Gringo Doctor

By Dr. Ira J. Bush

Book Description:

War below the Rio Grande! Guerrilla warfare in the hills, bombing of government trains, night raids of rebels, daring assassinations, the common people excited by the victories of insurgent troops fighting for freedom. It is a story that has captured the imagination of the novelist and the motion-picture producer, and the truth has long been forgotten for legend.

Dr. Bush, as a surgeon general of the Insurrecto Army, has seen at first hand some of the fiercest fighting of the Mexican Revolution. His acquaintance with Pascual Orozco, Francisco Madero, and Francisco (Pancho) Villa stamps his career with historic importance.

Much, exceedingly much, has been written of the Mexican revolutions. A great deal of this has roused raucous mirth among those who know. What Dr. Bush has to say of Mexico and the Border and the men who fought from Madero’s day onward is authentic. At worst, it is the consensus among actual participants, the men who fought and planned; and for the most part it is what Dr. Bush himself observed as he played his part in the action. His record is a picture drawn at first hand, quick with life, a “motion picture” rather than a description of a motion picture. The story of his long and full life is one to hold any reader interested in frontier times.

About the Author :

Ira Jefferson Bush was born in 1865 on his grandfather's plantation in Lawrence, Mississippi. After contracting swamp fever, he moved to Texas for his health and established medical practices at Fort Davis and Pecos before settling in El Paso in the summer of 1899. His hobbies of big game hunting and archeological exploration led him to visit Mexico frequently. He served several years as the company doctor for mining and lumber interests in Temósachic, Chihuahua, and elsewhere in Mexico, before returning to El Paso.

As a close friend of Francisco Madero, Bush served as chief surgeon general of the insurrectionist army during the first phase of the Mexican Revolution. He and his wife, Bertha, had no children. Bush died in 1939 in El Paso.

My Opinion:

Gringo Doctor is one of my primary sources for what life was like in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico at the turn of the twentieth century. Dr. Bush's eye for detail and sharp wit enhanced his ability as a natural-born storyteller. I highly recommend his book with one caveat. What he wrote, particularly in Part I, would not be considered politically correct by today’s standards. All of us are a product of our times, and he had the biases you would expect from a white man born at the end of the Civil War on a southern plantation.

Full Citation:

Bush, I.J., Gringo Doctor, The Caxton Printers, Ltd., Caldwell, Idaho, 1939.