Montana’s First Licensed Physicians

Before 1889, Montana exerted little oversight of those who claimed to be healers. Starting that year, however, the state required all medical practitioners to register with the newly formed State Board of Medical Examiners. Dr. Todd L. Savitt, historian of medicine at East Carolina University’s Brody School of Medicine, reveals a group demographic picture of the doctors who did (and did not) register and tells stories of some particularly interesting physicians in that group.