Doctor Curmudgeon® What’s In A Name? Indeed!
By Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D. FAAP Doctor Eisman, is in Family Practice in Aventura, Florida with her partner, Dr. Eugene Eisman, an internist/cardiologist
I am a curmudgeon who loves words. Words in all shapes, sizes, forms and languages. Crossword puzzles fill me with joy. More words for me to savor.
Curmudgeon is one of those words beginning with a C that are good…like chocolate and capable and conscientious. Calamity is a word that I never think of as good, but then along came Calamity Jane!
Martha Jane Cannery was an adventurous, brave woman who was an Army scout, pioneer, and a recognized sharpshooter.
A friend of Wild Bill Hickok, she was a tough frontierswoman and appeared in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.
The deaths of Mary Jane’s parents left her in charge of the family. And so at the ripe old age of fourteen, she piled her five younger siblings into a loaded wagon and drove the entire crew to Wyoming. This amazing teenager did everything she could to support them: dance hall girl, nurse, ox team driver, cook and rumors circulated that she had been an occasional prostitute at the Fort Laramie Three-Mile Hog Ranch.
Outfitted in a regular soldier’s uniform, she became a scout for General George Armstrong Custer. A fearless and reckless rider, she could shoot as well as any cowboy.
Why was this amazing Frontierswoman called Calamity Jane? It seems that she had been stationed under a Captain Egan at a Post in Goose Creek, Wyoming. A group of soldiers had spent several days outside of the fort as they attacked Indians.
She had been riding out as an advance scout when she heard gunfire. Racing back, she found that Captain Egan had been shot. Picking up the captain, she put him on her horse and galloped back to the safety of the Fort.
As Calamity Jane tells the story: “I was riding in advance and on hearing the firing turned in my saddle and saw the Captain reeling in his saddle as though about to fall. I turned my horse and galloped back with all haste to his side and got there in time to catch him as he was falling. I lifted him onto my horse in front of me and succeeded in getting him safely to the Fort. Captain Egan on recovering laughingly said: ‘I name you Calamity Jane, the heroine of the plains.’ I have borne that name up to the present time.”
Calamity Jane or Martha Jane Cannery…whatever name she used! Still one incredible woman!
As William Shakespeare said, ““What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.”
Dr. Curmudgeon suggests “Bitter Medicine”, Dr. Eugene Eisman’s story of his experiences–from the humorous to the intense—as a young army doctor serving in the Vietnam War.
Bitter Medicine by Eugene H. Eisman, M.D. –on Amazon
Doctor Curmudgeon® is Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D., a physician-satirist. This column originally appeared on SERMO, the leading global social network for doctors.
SERMO www.sermo.com “talk real world medicine”
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