The Doctor in Deadwood

Giveaway! Enter to win a copy of the New York Times Best-Selling book

The Doctor Wore Petticoats: Women Physicians of the Old West

Woman Doctor demonstrates operation to class - 1883

Woman Doctor demonstrates operation to class – 1883

The rough-and-tumble town of Deadwood, South Dakota was home to a variety of notorious western characters in the mid-1800s. Buffalo Bill Cody, Wild Bill Hickok, and Calamity Jane were just a few of the infamous names associated with the gold-mining camp. These three legends of the West were at one time patients of the first woman doctor in the area, Doctor Flora Hayward Stanford. Doctor Stanford opened a practice in Deadwood in 1888 and began seeing to the healthcare needs of hundreds of prospectors, prostitutes, business owners, and their families. She entered the medical profession late in her life, receiving her degree from Boston University of Medicine in 1878, at the age of forty.

To learn more about lady healers on the frontier read

The Doctor Wore Petticoats: Women Physicians of the Old West.