Back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, medical training and care in Park City was “sketchy,” said Dr. Thomas Schwenk.
“It was very rudimentary,” he said. “There were all kinds of different theories about disease that were promoted in a very non-scientific approach to medicine,” he said.
In addition, before the construction of Miners Hospital, doctors used their offices as makeshift operation rooms, Schwenk said.
“There were all kinds of injuries that required amputation, for example, that was done on a small table and in the front room,” he said. “There were terrible eye injuries that led to the eyes having to be removed, and there were head injuries that required surgical treatment — all that took place in a doctor’s office.”
Schwenk, a board-certified family physician who practiced in Park City from 1978 to 1984 and author, will shed some light on these types of procedures and the impact Miners Hospital had on the town when he gives a free lecture, “Medical Care in Park City in 1900 — Not For the Faint of Heart,” at 5 p.m. on Wednesday at the Park City Museum Education and Collections Center, 2079 Sidewinder Drive.
During his practice, Schwenk became interested in the town’s history, particularly the medical care during the mining era, because it was a transformative time in the world of medicine.
“The onset of anesthesia allowed surgical procedures to be done,” he said. “The concept of antisepsis and infection emerged, so doctors started to wash their hands. And the idea of infectious disease that led to antitoxins being developed for diphtheria, vaccines being developed for typhoid fever were happening right at that time and playing out in Park City.”
Schwenk will share some of that history and also talk about some research he used for his novel, “Beyond the False Summit.”
The story is about two mining-day-era physicians who work to solve a medical mystery, while exposing a deceitful mine superintendent.
“Mining was incredibly dangerous, as it continues to be, but certainly in those days,” he said. “You can see that in the Park City Cemetery with miners who died in all kinds of accidents.”
The cemetery also reveals what health in general was like back then, Schwenk said.
“Walking the Park City Cemetery, you see a lot of children who died from diphtheria, scarlet fever — the major killers,” he said. “Sometimes whole families were wiped out. I have a story about a family who lost six of their seven children.”
If a case was too big for doctors to fix in their offices, the patients were sent to St. Mark’s and Holy Cross hospitals in Salt Lake City, Schwenk said.
“That was a terrible trip, usually by carriage and not by railroad,” he said. “So they had to go down Parleys Canyon. It took hours and hours and hours, and it was dusty and bumpy.”
The ordeal was just to get to the hospitals, Schwenk said.
“There was quite a bit of controversy about the care that St. Mark’s, for example, was giving to miners,” he said. “Miners paid a fee of one dollar a month for healthcare, and that was sent to St. Mark’s, and there was controversy about the charity wards that St. Mark’s had for the miners and whether the care was appropriate.”
Mine owners opposed the construction of Miners Hospital in 1904 because they wanted to keep sending miners down to St. Mark’s for their own “political and clinical reasons,” according to Schwenk.
“Miners Hospital provided nursing care, for starters,” he said “So patients could be kept in the hospital if they were recovering from an accident. There was certainly more room, more facilities, and eventually that hospital got an X-ray machine, which was a big deal.”
The X-ray allowed doctors to do more things and keep more patients in town, Schwenk said.
“It was also an issue with the city’s pride, I think,” he said. “Having a hospital meant they had risen to another level of sophistication, and it was something a town like Park City should have.”
As a physician, Schwenk marvels at what doctors did regardless of crude medical knowledge.
“There were no antibiotics, of course, and there were few surgical procedures that could be done,” he said. “But doctors did the best they could. So there were pretty heroic things that were done out of sheer necessity, which I will talk about.”
Still, there was a little light in those dark days, Schwenk said.
“Medical training had improved in that era because a few top medical schools did a more rigorous type of training,” he said. “So, as medical education improved, physicians received some greater training, but, again, the things they could do were quite limited. And people understood and accepted whatever could be done.”
Even in the late 1970s, Park City’s medical care wasn’t as advanced as Salt Lake City, Schwenk said.
“When I practiced in Park City, we didn’t have a hospital, and a lot of things happened in our office as well at the Park City Health Center with my partners, Dr. Robert Winn and Dr. Robert Evers,” he said. “We experienced a little bit of this in terms of the types of care we provided, without any back up or hospital assistance.”
Schwenk, who is currently working on a second book that focuses on the impact Miners Hospital had on the Park City community, thought his research would lay the foundation of a historical lecture.
“A lot of my research went into those books, so in order to turn it into a lecture, I had to reverse the engines,” he said. “When you delve into the history and adapt it to fiction, you can write different stories and take a few liberties here and there. But when you give a lecture, you have to back up to the actual facts. So that was a fun thing to do.’
The medical field attracted Schwenk because it’s the “ultimate intersection of science and humanism.”
“You really have the great forces of caring for people with the great forces of science and medicine coming together,” he said. “It’s endlessly fascinating.”
‘Medical Care in Park City in 1900 — Not For the Faint of Heart’ by Dr. Thomas Schwenk
- When: 5 p.m. Wednesday
- Where: Park City Museum Education and Collections Center, 2079 Sidewinder Drive
- Cost: Free
- Web: parkcityhistory.org/events