Accuracy in Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman

Historical facts and filming informationWhile much of Dr. Quinn was fictional, some of the events and people were based on historical fact:

Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania actually existed and is today part of Drexel University College of Medicine.

The Sand Creek Massacre in 1864 was referred to in the pilot episode (though it was historically inaccurate as the pilot took place in 1867).

Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and Chief Black Kettle are true historical figures.

The Battle of Washita River, seen in the third season episode Washita, was a true event. In the show, the battle took place in 1869, while in fact it took place in Fall 1868.

In what most consider the final episode of the series, the town's often-antagonist banker, Preston A. Lodge III, went bankrupt as a result of the great stock market crash caused by the Panic of 1873, a historically-accurate event. Lodge lost much of the townspeople's money along with his own in the Panic.

One of the major historical oversights of the show is that Colorado Springs was not technically founded until 1871 by General William Palmer and was mainly a resort town. There were no saloons as Palmer declared Colorado Springs to be alcohol-free. Colorado Springs stayed "dry" until the end of Prohibition in 1933.Comment:  In the second episode, Dr. Quinn claims that some scientists believe diseases are caused by these little critters called germs. The townspeople scoff at this and the barber "doctor" continues his practice of bloodletting. The germ theory was coming into vogue in that era, so this scenario is realistic. Bloodletting probably died out a few decades earlier, but a few backwater quacks still may have done it.

For more on the subject, see TV Shows Featuring Indians.