For U.S. pioneers, Indians and the weather were mild risks compared with the dangers of sicknessand doctoring. In The Midwest Pioneer, His Ills, Cures & Doctors (R. E. Banta, $5), published last fortnight, Indiana Historians Madge E. Pickard and R. Carlyle Buley tell about the medical terrors of the early Century.
Ague and Hypo. Advertisements circulated to lure western settlers referred to the climate as "salubrious," but a rhyme got around that had more truth in it:
Don't go to Michigan, that land of ills,
The word means ague, fever and chills.
Malaria flourished the length of the Mississippi and the Ohio. The itch, typhoid,...