a medical degree nor a license. Given the uncertain state of orthodox medicine, many patients lost confidence in it and turned to a proliferation of medical sects. In the words of one historian: As medical science searched for better methods and procedures, the public wandered amid an endless list of pathies, the claims of which rivaled the eschatological dreams of the era's religious and political Dr. Bennion is a professor of journalism and program leader of women's studies at Humboldt State University, Areata, California. A version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting ofthe Mormon History Association, May 1986. lSalt Lake Sanitarian, July 1888, p. 84. 2Ibid., April 1888, p. 14. » Ibid. 126 Utah Historical Quarterly . THE SALT LAKE wjji VX \ 1 x iixvli X^ \ W MONTHLYJOURNAL OF MEDICINE AND SURGERY, Devoted to the prevention and cure of diseases and injuries, and the promulgation of the laws of health and life. EDITED BY THE DRS. SHIPP. VOL. I. OCTOBER, 18S8. NO. 7. C O N T E NT S. EDUCATION IN RELATION TO HEALTH, by Daniel Clark, M. D«, Superintendent of the Asylum for Insane, Toronto, Ontario 149-156 BRAIN WORK—ESSENTIALS .FOR ITS DEVELOPMENT AND HEALTH 156-157 PNEUMONIA OR LUNG FEVER, SOMETIMES CALLED WINTER FROST, by Dr. Brown _• 157-160 CATHARSIS OR THE EVACUATION OF THE BOWELS, by the Editors 160-162 MALARIAL FEVER IN CHILDREN, by C. L. Dodge, M. D., Kingston, N. Y. __ 163-166 A FOREIGN BODY n* THE EAR FOR EIGHTEEN YEARS 166 INFANT MORTALITY 166 EDITORIAL: THE ATMOSPHERE AS A MEDICAL AGENT 167-170 MOTHER'S METHODS.—No. v., by Dr. Ellis R. Shipp 170-172 TERMS:—YEARLY SUBSCRIPTIONS, §2,00; SINGLE COPIES, 20 CENTS. Salt Lake City, 16 S., East Temple Street. Telephone jyp. Sf. 4» JUVENILE INSTRUCTOR PRINT. Cover and contents ofthe October 1888 Sanitarian. Courtesy of Sherilyn Cox Bennion. Salt Lake Sanitarian 127 leaders. The spirit of heresy was rampant and worshipers gathered before the newer medical shrines in search of cures.4 To the pathies—hydropathy, vitapathy, osteopathy, isopathy, homeopathy, phrenopathy, electropathy — could be added magnetic healing, physiomedicalism, sun therapy, chrono-thermalism, Thom- sonism, Grahamism, eclectic medicine, and Christian Science. Thomsonian medicine, which relied on herbs, hot baths, and dietary moderation, numbered several prominent early Mormons among its disciples. Frederick G. Williams purchased the right to practice it before he joined the church. Willard Richards and his brother Levi were other licensees close to Joseph Smith and may have influenced his advocacy of botanic medicine.5 The Mormon Word of Wisdom, Section 89 in the Doctrine and Covenants, advised prudent use of wholesome herbs, and Section 42 gave this prescription: "And whosoever among you are sick, and have not faith to be healed, but believe, shall be nourished with all tenderness, with herbs and mild food, and that not by the hand of an enemy."6 The next verse di­ rected elders of the church to lay their hands upon the sick and pray for them. Joseph Smith's successor, Brigham Young, also supported faith healing backed up by Thomsonian remedies.7 Although his feelings for doctors mellowed and he consulted them as he grew older, appar­ ently no longer considering them "a deadly bane to any community" as he did in 1869,8. only two years before his death he told the Saints that when their children were sick "Instead of calling for a doctor you should administer to them by the laying on of hands and anointing with oil, and give them mild food, and herbs, and medicines that you understand. ."9 When he encouraged Mormon women and men to obtain medical training in the late 1860s and the 1870s it probably reflected not a change of heart toward the medical profession but his desire that Mormons be treated by Mormon doctors rather than by gentiles and that obstetrical practice be restricted to women. 4John S. Haller, Jr., American Medicine in Transition, 1840-1910 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981), p. 100. 5Robert T. Divett, Medicine and the Mormons (Bountiful, Ut.: Horizon Publishers, 1981), p. Ill, and "Medicine and the Mormons: A Historical Perspective," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 12 (Fall 1979): 23. 6Doctrine and Covenants, 42:43, 44. 7Linda P. Wilcox, "The Imperfect Science: Brigham Young on Medical Doctors," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 12 (Fall 1979): 27. 8 Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (Liverpool, England, 1854-86), 14:109. sibid., 18:71-72. 128 Utah Historical Quarterly Health had been a prime concern of church authorities ever since the first Saints reached Utah in 1847, perhaps partly because of an alarmingly high death rate, surpassed in 1850 only by that of Loui­ siana. Mormon doctors formed a Council of Health in 1849, pro­ moting botanic medicine and suggesting a search for medicinal plants native to the area.10 In 1852 the territorial legislature passed laws re­ quiring labeling of any medicine containing poison and stipulating that doctors must explain "in plain, simple English" the effects of any poisonous drug they intended to administer and obtain written con­ sent for its use.11 Salt Lake City began requiring physicians to be li­ censed in 1856.12 A series of physiology classes for women met in 1872 and 1873,13 and in 1874 Eliza R. Snow spearheaded the offering of in­ struction in nursing and obstetrics.14 In 1878 Dr. Ellis Shipp, subse­ quently one of the editors of the Salt Lake Sanitarian, opened a School of Obstetrics and Nursing. It affiliated with the Relief Society's Des- eret Hospital, operated between 1882 and 1890 primarily for women. The nursing instruction continued until well into the twentieth cen­ tury with both Ellis and her sister wife Dr. Margaret Shipp (Roberts) as teachers. By this time conventional medical theory had undergone many changes. The work of Louis Pasteur led to recognition of a relation­ ship between microorganisms and disease. Robert Koch's discoveries paved the way for the development of vaccines. Diagnostic methods became more sophisticated, and doctors began to specialize. Surgical innovations accompanied the use of anesthesia. Educational practices underwent reform, and hospitals began to take a central role in caring for the sick. Still, medical science in the United States lagged far be­ hind that in Europe,15 and advances filtered down to everyday prac­ tice slowly. Only toward the end of the century did the average citizen begin to benefit from the new discoveries and techniques. Part of the credit for the modernization of medical treatment niust go to periodicals that spread word of innovations. As early as 1829 magazines began to be published in behalf of various theories ioj. Cecil Alter, "The Council of Health," Utah Historical Quarterly 10 (1942): 37. 11 "Health Laws," ibid., p. 40. 12Joseph R. Morrell, Utah's Health and You (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1956), p. 25. 13 Woman's Exponent, August 1, 1872, p. 37. 14Keith. Calvin Terry, "The Contribution of Medical Women during the First Fifty Years in Utah" (M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1964), pp. 36-38. 15James Bordley III and A. McGehee Harvey, Two Centuries of American Medicine, 1776-1976 (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders Company, 1976), p. 187. Salt Lake Sanitarian 129 and practices. In fact, the aims of the Journal of Health, founded that year by an association of physicians in Philadelphia, resembled those of the Salt Lake Sanitarian. It would present "plain precepts, in easy style and language, for the regulation of all the physical agents neces­ sary to health." It advocated fresh air, good food, exercise, healthful clothing, proper correlation of mind and body, and abstinence from tobacco and liquor.16 Along with the periodicals designed to aid readers in making themselves more healthy came those directed toward medical practi­ tioners, which contained more specialized and technical information. Most states and many cities had their own journals for physicians, as did the various medical specialties.17 The pathies, too, had their journals. Between 1850 and 1865 at least seventeen of them promoted homeopathy. The hydropaths had the Water-Cure Journal, the Water-Cure Monthly, and the Water-Cure World. Disenchantment with conventional medicine led both to en­ thusiasm for the heretical movements and their publications and to an avid concern with health that fueled interest in health magazines of all kinds. Probably about a thousand journals in medicine and related fields were published between 1885 and 1905, many of them depend­ ing on patent medicine advertising.18 A history ofthe American Med­ ical Association refers to the middle 1890s as "the days of competitive journalism in American medicine" in which "the battle raged contin­ uously."19 Health also played a prominent part in popular general magazines.