Bad ale and even worse water? Drinking during the gold rush.

19 Monday Mar 2018

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Beechworth, Gold rush diseases, Gold rush food, Gold rush health, Gold rush sanitation

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Alcohol, Ale, Beer, Billson's Brewery, Ginger Beer, Honeysuckle Inn, Raspberry Vinegar, Spruce Beer, Violet Town

By now, dear readers, you would all know how I like to question historical myths and anecdotes. In this post, I’m going to take issue with two: the first being that ‘in the olden days’ people drank alcohol instead of water to avoid getting sick; and the second, that colonial beer was bad because it was watered down.

Image: Hongreddotbrewhouse, via wikimedia commons.

Did people stick to drinking alcohol as a ‘safe’ alternative to drinking dirty water? And what else did they drink?

One of the most persistent ideas I’ve heard that grates on me as a historian is that people ‘in the olden days’ only drank alcohol, because it was safer than drinking water; or at least they were encouraged to do so. This idea is framed as conventional wisdom, but take a moment to think about it: this would have meant that almost everyone was constantly either drunk or tipsy (even children!); and quite clearly, they weren’t. Alcohol is also a diuretic, which means that it isn’t especially thirst quenching. Anyone who’s spent even a night drinking alcohol and nothing else with tell you about ‘the dry horrors’ the next day. For purely practical reasons, people couldn’t have drunk alcohol continuously.

So what else is wrong with the supposition that everyone drank alcohol instead of water? To begin with, prior to the 1880s, people had no idea that disease was transmitted by microbes and that these microbes could be water-borne. However, people did make a correlation between a lower incidence of illness and the availability of clear running water. William Murdoch, the attendant and tent-keeper to Assistant Commissioner Clow, said as much at the Spring Creek Commissioner’s camp on 20 November, 1852:

I think this is a very unhealthsome place — everyone has had a sort of influenza accompanied with dysentery — I have had a good touch but I think I have got the better of it yet the water is good here and plenty of it. The creek at the side of our camp is very fast and runs very deep but I daresay butcher’s meat is a great cause of it. Flesh must be eaten two hours after butchering or else it is crawling with large maggots. As soon as the fly blows them they seem to live and grow almost as you eat a meal — the piece will be alive before you stop eating. [1]

However, from this statement, you also can see his confusion: Murdoch was happy to be drinking the water from Spring Creek because it looked clear (even though it was almost undoubtedly polluted with the excrement of the gold diggers), and he attributed the illness on the diggings to another cause entirely: the maggoty meat.

When an outbreak of an unknown illness, dubbed ‘low’ or ‘colonial fever,’ killed numerous people on the Buckland diggings in the summer of 1853-4, William Howitt attributed the disease to bad flour and bad air, rather than the falling water levels in the heavily polluted Buckland River.

29^th January 1854

Partly, I suspect, from the bad flour sent thither, but still more from causes connected with the situation, there is a great deal of sickness here. Though the diggings are but of a few weeks old, there is a considerable burying ground already, where you see numbers of fresh graves surrounded by a rude paling, and on the post at each corner placed a square of turf, the digger’s monument!

These deep valleys, inclosed between steep, wooded mountains, are intensely hot, and rarely traversed by any wind. There are vast jungles here and there where the valleys opens out into flats, and everywhere the soil is of a light porous quality, which absorbs the rain like a sponge, and in the heat exhales malaria. You may smell the dry-rot of decaying roots of trees as you walk over the surface. A species of low fever prevails, and has attacked, more or less, almost every tent. [2]

Despite the tendency to blame bad food and bad air for illness on the diggings, let’s assume for a moment that people did actually blame dirty water, and therefore sought substitutes for clean water when none was available. Clearly the substitute wasn’t solely alcohol. Instead, it seems that the most common drink on gold diggings was in fact tea.

While staying at Bontharambo (near Wangaratta), in 1854, Mary Spencer observed that ‘far less wine appears to be taken by the gentlemen in Australia than in England. Tea is the chief beverage. I have never seen such tea drinkers.’ [3] Spencer may or may not have been referring specifically to upper classes when she referred to ‘gentlemen’, however, there is little to indicate that the entire digging population weren’t hardened tea drinkers. Tea could disguise the taste of dirty water, and although the health benefits of boiling the water were not clearly understood, putting the camp kettle or billy on was a ritual for virtually every gold digger. (As an aside, on the basis of advertisements from The Argus, it would seem that the tea on the goldfields in 1852-3 was mainly Chinese in origin, and that people drank both black and green teas.)

However, it still doesn’t appear that people actually avoided unboiled water: Edward Ridpath, a digger who was an early arrival on the Spring and Reid’s Creek diggings, reported that ‘during the summer refreshment tents were numerous over the diggings, where ginger beer, lemonade, raspberry vinegar, and spruce beer were sold.’ [4] While the spruce beer and ginger beer were brewed, and therefore boiled; the syrup-based drinks probably used unboiled water.

I don’t doubt that a lot of hard-drinking was done on the diggings during the gold rush. A browse of the newspaper advertisements of the period will tell you that anyone with access to the Melbourne markets could buy brandy, Scottish whiskey, Jamaican rum, gin (and the Dutch gin-like spirit genever), wine (French: Médoc claret [i.e.: Bordeaux], Margaux [i.e.: cabernet sauvignon], Sauternes and Champagne), Portuguese sherry, bottled beer, stout, porter and cider. However, no matter how much alcohol was consumed, there is no evidence that people did so for reasons of health. Everyone also drank a lot of tea, and yet there is still also no evidence that people did so to prevent illness. And in any case, virtually everyone on the diggings still experienced some form of water-borne illness.

Eugene von Guerard, the inside of a digger’s tent in 1853. The kettle, ready for making tea, is a stand-alone item.

Bad Ale at the Honeysuckle Inn

Almost everyone coming from Melbourne to the Ovens diggings during late 1852 and throughout 1853, stopped at certain pubs along the way. One of the most remarked upon was the Honeysuckle Inn, at what became Violet Town. The thing that has always intrigued me about the Honeysuckle Inn during the gold rush is the comments about the beer being awful. Here’s what Thomas Woolner had to say in November 1852: ‘We camped today at Honeysuckle Creek: there is a large tavern where enormous prices are charged, 1/6 for a glass of bad ale, 3/6lb for common cheese.’ [1] And here’s what William Howitt (who was travelling with his son 22-year-old son Alfred and his friends), had to say in December: ‘We found everything now monstrously dear on the roads, the nearer we got to the diggings. My youngsters, at an inn called The Honeysuckle, would insist on my having a pint of beer. It was 3s., and most disgustingly vapid…’ [2]

It’s easy to explain the complaints about the expense. We can get a sense of the cost firstly by the fact that it was one shilling and sixpence in November, and then by December — by which time thousands of gold seekers were heading up the Sydney Road — a whole three shillings (i.e.: double the price). Secondly, we can compare these prices to a pot of ‘Billson’s Best Ale’, which was being made in Beechworth and was available on draught at local pubs for sixpence (half a shilling), fifteen years later. [3]

Aside from the cost, for years it’s intrigued me as to how and why was the beer so ‘disgusting’ as to be remarked upon. But how does a historian manage to work out why the beer tasted ‘vapid’ (i.e.: bland), more than 150 years after that beer was drunk? The common assumption is that the beer was watered down. However, other more meaningful answers to this question came to me late last week, while I was working on the history of Billson’s Brewery in Beechworth (which started as Billson’s Ovens Brewery in 1867, was renamed Murray Breweries in 1914 [4], and has recently been switched back to ‘Billson’s’ by new owner Nathan Cowan). Working on the history of Billson’s compelled me to think deeply about beer.

The key constituents of good beer — other than water — are yeast, malted Barley grains and hops. At the time of the Victorian gold rushes, most malt and hops were imported. In Britain, malt had been subject to a tax, which was major source of public revenue in the 18th century — a tax which was still in effect by the time of the gold rushes (the tax wasn’t repealed until 1880) [5]. In Australia, the expense of imported malt, to which freight and tax had been already added, drove many brewers to replace it in the ferment either in part or sometimes wholly with sugar (which, incidentally, came from the cane plantations of Mauritius). Moreover, beer brewed with sugar had the advantage of turning ‘bright’ in only a few days, as opposed to malted brews, which required far longer periods of maturation. And beers which had to be matured over a period of weeks or months, had to be stored in cellars — which, at the time, were also in relatively short supply.

The use of sugar in the brew is probably one factor that made the beer seem ‘vapid’ to many British gold seekers, who were used to beers brewed only with malt. In Britain, it had been illegal to make beer with sugar in the ferment until 1847 [6]; so even by 1852, British tastes probably still ran to traditional pure malt beers: hence William Howitt’s and Thomas Woolner’s distaste for the colonial brew.

The other factor that might have made the beer taste disgusting was that it might have gone bad in the heat. In the days before refrigeration, beer-brewed in the warmer months often deteriorated, and for this reason, some brewers only brewed over winter [7]. This certainly seems to have been the case for many decades at Billson’s Brewery in Beechworth, which advertised the release of its beers in September and October, also making capital of Beechworth’s cooler climate, and their cool cellars. [8] Conversely, the ale at the Honeysuckle Inn may well have been brewed cheaply and hastily with sugar to cater to the sudden influx of gold seekers, and then had been exposed to hot temperatures when Howitt and Woolner drank it in the summer of late 1852. It might also have been contaminated with microorganisms like Lactobacilli.

So what of the legacy of colonial ‘sugar beers’? Despite various moves in the industry throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to end its use, the propensity of Australian brewers to use sugar in their ferments has remained. Beechworth’s Alfred Billson was one of the purists, who wanted to ‘compel brewers to use only malt and hops in the manufacture of beer.’ However, these visions of enforcing beer purity laws never came to fruition, and even Billson had to admit, the public had grown used to its sugar beers, and now preferred the taste. [9] We still brew plenty of beer in Australia using sugar today.

As for the Honeysuckle Inn, it is now owned by my dear friends, Annette Walton and Andy Guerin, who have opened an art gallery in its front room. They assure me that they still serve ‘bad ale’ and ‘common cheese’.

Notes

Did people stick to drinking alcohol as a safe alternative to drinking dirty water?

[1] William Murdoch, A Journey to Australia in 1852 and Peregrinations in that Land of Dirt and Gold, unpublished diary manuscript (digital form), held by the Robert O-Hara Burke Memorial Museum. This is from an entry dated: 20 November, 1852.
[2] William Howitt, Land, Labour and Gold, or Two Years in Victoria, Volumes 1 & 2, Sydney University Press, 1972 [first edn: Longman, Brown, Green and Longman, London, 1855]; Volume 2, pp.153-4.
[3] Mary Spencer, Aunt Spencer’s Diary (1854): A Visit to Bontharambo and the North-east Victorian Goldfields, Neptune Press, Newtown, 1981, p.46.
[4] Edward Ridpath, Journal, transcription of letters to his father, possibly in his own hand, 1850-53? [manuscript MS 8759], State Library of Victoria, Box 1012/4 [Box also includes his gold license from 3 August 1853, p.32.

Bad Ale at the Honeysuckle Inn

[1] Thomas Woolner, Diary of Thomas Woolner, National Library of Australia, MS 2939, 12 November 1852.
[2] William Howitt, Land, Labour and Gold, or Two Years in Victoria, Volumes 1 & 2, Lowden Publishing Company, Kilmore, 1972 [first edn: Longman, Brown, Green and Longman, London, 1855]; Volume 1, p.81.
[3] Numerous advertisements in the Ovens and Murray Advertiser for the Temple Bar (e.g.: 28 November, 1867) in Ford Street show this price. The beer was being made by Billson’s Ovens Brewery in Loch Street.
[4] Confirmed by the Minutes of the Board of Directors of Murray Breweries, still held at the brewery in Last Street, Beechworth, today; and reported in Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 21 November 1914, p.2.
[5] Raymond A. Anderson, ‘The History of The Maltsters Association of Great Britain.’
[6] Dr Brett J. Stubbs, ‘Brewing with Sugar’ Brew News, September 5, 2011; Keith Farrer, To Feed a Nation, CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood, Victoria, 2005, p.86.
[7] ibid.
[8] An example would be an article from the Ovens and Murray Advertiser, Saturday, 2 June 1900, p.12, which states: ‘The specialty [of the brewery]… is the high-class character of the bottled ale turned out under the well-known brand, “Anglo-Australian Ale.” This high-class bottled ale is brewed only during the cold months of the year, and is made from a special malt suited to the production of such an article. … the demand for this ale exists all over the colony, and is even sent into the heart of New South Wales, …. the climate and water supply [of Beechworth are suited] for the brewing of high-class ale…’
[9] Corowa Free Press, 16 July 1901, p.3; Albury Banner and Wodonga Express, 19 July, 1901, p.31.

Personal hygiene, gold-rush style

04 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Beechworth, Gold rush diseases, Gold rush health, Gold rush medicine, Gold rush sanitation, Uncategorized

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Brown Windsor soap, White Windsor soap

These last couple of weeks, there has been quite a bit of viral gastroenteritis going around Beechworth, hot-on-the-heels of what would have to be one of the worst flu seasons in years. Last night at around 2am it hit our house… and as I was scraping projectile vomit from the bathroom walls, I began to think about issues of infection control in the era before microbiology and germ theory. What was personal hygiene like on the gold diggings?

Scanning electron micrograph of Escherichia coli

E. coli bacteria

If you’ve come across my earlier post, The problem with Poo, dealing with peoples’ toilet habits during the gold rushes of 1852, you will have realised that as a historian, I am far more fascinated with the minutiae of daily life than the rise and fall of empires. Ethnographic historian Robert Darnton, in the introduction to his wonderful book on the cultural history of France, The Great Cat Massacre, wrote that only when we look at trivial and taken-for-granted aspects of the past does it become fully apparent the extent to which the people who lived there did ‘not think the way we do.’ Darnton wrote:

…nothing is easier than to slip into the comfortable assumption that Europeans thought and felt two centuries ago just as we do today—allowing for the wigs and wooden shoes. We constantly need to be shaken out of a false sense of familiarity with the past, to be administered doses of culture shock. (1)

With this in mind, let us return to issues of hygiene during the gold rush era of the early 1850s: Imagine a world in which medical students walked straight from performing autopsies on decomposing corpses in one room to the maternity ward where they delivered babies in the next, without disinfecting their hands. This practice, which routinely happened at Vienna General Hospital, meant that women were actually safer delivering babies on the street than under medical care. In fact, local women were terrified of giving birth in that maternity ward; and yet most of the doctors saw no issue. Moreover, this ignorance of infection control was by no means atypical of hospitals around the world in the nineteenth century.

What came to set Vienna General Hospital apart from other hospitals was that in 1847, one of its doctors, Dr Ignaz Semmelweis, began to suspect that tiny particles of cadaverous material still present on the hands of doctors were working their way into the bodies of women and making them sick. Finally, he made students and staff wash their hands with chloride of lime after performing autopsies, which dramatically improved the survival rate of the women and the babies they delivered. Semmelweis, with his great powers of observation, had learned one fundamental aspect of infection control: disinfect your hands.

One would think that, furnished with such clear evidence, doctors everywhere would start disinfecting their hands with chloride of lime — but it just didn’t happen. Instead, Semmelweis’s ideas were actually regarded as unscientific by the medical community of the day. To most medical practitioners, the idea of tiny particles which couldn’t be seen by the naked eye being capable of actually killing people, was simply ludicrous. Semmelweis tried to push his theory, but the medical establishment wasn’t having a bar of it. It literally drove Semmelweis mad, and he was committed to a mental asylum where he died in 1865 at the age of 47.

The disinfectant which was being used by Semmelweis, chloride of lime (a mixture with slaked lime and calcium chloride to make Calcium hypochlorite), was the forerunner of today’s liquid bleach (sodium hypochlorite). It was available from chemists during the Victorian gold rushes, but probably was used predominantly as a bleaching agent for clothes. The cleaning product of the era which did kill many household pathogens (although not salmonella) because it contains roughly 5% acetic acid, was vinegar. However, once again, in the absence of germ theory, vinegar was not actively used with disinfection in mind. Moreover, basic hand hygiene was so unknown, and personal cleanliness so under-valued, that for more than one hundred years, the British (and its colonies) had seen no problem with taxing soap to make it a luxury item. When the tax was finally repealed in July 1853, Prime Minister Gladstone’s rationale was not to give poor people better access to soap, but rather “to extinguish the slave trade” by giving parts of Africa, rich in palm oil, a solid source of income. (If you are interested in what type of luxury soap was available during the gold rush, see below.)

What can all these facts tell us about life during the Spring and Reid’s Creek gold rush in 1852-3? In short, no one thought any the worse of you if you went and relieved your bowels in a hole, wiped your rear-end up with a rag, changed the dressing on your friend’s dirty, pus-filled wound, and then came and broke bread with your mates — all without washing your hands. Little wonder most diggers experienced the most horrendous dysentery and trachoma (chlamydia infection of the eyes) — often repeatedly — and yet struggled to understand why it was happening to them. Instead, they genuinely thought themselves the victims of bad food or bad smells. (2)

These days we have vaccinations to protect us from most of the worst diseases, and antibiotics to deal with bacterial infections. These medical advances have meant that as a society, once again — but unlike our forebears, not for reasons of ignorance — we have become quite laissez-faire about personal hygiene. Where has it got us? The answer is not very far when it comes to viral gastroenteritis. And now it’s at my house. It’s time to break out the bleach, and spend more time washing hands.

Notes

The virtual absence of disinfection on the gold digging still doesn’t explain all the disease on the goldfields. Assistant surgeon general of the Commissioner’s Camp at Spring Creek, Dr Henry Green, died of typhus fever (i.e.: not typhoid) within three months of his appointment. (3) Typhus fever — a bacterial disease spread by fleas and body lice — probably owed its presence on the gold diggings to the high number of flea-ridden dogs, which is another story altogether.

(1) Robert Darnton, The great cat massacre and other episodes in French cultural history, New York, Basic Books, 1984, p.4.
(2) To see some examples as to how people were baffled by these illnesses, and how they attributed them to the wrong sources, read my earlier post, The problem with Poo.
(3) The Victorian parliamentary paper, Gold Fields: Return to Address, Mr Fawkner — 10th Dec 1852, Laid upon the Council Table by the Colonial Secretary, by command of his Excellency Lieutenant Governor, printed 27 Sept 1853, lists Dr Green, Henry. Esq as being appointed assistant colonial surgeon to May Day Hills on 19 November 1852, on page 8. His death appears in ‘Scraps from the Ovens,’ The Argus , 25 February 1853, says he died on the 20 February.

Luxury Soap during the Gold Rush Era

The most commonly advertised soaps were white and brown ‘Windsor’ soaps, so named after the location in which they were traditionally made in London.

Perfumery and kindred arts: a comprehensive treatise on perfumery,
by Cristiani, R. S. (published by Richard S., 1877) explains:

‘Windsor soap is manufactured in this country with soda and sweet oil, or any good vegetable oil, and perfumed chiefly with essential oil of caraway.’

Cristiani gives this ratio of essential oils for Old Brown Windsor Soap:
Oil of bergamot… 4 ounces.
caraway. . . .2oz
cassia. . . .2oz (cassia is a type of cinnamon)
lavender. . . .8oz
cloves . . . . 1oz
petit-grain …1oz

George William Septimus Piesse, The Art of Perfumery And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants, Philadelphia, Lindsay and Blakiston, 1857, gives these ratios for essential oils in brown and white windsor soaps:

Ratio of oils for Old Brown Windsor Soap:
caraway
cloves
thyme
cassia
petit grain
French lavender (all equal parts)

Ratio of oils for White Windsor Soap:
caraway 1 1/2
thyme 1/2
rosemary 1/2
cassia 1/4
cloves 1/4

The problem with poo: Why the Ovens gold rush was a shi**y time.

12 Saturday Nov 2016

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Californian gold rush, Gold rush, Gold rush diseases, Gold rush health, Gold rush sanitation

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Blowflies, Chlamydia, Cholera, Dogs, Dysentery, Flies, Fly-blown, Ophthalmia, Sandy Blight, Toilets, Trachoma

As a historian, it’s difficult to write about peoples’ toilet habits during the gold rush, because no one at the time mentioned something so unmentionable in their letters, diaries or newspaper reports. Nevertheless, I’ve been threatening to write about this topic for a while now — so here it is.

(Image: Soebe)

I can tell you with confidence that each one of the 8000 or so diggers on Spring and Reid’s Creeks in the summer of 1852-3 took a shit at least once but probably twice a day (despite the widespread constipation, due to lack of dietary fibre), which made at least 50,000 bogs over the course of January alone. You can probably add to that at least another 10,000 dog shits. There were no toilets, so the Ovens diggings must have been a shitty place.

In all honesty, I don’t know what happened to all that human and dog waste. As yet, I haven’t come across a single first-hand reference to what people did when they needed to go to the toilet on the Ovens goldfields. I can only extrapolate — on the basis of the health status of most individuals on the goldfields — that the shit flowed freely, as literally everyone got a dose of something special.

‘Troubled with the backdoor’

Imagine something like the Folk Rhythm and Life Festival, but set in a natural disaster zone, where our local turd tosser par excellence Hamish Skermer has given up on his concept of Pootopia for festival goers. (That’s the closest analogy I can come up with when I think of the gold rush.) The first thing that happens is that everyone gets ‘Troubled with the backdoor…’ which is how American digger Gordon Tucker described the effects of the dysentery he experienced on the Spring Creek diggings [1]. Of course, Tucker didn’t record in his diary where he went to relieve himself when he experienced the diarrhoea which accompanied his fever and abdominal pain, but he was surrounded by gold diggings, so there were plenty of holes when he was in a hurry, and of course the Creek itself.

If we remember that in November 1852, the faecal-oral transmission of disease wasn’t yet understood, we might understand how young Scottish-born Policeman William Murdoch managed to conclude that everyone getting diarrhoea wasn’t much to do with contaminated water:

I think this is a very unhealthsome place — everyone has had a sort of influenza accompanied with dysentery — I have had a good touch but I think I have got the better of it yet the water is good here and plenty of it. The creek at the side of our camp is very fast and runs very deep but I daresay butcher’s meat is a great cause of it. [2a]

A reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald likewise concluded that the prevalence of illness on the diggings was something to do with meat:

With regard to the physical condition of the people here, I am sorry to say that a great deal of sickness prevails here. A low billious fever very generally prevails, with some lingering remnants of influenza, of which last I am myself suffering under a severe attack. There is also a great deal of blight, and dysentery, the last arising I doubt not in great measure from the meat, which is frequently cooked in a hot and quivering state. [2b]

The butchers’ meat might have been a problem for other reasons, but what clean water there was (visually, at least) in Spring Creek didn’t last long. A month later, William Howitt described it and the water of Reid’s Creek as ‘fetid’ and ‘Stygian’, and the holes in which the diggers laboured as being filled with ‘sludge, filth and confusion’ [3]. ‘Stygian’ is a term easily lost on us today, but it refers to the river Styx, which in ancient Roman mythology flowed from Hades (the underworld). In other words, Howitt was saying that the water looked and smelt like it had been ejaculated from the bowels of Hell; and to one degree or other, everyone worked in it.

Let’s add some general context to this picture: It would still be a few years before toilet paper was commercially available, and many of those who came to Australia aboard English clipper ships had instead used a communal rag, soaked in vinegar. At the same time, the British had levied a tax on soap, which had done little to encourage its general use. Given the situation, you’d imagine that people would have thought twice when someone passed them a piece of food with their bare hands in 1852, except that no one knew about pathogens like bacteria. Plenty of people still thought that diseases were caused by miasmas — bad air.

Fortunately, dysentery was rarely fatal (unlike the more virulent cholera, which had taken out thousands of diggers en route to the California gold rushes just a few years before). Nevertheless, a few diggers on Spring Creek died alone in their tents, while others were saved only by the goodwill of strangers. Wrote A. Waight in a letter to his sister Elizabeth,

we worked here pretty well for new beginnings for the first week & then I was taken ill with the Dysentery & the other 3 left off work and said they had enough of it & so they took the Horse & Cart & left me to my fate although I was near Dying in fact if it had not been for the kindness of a Woman who is near my tent I do not think I should have recovered. [4]

Maggots and matter

The other thing that happens when you have shit absolutely everywhere (human, dog and horse shit too) is that you end up with oodles of blowflies. This meant that everything on the Ovens diggings that could be, was, fly-blown. As Murdoch explained, ‘Flesh must be eaten two hours after butchering or else it is crawling with large maggots. As soon as the fly blows [a piece of meat] they seem to live and grow almost as you eat a meal — the piece will be alive before you stop eating.’ [5] In fact, things were flyblown, dead or alive. William Howitt told a story of how one man, ‘hurt his eye with the handle of a windlass; and the next morning, feeling a strange creeping sensation in it, he got up and to his horror saw it alive with maggots.’ [6]

The flies also spread what the diggers called ophthalmia or sandy blight, which we now call trachoma: a bacterial infection of the eye caused by Chlamydia trachomatis. On the goldfields, the dusty conditions left peoples’ eyes scoured by dirt particles, making them more susceptible to infection; and this, combined with the lack of sanitation, meant that when a fly carrying Chlamydia landed someone’s eye, the chances of them getting trachoma — with irritation, discharge (conjunctivitis), swelling of the eyelids, and temporary loss of vision — were high.

William Murdoch offered this graphic account of the disease:

I again have got sore eyes which is called sandy blight which is very irritating and annoying besides half blinding one. The eyes gush with matter continually and some time in quantities of small pieces like butter among churned milk. So it is anything but pleasant besides the disfiguration. [7]

To this we can add Howitt’s description:

Almost every third man that you meet up the country in summer is half blind… Some of our party have had their eyes much inflamed for a week or more, when they have swelled up like two great eggs, just as if their owner had been fighting; and then they turn black. In a morning the sufferers cannot open them till they have been washed with warm water. Our dogs have suffered too. [8]

And once again, people were ignorant of the bacterial source of the disease. Mrs Campbell wrote:

This very common complaint upon the gold-fields is said by some to be caused by the flies laying eggs in the corners of the eyes; others, however, attribute it to the hot sand-storms. In my case, I cannot say what brought it on, but know that I had a narrow escape from blindness. For a week, I could not even see a gleam of light; and the fear of remaining in that state made me cry so much, that it aggravated the disease, so that when we moved, G. had to be my guide, leading me from room to room. [9]

But at least they recognised that flies and dust played a role in the disease — so most people on the goldfields wore gauze over the face: ‘everyone wears green, black or brown veils; the ladies shades also.’ [10] So if you’ve ever wondered about the development of the Akubra hat with wine-corks hanging from the rim, you can probably thank Chlamydia.

These days in Beechworth, we’re a lot wiser to principles of disease and basic sanitation. But if you happen to be going to the Beechworth Music Festival or Folk Rhythm and Life this summer, be thankful for the modern conveniences of porta-loos; and if you’re camping there, maybe take some sanitised hand-wipes. And remember, we still have Chlamydia — which these days is predominantly a sexually transmitted disease (readily treatable with a single dose of antibiotics), so maybe take some condoms too.*

*First manufactured in 1855, when they were about the same thickness as a bicycle inner-tube.

Notes

[1] Gordon Tucker, Journal, 1853 Apr. 12-1857 June 6. Manuscript 10649, State Library of Victoria. This entry: Thursday 8 – Sat 10 December 1853.
[2a] William Murdoch, A Journey to Australia in 1852 and Peregrinations in that Land of Dirt and Gold, unpublished diary manuscript (digital form), held by the Robert O-Hara Burke Memorial Museum. This is from an entry dated: 20 November, 1852.
[2b] ‘The Ovens Gold Field (From our special reporter) S[ring Creek, Ovens district, January 13, 1853,’ The Sydney Morning Herald, Monday 24 January 1853, p 2
[3] William Howitt, Land, Labour and Gold, Or Two Years in Victoria, Lowden Publishing Company, Kilmore, 1972 [original first published 1855], pp. 95, 99.
[4] A. Waight, Letter to his sister Elizabeth, 20th Nov 1852, National Library of Australia, MS:2279.
[5] William Murdoch, 20 November, 1852.
[6] William Howitt, op cit, p.100.
[7] William Murdoch, op cit, 6 March, 1853.
[8] William Howitt, op cit, p. 128.
[9] Mrs A. Campbell, Rough and smooth, or, Ho! for an Australian gold field, Hunter, Rose & Co., Quebec, 1865, p.104-5.
[10] Mary Spencer, Aunt Spencer’s Diary (1854): A Visit to Bontharambo and the North-east Victorian Goldfields, Neptune Press, Newtown, 1981, p.42.

A Gold Rush Medicine Chest

20 Saturday Aug 2016

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Beechworth, Gold rush, Gold rush health, Gold rush medicine

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Beechworth, Dover’s Powder, Friar's balsam, James’ Antimonial Fever Powder, Peruvian bark, Sal Volatile, Seidlitz powders

Anyone living on the Spring Creek diggings at the height of the gold rush in late 1852 put themselves at risk of serious and potentially fatal illness. Dysentery, ophthalmia (trachoma), and infection from injury were commonplace, as was an unidentified and often fatal illness described as ‘low fever’. This led me to wonder exactly what medicines the gold diggers had to treat illness, and more importantly, if any of them actually worked.

bottles of ingredients for pharmacy

(This post is quite long, so I have put each medicine in bold type to allow you to skim read.)

Let’s start with what seems to have been the most commonly sold item for the gold digger’s medicine chest: the laxative Senna leaf. On one hand, the gold diggers’ diets lacked vegetables and fibre, so they must have suffered terrible constipation; and on the other, dysentery was probably the single biggest medical issue on the goldfields. Accordingly, almost everything the gold diggers could buy to ‘physic’ themselves worked to relieve bowel problems or stomach upsets of one kind of another (either indigestion, constipation, diarrhoea or flatulence). You can still buy Senna leaf laxatives in the supermarket today.

The next two most common items seem to have been Laudanum (a tincture of opium) and Powdered bark. Although one might imagine that the Powdered bark so commonly advertised was willow bark (from which Aspirin was synthesised in 1853), it was in fact the bark of the Cinchona tree (hence its other name, Peruvian bark), which contains Quinine. This was both anti-malarial and more significantly for the Victorian gold diggers, antipyretic (fever-reducing). Quinine is still used medically today, and you’ll also find small quantities of it in tonic water.

Laudanum was a powerful analgesic (painkiller), and could also be used as a sedative. (Battley’s Liq. Opii Sed. [ie: “Liquor Opii Sedativus”] — a patented preparation of macerated opium in distilled water, preserved with alcohol — was advertised specifically as a sedative.) Although it is not openly stated, Laudanum may also have been used as an antipropulsive medicine as it slows down the movement of the gut, which could have been beneficial in cases of acute diarrhoea. Another opium-derived drug, Morphia (Morphine) would become more popular after hypodermic syringes were invented in 1853, and has been in use ever since.

A detailed advertisement by a Chemist warehouse in the Geelong Advertiser (Friday, 10 January 1851, p.1) addressed ‘to settlers, bush surgeons, storekeepers, others’ provided a substantial list of its stock, which enables me to expand this basic list of medicinals. All of the medicines (even patented ones) were either chemical compounds, or herbal — in which case they were sold either in a raw form, such as bark, leaves, roots, balsams (resinous saps), and seeds; or as processed plant materials in the form of oils and tinctures. There were also patent medicines, the most famous of which was the cure-all Holloway’s Pills.

It’s probably no mistake that laxatives assumed even greater significance when the opium-based analgesics of the day caused constipation. Other than Senna leaf, strong laxatives included Milk of Magnesia (a white suspension of hydrated magnesium carbonate in water, used as an antacid or laxative), Turkey Rhubarb (Rheum palmatum root), Castor Oil (obtained from castor beans), Epsom Salts, and Seidlitz powders (similar to Rochelle Salt)— a patented medicine, combining tartaric acid, potassium sodium tartrate, and sodium bicarbonate.

Given that almost everyone on the goldfields experienced dysentery, people also took various herbs to reduce the severity of digestive problems. Cape aloes (Aloe vera) was taken to relieve digestive discomfort and Caraway seeds and oil were thought to help with intestinal irritation and digestive problems. Peppermint oil could be used to settle the stomach and combat flatulence. Other digestive tonics included Gentian root (Gentiana lutea) now found in Angostura bitters; Cascarilla bark (Croton eluteria), which was often made into a tincture as a digestive tonic, stimulant and fever reducer, and today is used to flavour the digestif Campari and the apéritif Vermouth; and Columbo root (Jateorhiza sp.) and Angostura bark (Cusparia febrifuga) were both used as tonics. I wondered why Ginger wasn’t sold at chemists for the purpose of calming the stomach, but this is probably because it was so widely available in Ginger Beer.

Clove oil, an analgesic and antiseptic, was used to relieve the pain of toothaches, just as it is today. Myrrh balsam (a resin obtained from the Commiphora myrrh tree) was likewise used as an analgesic for toothache, and as an antiseptic in mouthwashes (in a tincture with borax), throat gargles and toothpastes.

Various herbal preparations were used as topical skin treatments, either for their anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, anti-fungal and/or anti-puritic (anti-itching) properties. Lavender oil is mildly antiseptic, as is Myrrh and possibly Burgundy Pitch — a resin from the Pini burgundica tree. Peppermint oil or tincture of peppermint could be used topically as an anti-puritic because it is cooling, and Cape aloes (Aloe vera) was also employed for its soothing effects. However, it is likely that one of the most popular preparations was Friars balsam, now commonly referred to as Compound Benzoin Tincture. This contains Benzoin (the resin that is exuded from the bark of the Styrax benzoin tree), Cape aloes, Storax (Liquidamber resin) and sometimes Tolu or Peru balsam (obtained from the Myroxolon balsamum tree). Compound Benzoin Tincture’s main medical use is still as a treatment for damaged skin, as it can be applied to minor cuts as a stypic (stops bleeding) and antiseptic (an effect of both the benzoin and its alcohol solvent). It is technically a ‘medical varnish’ forming a sealing over raw tissue to protect wounds from ingress of bacteria (but by the same token it can ‘seal in’ bacteria). Applied to itching and inflamed areas of skin, it reduces inflammation and calms and cools. Applied to broken blisters, cracked nipples, anal or heel fissures, or even chillblains, it protects against infection and promotes healing.

Muscle aches and pains, sprains and rheumatism could be relieved with liniments incorporating Burgundy Pitch, Camphor (from the wood of the Cinnamomum camphora tree) and/or Myrrh. Also in common use were mustard plasters — a poultice of mustard seed spread inside a protective dressing and applied to the body to promote healing. It would warm muscle tissues and was used for chronic aches and pains.

Treatments used to relieve the symptoms of cold and flu included Camphor, often appearing as Camphorated spirit of wine (a tincture of camphor), which along with Peppermint oil (from which menthol is derived), was used as a nasal decongestant. These are still used in steam vapour products today. Both Aniseed oil and Spanish liquorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra) were probably used as expectorants to loosen up and liquefy mucus. As a stimulant to mucous membranes, Cascarilla bark was also used as an expectorant. Tolu balsam, tapped from the living trunks of the South American tree Myroxylon toluiferum, is still used in certain cough syrup formulas. Plain Tincture of Benzoin was also inhaled in steam as a treatment for bronchitis and colds.

Lavender oil was used for treating headaches; and along with Camomile purchased as dried flowers, was thought to help relieve insomnia and stress.

Trachoma (a contagious bacterial infection of the eye) was a huge problem on the goldfields, so Dr Parke’s Eye Lotion, and Russell and Turner’s Celebrated Eye Water, would have found large markets, despite the fact that they were probably ineffective. I have no idea what went into them.

Although advertised as a treatment for consumption (tuberculosis) and ‘general debility,’ Cod liver oil was actually useful in preventing rickets in children because of its high levels of Vitamin D.

One medical idea that no longer holds currency is the notion that purging people with emetics (to make you vomit), and diaphoretics (to make you perspire), could halt the advance of fevers. The Ipecacuanha powder (obtained from the dried rhizome and roots of Carapichea ipecacuanha) that was used for this purpose, is still used as an emetic today in the syrup form, Ipecac. Along with Opium, Ipecacuanha was the other key ingredient in Dover’s Powder, designed to induce vomiting and sweating. James’ Antimonial Fever Powder was yet another proprietary medicine which induced vomiting and voiding of bowels. When taken in large doses, Angostura bark also caused diarrhoea, and so was often used as a purgative. With its diuretic, diaphoretic, and antispasmodic properties, Spirit of Sweet Nitre — a tincture of ethyl nitrite — was also used.

Chemists of the day also sold ammonia-based smelling salts to arouse consciousness such as Sal Volatile, and similarly, Spirit of Hartshorn — a distillation of horn shavings that produced ammonia, in a tincture.

Treatments for venereal disease comprised the toxic Calomel (Mercury(I) chloride): yet another purgative and laxative that was both taken internally and used topically to treat syphilis (it may have been more useful topically, as Mercurochrome is also mercury-based). Copaiba balsam, a stimulant oleoresin tapped from the trunk of South American Copaifera tree, was taken as a liquid, as it was thought to the sooth inflammation caused by gonorrhoea. Sarsaparilla Root (Smilax regelii) was also believed to be a treatment for or preventative against venereal disease, possibly because of its diuretic effects of flushing the urethra after intercourse. (On a related note, the first rubber condom would not be produced until 1855.)

Finally, in 1852 you could buy the general anaesthetic Chloroform over the counter… and hope no one would ever have to use it, as aseptic conditions for surgery (partly through the use of Phenol), would not be developed for at least another twenty years.

Life on Spring Creek

Category Archives: Gold rush health

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