Wade, I have done some looking around and it is a bit of a mishmash to figure out some things as most of the doctors of the time either had their initial training in France or England usually although many in the US of the time may have gotten their training in Pennsylvania possibly.
The first Medical College in America was founded at the University of Pennsylvania in 1765. American medicine in the mid-19th century was a far cry from today’s curriculum of 4 years of college, 4 years of medical school, and 3-6 years of residency training.
Most aspiring doctors would spend a few months in a medical school for 2 terms, often without having a college degree, then spend a year or two apprenticed to a practicing doctor where they would learn the practical aspects of patient care. Medical students were renowned for their raucous and drunken behavior. Most medical schools in America were privately owned and run by individual doctors.
Medical techniques were still rudimentary. No anesthesia, save for perhaps intoxicating the patient with liquor, was available at that time for surgery – even ether was not yet available. A surgeon was prized for his ability to perform operations quickly due to the pain, and a good surgeon could, for example, amputate a leg in about 2 minutes.
Antibiotics were still decades in the future, so post-op infections were the rule, with mortality rates for even simple operations running about 50%. Wounds were usually cauterized with boiling oil or hot pokers after surgery.
Medicine theory was still grounded in the passive, nature-based principles of Hippocrates, a Greek physician from 4th century BC, and Galen, the 2nd century AD Roman physician. Some herbs were available in 19th century America and some plants were used, such as the foxglove plant which provided digitalis for dropsy, or congestive heart failure, but the mechanism of action was unknown and doses were not precise.
With standard medicine in such a state, many people sought out herbalists or homeopaths who, even if their nostrums were ineffective, at least did little harm and let the patient heal by themselves if possible. This was preferable to the frequent bloodletting or provision of emetics and strong purgatives to make the patient vomit or have diarrhea which were among the “heroic medicine” treatments most doctors used at the time.
One resource you may want to check with is this that I found which is "A Guide to Pharmacy Museums and Historical Collections in the United States and Canada". there are quite a few Museums in several states that you may be able to contact and speak to someone if you can't personally visit them, including one in San Antonio according to the publication of 1999
www.pharmacy.wisc.edu/AIHP/museumguide.pdfSupposedly the San Antonio Museum includes:
Exhibits represent twenty-seven ethnic and cultural groups with Texan
heritage and include a medico-pharmaceutical display. It contains artifacts
and illustrations of frontier medical practice and an early Texas apothecary
restoration of fixtures, tools, and pharmaceutical vessels and glassware.
