I've been thinking about the section of the book on people moving west in the hopes of curing their afflictions. The author states that the main reasons the myth of the west persisted are because people had financial and emotional investments in it. The emotional part makes sense. People suffering from a terminal illness want to believe that they can be cured. They may be willing to suspend their skepticism of an idea, such as moving west, to keep their hope alive. Many people moved west before anyone made financial investments in the movement. I believe the westward movement probably would have flourished even if nobody had a financial investment in it.
The book mentioned that some of the sick moved into cities, or the towns they settled eventually grew into cities. I wish the author hald delved into this point further. For example, did anyone ever write about the illogic of moving into a western city when one of the points of moving west was to escape the impurities of the city? She also did not discuss who ran the businesses in the cities- were they run by the sickly, or their healthy counterparts? It would be interesting to find out the ratio of sick tuberculosis patients to healthy people in the settled lands, and what their relationships to each other were. The author also mentioned that people went westward to help cure other ailments they suffered besides TB, but she did not indicate how commonly this took place. I wish too that she had focused more in the experiences of people moving westward before the railroads were built.
The topic of the westward movement is intriguing; however, the section could have been more enjoyable if the author had gone into greater depth on some issues.
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