Health in the days before antibiotics meant that a stubbed toe, a knife cut, or even a scraped knee could lead to death by infection. It was easy to step on a shovel or cut yourself, and it was a "big deal." Complications of the common cold and childhood diseases could quickly turn into a life-threatening situation. Parents gave their children Ovaltine and dosed them with cod liver oil to keep them healthy. They treated injuries and illnesses with whatever they thought would help.

In the early days the thirty-five mile long dirt road from Whitmore to Redding was twisty, rocky, and when it rained, a muddy mess. It took a whole day to get from Whitmore to Millville, about seventeen miles, and another day to get to Redding. It was a difficult trip until 1985 when the gravel Whitmore Road was paved with blacktop.

In the early days, unless something was drastically wrong like a broken bone, people just did not go to the doctor. By the time the injured or sick person reached the doctor they were probably either cured or dead.

Mollie Cochran St. John, who grew up in Whitmore, said:

You didn't go to the doctor for every little thing, because you had to go into Redding. Only in an extreme emergency would a doctor come clear out here. If I fell down my folks would soak it in Epsom salts, and they doused all cuts with iodine. When someone was "very" sick, it was assumed that they would die. When somebody was sick, it was usually pneumonia. I remember that Mother would go to somebody's house and for two or three days they would take turns sitting up with the person. They'd have to keep steam going, keep sponging them down, and give them aspirin every two hours. If the fever broke they got well, if the fever didn't break, they didn't get well.

Another Whitmore resident said:

I thought of one thing my father told me that happened when he was a kid. His mother had problems with corns on her toes. One winter night, when they were sitting around the fireplace, she was complaining about a corn on her toe. My dad decided he would help the corn, so he put the fireplace poker in the fire till it got good and hot. Then he put it on the corn. Needless to say, he went to bed in one big hurry.

Another resident said:

Anytime you got a stomach ache your mother would grab the box of baking soda. George Gillette opened up a saloon, and he sold soda pop. I was walking home from school one day, and George came out. He tried to coax me inside to have a soda pop. No way was I going in there. About three or four days passed and finally he brought a bottle out, and coaxed me to taste it. No way was I going to drink that soda.

The Daily Free Press, Redding, California, 1896

William Atkins met with a painful accident Saturday morning while at work for Milt Heryford. He was operating a derrick fork stowing hay away when his left hand was caught between the rope and pulley and three of his fingers were horribly mangled. He was brought to town and Dr. Crabb dressed the wound and found that the bone of the second finger was badly shattered and the bones of the third and little fingers were protruding through the flesh, but he thinks it will not be necessary to amputate any of them. [The newspaper did not spare us any details.]

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