RIH AT 100: Medicine in early Kamloops
Natives had healing rituals and treatments long before Europeans arrived in the Thompson Valley, using tree roots and bark, leaves and berries to treat ailments.
When traders and settlers began arriving in the area in the 19th century, though, they brought with them “modern medicine”.
An 1877 supply list for Fort Kamloops included a number of medicinal ingredients.
Among them were cod liver oil, stick and powdered sulphur, seidlitz powders, chlorodyne, bitter aloes, tartaric acid, powdered rhubarb, copaiba balsam and cherry pectoral — all of which were recognized medicines of the time.
Some of the more vague remedies on the list were Black Draught, Blue Pills, Seven Seals, Golden Wonder, Wright’s Sugar-coated Pills, Mustang Liniment, Kennedy’s Medical Discovery, Abolition Oil, Cockles’ Pills and Perry’s Painkiller.
All of this was six years before there was even a doctor in the area.
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