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In the 1800s, people who were sick often tried to cure themselves at home. Doctors were considered expensive, and hospitals were only for the very ill. Instead, people tried to remedies suggested by family or friends or turned to a book by a "professional"--similar to books about health that you can buy today.
Dr. A.W. Chase was an Ann Arbor physician who published one such book, Dr. Chase's Recipes, in 1865. Dr. Chase had an office on Main Street but realized that many of the city's residents wouldn't be able to afford a visit. He tried to make all of his cures in his book practical--based on ingredients that most people would already have in their homes--and he offered advice on everything from sore throats and coughs to cancer or heart problems. Many of the recipes could easily be made using ingredients in your house , but others probably aren't something you'd want to try today .
Dr. Chase had been trained as most doctors of the first half of the ninteenth century had--by working under another doctor as an apprentice. After the Civil War, however, the University of Michigan opened its first University Hospital and training school. Doctors like Chase, who didn't have an academic degree, were facing increasing competition. He acknowledged this competition in his recipe book:
Many persons will stick up their noses at these 'Old Grandmother prescriptions,' but I tell many 'upstart physicians' that our grandmothers are carrying more information out of the world by their deaths, than will every be processed by these 'sniffers'...