Title: Miners and medicine : West Virginia memories /
Authors: Frazier, Claude A. 1920-2005; Brown, F. K. 1921-
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press,
Year: 1992
Subjects: Community Health Services history; Occupational Diseases; Community Health Services; Coal Mining; Pneumoconiosis history; Occupational Diseases history; Coal Mining history; Coal miners Medical care West Virginia History.; Coal Mining history West Virginia.; Occupational Diseases history West Virginia.; West Virginia; West Virginia
Abstract: The coal-company doctors of Appalachia fought the health hazards of the coal fields, arguably the most dangerous and diseased working environment of the modern world. Often the doctors were held accountable for evils that persisted despite their best efforts. Claude A. Frazier - a coal-camp doctor's son and a doctor himself - draws on the memories of health workers, miners, and their families to convey the horrific problems in the coal camps, the resourcefulness of the doctors and nurses, and the struggle to raise health standards in and around the mines. Doctor Frazier tells how, from the Civil War to World War II, Appalachian mountain folk were exploited in a feudal system ruled by the coal companies. The miners, always in debt to the company, paid for a doctor's services with a checkoff from wages.^
Contents: King Coal -- The coal camps -- The miner's lot -- Death and danger in the mountains -- Old-time medicine -- The coal-camp doctor: I -- Coal-camp doctor: II -- Miners' hospitals -- The nurses -- The coal miner's nightmare: Black lung -- Miners and medicine today.