Monday, November 17, 2014

Doc Holliday - Doctor John Henry Holliday - Frontier Gunman


Famous for his frontier gunfight with the Earp party in the OK Corral in Tombstone, many do not know much about the Confederate Dentist before the famous gunfight.
     Folklore has the Georgia native schooling at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. Not true. Grab pen and paper folks - here's the lowdown. Doc Holliday got his book learnin' at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia at the School of Dental Medicine located at 4001 Spruce Street in west Philadelphia 19104.
     Myownself graduated from Penn's Wharton School and unknowingly passed by that very same original building numerous times not knowing it's western history. It still stands and is now a library.
     A call to the head librarian will most likely give you some background on Holiday's residency there. Doc was the oldest son of a Confederate Colonel from Valdosta, Georgia, stricken with a debilitating lung disease, that part of history, very true. The liquor bad for him, the sunny, dry air of the southwestern US was perfect for his weak lungs.
     Tucson had been a haven for " lungers" back in the day,one of the original hospitals - St Mary's - still operates on the western edge of the city. Some say Holliday was an occasional visitor. He certainly was in downtown Tucson's gambling and bordello haunts.
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