HBO photo: Doug Hyun |
A June 2004 Report with Tesa Nauman Bradspeak: Doctors would remove legs, and there were walls of legs. They would pile them up; thousands of legs. |
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HBO photo: Doug Hyun |
A June 2004 Report with Tesa Nauman Bradspeak: Doctors would remove legs, and there were walls of legs. They would pile them up; thousands of legs. |
Brad Dourif isn't a doctor. He just plays one on TV. However, Dourif's doctor isn't your typical prime-time television physician.
The Oscar-nominated actor portrays the character of "Doc" on HBO's Western-themed hit Deadwood. What little viewers know of the highly intense but moral doctor who treats the denizens of the roughest town in the West is that he was convicted of robbing graves -- seven times. But that's little reason to doubt the good doctor's integrity, Dourif insists.
"He's a scientist. It was illegal (to study a human body). You had to get somebody who was convicted and hanged. In a lot of states in the U.S. at that time you couldn't get a body, so how could you learn about anatomy? It was a huge problem in the States. What we know about medicine has to do with the fact that there were a lot of grave robbers, and it was a big business," said Dourif.
Dourif, a West Virginia native who received an Oscar nomination for his role in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, is one of those actors whose name most people don't recognize. However, when they see his face, they realize they've seen him dozens of times over the years: "Oh, yeah! That guy!"
In the past decade he's gotten the attention of younger fans by playing roles in The X-Files, Star Trek: Voyager and by providing the voice for the homicidal doll Chucky in Child's Play and the resulting film franchise. He's also added to his fan base aficionados of The Lord of the Rings trilogy by playing Grima Wormtongue in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
The reason why "Doc" chose to move to Deadwood -- which, at the time the series is set, was not a U.S. territory and had neither laws nor formal judicial system -- can be found by looking at Doc's past, Dourif said.
"It's been hinted that the character was a surgeon in the Civil War," Dourif said. "A lot of people don't know this, but (Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome) was a huge problem among surgeons during the Civil War. Surgery was not really what doctors did, and then suddenly you have these people who are severely wounded by bullets. (The doctors) would remove legs, and there were walls of legs. They would pile them up; thousands of legs."
He said the amputations performed on those fields of war caused another lethal condition. Doctors were unaware that using the same surgical scalpel on more than one patient would spread bacteria. "There would be these patients, and they would all die of gangrene because the doctors thought gangrene came through the air. They had no idea that they were spreading gangrene. So these people saw a lot of death. Anytime you're exposed to that much death, you get very traumatized."
The fact that the character of Doc was created might be due more to familial circumstances than historical research. Dourif pointed out that Deadwood producer David Milch's brother is a doctor. The actor said that while the pay isn't great, he loves working on the show because of the quality of the writing and the production values. Plus, it's a pretty easy commute to work. Deadwood is filmed on a ranch outside of Los Angeles, twenty minutes from his house.
Tesa Nauman is a freelance writer and newspaper reporter from Gatlinburg, Tenn. Visit her Web Home, "Tesa's Top 15 Films of All Time."
