Highet, M: Rushing to the Grave

That it was primarily ordinary men and women who ventured to this remote frontier in their pursuit of gold, rather than the more seasoned miners characteristic of prior gold rushes, lent a certain inevitability to the Klondike gold rush. The eccentricities of the gold rushers and the incredibility of the event itself resulted in circumstances both so fantastic and improbable that the Klondike gold rush most certainly could not have unfolded in any other way. While this is an extremely well documented aspect of Canadian history, it must be appreciated that the data contained within archival materials pertaining to this event represent the lives of real people who lived, labored and died in their extraordinary quest for fortune. Revealing the humanity of this celebrated community is thus the primary intent of this book. By situating the gold rushers within the milieu of lived experiences, aspects of the local environment and socioeconomic and political influences, a biosocial approach to patterns of differential morbidity and mortality promises to reveal a great deal more about the human condition than simply what diseases the Klondikers suffered and died from.