Dentistry in the Old West was dangerous… if a body could find a dentist.
Doc Holliday (of Tombstone and O.K. Corral fame) was a dentist– and a gambler.
Clay Allison attacked his dentist with intent to rip out the doc’s molar–“tooth for tooth.”
Twenty-first century people have it easy. In fact, most of us don’t know how to make soap–much less the ingredients (found on the Old West homestead) that should be saved in the process of living so that soap could be made. Soap did become readily available through catalog orders, but it cost money, and the more remove a settler, or the earlier a man or family found themselves on a frontier, the dirty, hot job of soap making was a necessary one. This article sheds light on the process, basic ingredients, methodology, as well as the rise of commercially prepared soap products.
