Like the mythical Hollywood portrayal of the American "Wild West" as a place in which the denizens of every town were killing each other in gunfights every minute of the day, the free-market period in American medicine has also been distorted as one in which towns were mobbed by traveling quacks prescribing dangerous treatments that killed the townspeople in droves. Organized mainstream medicine concocted this myth, and as previously noted, it was they and not the homeopaths and eclectics who were killing large numbers of people via bloodletting and metal poisoning.

http://whatreallyhappened.com/content/100-years-us-medical-fascism