1870s U.S. Tetanus and Money - Need Info

Elfk: IIRC, the bacterial cause of tetanus wasn't really recognized by scientists until very late 19th C---turn of the 20th century. As far as being recognized by the general population, figure several decades later. It might help to google Kitosato (sp?)

Sounds like an interesting book.

welcome.

If you look at the top of this Historical Genre board you will see a thread called Resources by Era. If you go there you will find a lot of resources for historical writers. Fairly near the top is a group of website urls and books under the title of Money and they are sites which will give you comparisons and modern values.

You can do a lot with this type of thing because we know the answers now for past diseases. Parents used to tell children to stay away from rusty nails, (even now) in fact, many kids, get tet shots because of this. However, the danger wasn't the rust, it was the feces contaminated soil being pushed into the body via the puncture. Odds of getting tetanus would escalate if metal had been dug up, or on a farm.

During your time period the people made observations-generally of course , but many on target. You could have another character say, "Good thing, that metal hasn't been lying on the ground etc."

Hope this helps.

In the olden days tetanus was called lock-jaw , your hero would of know about that.It was much feared in them days but not understood. As for the money,Sears catalogues started in 1897,a bit later than your 1877.But I don't think Sears was the first.I might be worth looking at some catalogue archives.

They would probably know to pour some alcohol on the wound.

As for what things cost, I'd check out what newspapers were being published in the time period and region you're dealing with. The California Newspaper Project has microfilmed all of the surviving copies. You can usually get the microfilm via inter library loan. Plus, there would be all kinds of juicy stuff to use in your novel.

http://cnp.ucr.edu/cnpsearchdb.html

Well, there wasn't any penicillin until the end of WWII ('43 - '44). Australian Howard Florey, Baron Florey, Ernst Boris Chain and Norman Heatley discovered a method of mass-producing penicillin, and won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for 1945.

Try the New York Times Archive. From a bit of research (see link below), I found some stuff on tetanus there in your era -- looks like they were conflating it with hydrophobia/lockjaw.

http://query.nytimes.com/search/que...12&day2=31&year2=1880&submit.x=30&submit.y=13