In Utah's pioneer days, medicine often was an odd mix of science and "magic." John Steele also threw in a little herbology, astrology, numerology and peep-stone-type prophecy as he helped care for the early settlers of southern Utah. For the era, it wasn't an unusual approach to treatment. The scientific foundation for medicine was yet to come.
When the Utah Legislature finally established a state medical board to begin drawing lines between medicine and quackery, Steele was incensed and wrote a nasty letter to his representative, James Duffin, excoriating the creation of a "Board Excluding Every Other Person." "Acceptable" medical doctors, he suggested, were people who had come out of an institution of learning with "a diploma as long as your arm, with the privilige of charging a fee as long as your leg."Steele was born March 21, 1821, in Holywood, County Down, Northern Ireland. He had a curious streak and later wrote of himself that he was "a prety fare hand at whatever I undertook to do." He received a basic education and was apprenticed as a shoemaker. He married an aristocratic woman, Catherine Campbell, and emigrated to Glasgow, where he joined the LDS Church. He arrived in Nauvoo, Ill., just in time to become part of the 1846 exodus to the West, joined the Mormon Battalion and finally made it to the Salt Lake Valley on July 29, 1847, only days after the arrival of the first pioneer party.
Catherine gave birth to Young Elizabeth, the first child born in Utah Territory, Aug. 9 of the same year. In 1850, the family was called to settle in Parowan, but John, in a snit after losing a town election, chose to move on to Toquerville, much to Catherine's disgust.
His disparate loyalties to both science as it then existed and the occult were apparent in the magazines to which he subscribed - among them Scientific American and Raphael's Prophetic Almanac. When it came to treatment, he tended to mix several disciplines indiscriminately, depending on the circumstances. His approaches were not all that unorthodox to communities that were suspicious of "real" doctors and not inclined to seek out their services.
Many early settlers subscribed to the Thompsonian school of herbal medicine, and Steele included remedies from this school in his repertoire. The regimes "relied heavily on God, cayenne pepper, lobelia, cherry stones and steaming," according to an article about Steele in the Winter 1994 issue of the Utah Historical Quarterly.
The prevailing theory was that cold was the cause of disease, while heat was a healthy condition. Practitioners tried to cleanse the body of the ill effects of cold by using emetics and enemas, then restore the proper heat by using cayenne pepper, hot pads and external vapors.
Cholera was treated with a combination of gum camphor, laudanum, red pepper, oil of spearmint, oil of cedar, oil of hemlock and alcohol. "No one traveling in a Cholera district Should be without this excelant Remedy," Steele wrote.
The UHQ article suggests that Steele killed his own son after a "breaking out on its head and face" by overdosing with calomel. Treatment, in those days, in fact, was not considered effective unless it brought the patient "as nearly to Death as you can and live," Steele wrote.
Steele had animal as well as human patients. His "Horse Taming" elixir consisted of equal parts of oil of rodium, cummin, anise and poppy, to which was added some shavings from the forelimb of the horse, along with a teaspoonful of castor. Two or three drops on a handerkerchief were supposed to calm the horse, but if they didn't, six drops on the tongue were guaranteed to do the job. Steele had acquired the potion from J. H. Williamson, "ventriloquist and lecturer."
Andrew Olds recalled having his arm set by "Doc Steele." Olds and some young friends were climbing a rock wall to collect a "big old watermelon." When Andrew fell and broke his arm, the boys didn't dare take him home. Finally, there was no alternative and the lad faced up to his mother's demands to know where he'd been. One of the boys finally explained that they "couldn't come home. Andy broke his arm." Carried to Doc Steele, he submitted while the "doctor" applied a splint made of the slats from a wooden crate.
Possibly prompted by his reading of "Raphael's Key to Astrology," Steele became interested in black magic, witchcraft, spirits and fortune-telling. Claims of witchcraft were not uncommon in the southern Utah settlements and Steele once wrote a treatise on how to discern and neutralize people who might be involved in the practice. He also claimed to know how to "make two persons Enemays and hate one another."
Occasionally he received a request to foretell the future of someone in the southern colonies. Olive DeMill Stevens wrote from Orderville asking that he create a horoscope for her daughter, Minnie, to help her "know what kind of a man and when she is going to marry." She included the girl's full name and birthdate and then asked, as an afterthought, what she could expect of her wayward son, Nephi.
When Steele sent back a response regarding Minnie based on the wrong date, Stevens wrote again, correcting the information and adding that her daughter "don't never want a husband unless he is a true Latter-day Saint."
After Catherine's death, Steele, then 72, married 25-year-old Tamer Elizabeth Booth, who had two sons from a previous marriage. The union was a stormy one, with only rare moments of devoted communion. She sent a Valentine professing true love but came and went, spending long periods with her mother. Several times, he reported to her mother, she threw bucketsful of water at him and that she had "one of the worst tongues ever stuck in a woman's head."
On one occasion, he wrote out a prescription "for nervious Debillity in Females," particularly for Lizzie. In his own words and spelling, it consisted of two ounces of "puruvian Bark" or cinchini (Indian or Common hemp), two ounces of Cannibis Satira (marijuana), two ounces of Blue vervine (Verbena Hastata), smaller amounts of Elecampan and Inulin mixed in one "pind" of good "Whiskey."
In desperation, Steele wrote to an astrologer for guidance for himself. The man responded that "Owing to the presence of Saturn in the 7th House of the Heavens, you do not seem to be destined to much good fortune in marriage." Having already made the mistake, the astrologer told him, to "get rid of the one you have and do not take any other." Another astrologer seconded the notion with the advice that one should pursue "as little marrying as possible."
Finally, they separated for good and he spent some time studying divorce and writing a paper on legitimate reasons for separation, including "incompatibility of temper."
Toward the end of his life, Steele's treatment methods were passing from vogue. He continued to set broken bones, but his services were no longer in great demand. At 82, he was ordained a patriarch in the LDS Church by Elder Matthias F. Cowley. He was a prodigious temple worker and continued to be active in his community. He served as a justice of the peace and was a regular church attender.
In late 1903, he stepped on a nail and was soon ill. His own remedy for gangrene did not relieve the infection. Even hemlock, used as a last resort, did not serve. Perhaps he took too much of it. He gathered his family for a farewell and then went to Kanarraville to await death. Feisty and arrogant to the end, he claimed he could still walk a mile in 10 minutes if not for his ailing limb. A local reporter proclaimed him "still surprisingly smart at the age of 82." He died Dec. 31, 1903, and was buried in Parowan, a concession to Catherine, who had fiercely resented being moved to Toquerville.
For years, he was remembered in Toquerville as "Doc," the man who wore a blue cape with a red lining, carried a cane and rode a fine horse named Charlie. His good intentions to serve his fellow men outlived the unorthodox methods (by modern standards) he used to fulfill that service.