Medical Caregiving and Identity in Pennsylvania's Anthracite Region, 1880–2000

5. Miners, Masculinity, and Medical Self-Help

5 Miners, Masculinity, and Medical Self-Help Like others in the anthracite coal region, miners developed a system of self-help therapies and remedies designed to deal with the physical problems they experienced as a result of their work. Specifically, men employed alcohol, tobacco, and patent medicines to treat wounds, fight the ravages of black lung, and deal with rheumatism.1 And just as neighborhood women worked in and from a variety of medical spaces, miners too depended on specific locations where they might obtain relief. The mines, the saloon, the local store, and the world of mail order medicines encompassed the medical universe in which they moved. Local critics as well as large-scale medical and social changes challenged miners’ use of substances such as alcohol, tobacco, and patent medicine. Despite the long-standing use of alcohol and tobacco as medicinals in American culture, miners’ medicine was misunderstood ; the laborers were charged with intemperance and wastefulness, and their medical needs, especially in regard to black lung, were ignored or dismissed. Like many working-class Americans, coal miners embraced selfreliance . In addition to relying on themselves medically, miners practiced domestic self-help and emphasized economic self-sufficiency. Their first lessons in self-sufficiency came at an early age—young boys scoured culm banks looking for coal that could be used in the family stove or sold by the bag to other townspeople. Men also grew large gardens; raised chickens, 100 Y medical caregiving and identity rabbits, and goats; picked mushrooms and berries; and hunted wild game to supplement their families’ incomes. In times of economic crisis and unemployment, they willingly committed what the company considered criminal acts to survive. Specifically, during the Great Depression, many unemployed miners engaged in bootleg mining to support themselves and their families. Relying on their own tools, ingenuity, wooden props hewn from local forests, and old oil barrels, friends and neighbors mined for coal on company-owned property.2 Such self-reliance extended to providing their own health care. Although the professional medical practitioners and institutions of the anthracite region focused upon boys and men as their main clients, male workers preferred to take care of their own health. Company doctors, physicians in private practice, miners’ hospitals, and benefits associations all had their limitations. Most important, none of these people or establishments could offer relief from black lung; in fact, many company doctors concluded that it did not exist and sided with the mine companies when miners sought compensation for their industrial injuries. Historian Alan Derickson wrote that, in 1902, physician William Dolan “testified that his survey of poorhouse residents turned up only thirty-three cases of miners ’ asthma, most of whom he dismissed as disabled primarily by alcohol, not mine dust.”3 Likewise, miners’ hospitals helped men survive mining accidents, but left them amputees and too disabled to care for their families . The paternalistic attitude of professional medical practitioners did not sit well with the men and boys who were the primary recipients of medical care. Similarly, the sedate masculinity expected in miners’ hospitals did not match the rough manliness of miners and mine workers. Given the limitations and deficiencies of professional medical institutions and practitioners, boys and men learned to take care of themselves.4 Moreover, male laborers were not the primary patrons of the neighborhood women. In the sharply divided gendered world of the anthracite coal region, boys and men knew their places and spaces. By and large, herbalists , midwives, and passers cared for other women or for small children. Many single foreign-born men cut expenses by sharing housing costs; such arrangements excluded a woman’s touch, particularly the medical expertise she might offer these young men.5 The boys who worked in the mines wanted more than anything to be considered men and to earn money for their families. In many cases, these young men were the primary breadwinners for their fatherless brothers and sisters and widowed mothers. The swagger they displayed extended to the care of their own bodies. Miners made do with the things of their world—alcohol, tobacco, spit, and piss, as miners, masculinity, and medical self-help Y 101 well as medicines bought at the local or company store, at the drug store, and via the mail. Medical self-help was a long-standing tradition both in the United States and in the countries from which immigrants came. Over the course of the nation...