Dentistry in the Old West was dangerous… if a body could find a dentist.
Doc Holliday (of Tombstone and O.K. Corral fame) was a dentist– and a gambler.
Clay Allison attacked his dentist with intent to rip out the doc’s molar–“tooth for tooth.”
Victorian attitudes, being what they were, separated the sexes. Women should be nurturers, mothers, wives, and homemakers. Men should be protectors, breadwinners, and if either partner in marriage were to engage in business or education, it would be he.
Many single women hoping to find a spouse between 1865 and 1869 attended college. Ambitious women enrolled in schools across the eastern portion of the states were seeking to become doctors, lawyers, and journalists. Unfortunately for these ladies, men viewed female college graduates as poor homemakers, and the few eligible bachelors around kept their distance from educated ladies.
~ Object: Matrimony, The Risky Business of Mail-Order Matchmaking on the Western Frontier, by Chris Enss, p 36
