8 ADOBE, BRICK & STEEL
Pioneer Doctors
A few doctors accompanied the settlers, but many did not actually dig for gold. Medical care was poorly paid and much ofit had to be charity: the fees and cost ofdrugs (usually in short supply) were high, but collections were very poor because many settlers did not "strike it rich.” To supplement their medical incomes, some doctors established real estate and banking offices, which they advertised in the local press along with their medical set-ups. In terms of the needs, there were few trained physicians and too many pretenders and quacks. Dr. Berryman Bryant seems to have been an exception, telling how he opened a canvas-walled hospital on June 18 and closed it on November 21, 1849, having "made my pile.” Bryant was 33 years of age, from South Carolina, and had previously been a bricklayer, teamster, auctioneer and horse trader. But he had also, assertedly, graduated from the Botanica Medical College in Memphis, Tennessee. Writing in his Reminiscences of California, 1849-52, Dr. Bryant later explained: "I had no idea of mining and have never worked a day in the mines for when I left Alabama for California I had taken it for granted that people would get sick in this beautiful land, and I was not mistaken. "When I arrived in Sacramento there was not a place that I could find in which I could store away my medicines, so I went outside of the city limits
