The Strange Medical Saga Of John Henry Doc Holliday

This book takes the facts about Dr. John H. Holliday and breathes life back into Doc himself. The author has lived through many of the same most crucial moments as Doc; in fact, it is a name that his patients called him and still do. He is, like Doc, a Catholic. It is singularly amusing that they both have so many, many things in common, except that Pat stinks at poker most of the time. This is a very unique book. There has never been a book that tells the tale of Doc Holliday from Doc's side as consistently as this, knowing the disease intimately and living with an almost identical set of symptoms. He has a chronic cough at times so severe that is results in severe pain in his intercostal (chest muscles) that lasts for three days. Making it hard to breathe, move, or even bear down. Coughing or sneezing doubles him over. At times he coughs up blood. He is often hypoxic and unsteady on his legs, he cannot walk without a cane due to dizziness. All this makes his appetite poor. He at times may be dizzy enough to fall down with the room spinning and unable to move for 20 minutes to two hours. The facts were gathered for over forty-seven years of research, off and on. So it truly is a fictional book, perhaps more true to facts than a nonfictional one.

This book takes the facts about Dr. John H. Holliday and breathes life back into Doc himself. The author has lived through many of the same most crucial moments as Doc; in fact, it is a name that his patients called him and still do. He is, like Doc, a Catholic. It is singularly amusing that they both have so many, many things in common, except that Pat stinks at poker most of the time. This is a very unique book. There has never been a book that tells the tale of Doc Holliday from Doc's side as consistently as this, knowing the disease intimately and living with an almost identical set of symptoms. He has a chronic cough at times so severe that it results to severe pain in his intercostal (chest muscles) that lasts for three days, making it hard to breathe, move, or even bear down. Coughing or sneezing double him over. At times, he coughs up blood. He is often hypoxic and unsteady on his legs. He cannot walk without a cane due to dizziness. All this makes his appetite poor. He may be dizzy enough to fall down, with the room spinning and unable to move for twenty minutes to two hours. The facts were gathered for over forty-seven years of research, off and on. So it truly is a fictional book, perhaps more true to facts than a nonfictional one.

You’ve heard Doc Holliday’s history, but do you know his story? His name conjures images of the Wild West, of gunfights and gambling halls and a legendary friendship with Wyatt Earp, but before Doc Holliday was a Western legend, he was a Southern Son. The story begins in Civil War Georgia, as young John Henry Holliday welcomes home his heroic father and learns a terrible secret about his mother, with his only confidant his favorite cousin Mattie. As the Confederacy falls and tragedy strikes, John Henry’s hero-worship turns to bitter anger and he joins with a gang of vigilantes to chase the Reconstruction Yankees out of their small Georgia town. When their murderous plot is discovered and brings threats of military prison, he vows to change his reckless ways, leaving home to attend dental school in Philadelphia and hoping to become a respected professional man worthy of asking for his cousin Mattie’s hand. But when he returns from two years in the North he finds family intrigues, lies and revelations, rivals for Mattie’s affections—and a violent encounter that changes everything and starts him on the road to Western legend. Southern Son is the first book in the award-winning Saga of Doc Holliday, an epic American tale of heroes and villains, dreams lost and found, families broken and reconciled, of sin and recompense and the redeeming power of love.

Acclaim for Doc Holliday "Splendid . . . not only the most readable yet definitive study of Holliday yet published, it is one of the best biographies of nineteenth-century Western 'good-bad men' to appear in the last twenty years. It was so vivid and gripping that I read it twice." --Howard R. Lamar, Sterling Professor Emeritus of History, Yale University, and author of The New Encyclopedia of the American West "The history of the American West is full of figures who have lived on as romanticized legends. They deserve serious study simply because they have continued to grip the public imagination. Such was Doc Holliday, and Gary Roberts has produced a model for looking at both the life and the legend of these frontier immortals." --Robert M. Utley, author of The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull "Doc Holliday emerges from the shadows for the first time in this important work of Western biography. Gary L. Roberts has put flesh and soul to the man who has long been one of the most mysterious figures of frontier history. This is both an important work and a wonderful read." --Casey Tefertiller, author of Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend "Gary Roberts is one of a foremost class of writers who has created a real literature and authentic history of the so-called Western. His exhaustively researched and beautifully written Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend reveals a pathetically ill and tortured figure, but one of such intense loyalty to Wyatt Earp that it brought him limping to the O.K. Corral and into the glare of history." --Jack Burrows, author of John Ringo: The Gunfighter Who Never Was "Gary L. Roberts manifested an interest in Doc Holliday at a very early age, and he has devoted these past thirty-odd years to serious and detailed research in the development and writing of Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend. The world knows Holliday as Doc Holliday. Family members knew him as John. Somewhere in between the two lies the real John Henry Holliday. Roberts reflects this concept in his writing. This book should be of interest to Holliday devotees as well as newly found readers." --Susan McKey Thomas, cousin of Doc Holliday and coauthor of In Search of the Hollidays

Front page headlines on the day Elvis Presley died showed the deep feelings so many had for the first and only "King" of Rock 'n Roll. His early death at a young age was a shock. Not even 24 hours had passed after his death before the controversies started around the cause of his death. Did he really die of a heart attack as stated by the county coroner, or was his death a drug over-dose? Heart or drugs; what actually killed him? What were Elvis Presley's health issues that plagued him during his short life? Why was he in so much pain? Why the early death? His full medical saga has only recently begun to be thoroughly examined. After all these years people still want to know what happened to the "King." Three years after his death, I served as the major expert defense witness for Elvis' doctor, Dr. George C. Nichopolous. The District Attorney of Shelby County originally wanted to charge him with murder/manslaughter for "intentionally prescribing to harm Elvis Presley," but the charges were changed to "prescribing without a legitimate medical purpose." The jury promptly acquitted him, but I was left with many questions about what exactly was physically wrong with Elvis. The question of "was it heart or was it drugs" remained unanswered. In the years since his death, medical research has advanced to the point that we have new insights regarding his underling health problems and untimely death. Many of the mysteries of Elvis' life and death, which I hope to unveil in this book, can now be answered. I am in the unique position of being the only physician in the country who still has Elvis' full medical records from the trial. With expertise in internal medicine, addiction, and pain medicine along with having personally known his physicians, I am in a unique position to help uncover his mysterious medical saga. My hope is to shed some light on his health issues, and hopefully, with the help of medical science and common sense, solve the mystery of what really happened to Elvis! Forest Tennant