By Esther H. M. Power
Today there is no doctor's office in residential areas of Terrace Park. In the past medical care came from sources based in Cincinnati, neighboring communities and within resident's own homes.
One hundred years before Terrace Park's incorporation the seeds of Cincinnati becoming a medical center were being sown. The first best known pioneer doctor was Dr. William Goforth who was in Columbia by 1790. He became Dr. Daniel Drake's teacher taking him into his home in 1800 where Drake had access to Goforth's medical library and where Drake earned his first doctoring certificate.
These two doctors did go forth together by horse and buggy making house calls as far out as thirty miles, charging twenty-five cents a mile (half that if the horse was fed). If not for medical reasons it's possible they stopped where Terrace Park is today, since Dr. Goforth was a friend of John Smith. They served together in the Territorial Assembly and both were Baptists.
When a smallpox epidemic had broken out in 1793, John Smith, then living at the foot of Crawfish Run, now Delta Avenue, agreed to have his remote cabin used as an inoculation site.
Residents in the early years could rely on home remedies and popular concoctions advertised to cure whatever ailed man and beast, or could opt for high alcohol in bitters bottles for relief of various complaints. Newspapers, magazines and Sears Roebuck & Co. catalogues over the years offered information for home management of medical care. For example a book advertised in 1883 titled Painless Childbirth gave “complete instructions and how pain, perils, difficulties and dangers of childbirth can be avoided.”
In a 1911 magazine piece titled “Common Emergencies and How to Meet Them” were instructions for treating burns, hemorrhage and sun stroke, common problems in rural areas.