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 Doc Holliday
baptized March 21, 1852, Griffin, Ga., U.S.
-d. Nov.
8, 1887, Glenwood Springs, Colo.
byname of JOHN HENRY HOLLIDAY , gambler, gunman, and sometime dentist
of the American West.
 "He was the most skillful
gambler, and the nerviest, fastest, deadliest man with a six-gun I ever saw."
This was the tribute paid to Doc Holliday by Wyatt Earp, who was something of a
tough character himself.
Holliday was reared in Georgia in the genteel
tradition of the Old South, graduated from the Pennsylvania College of Dental
Surgery in 1872, and, already consumptive, moved west for drier climes. He
practiced dentistry briefly in Dallas but soon discovered his prowess as a
gambler, a poker and faro player, and began drifting throughout the
West--Jacksboro, Texas; Pueblo and Denver, Colo.; Cheyenne, Wyo.; Deadwood,
S.D.; Dodge City, Kan.; Trinidad and Leadville, Colo.; and Las Vegas, N.M.,
ending up in Tombstone, Ariz., in 1880. During the period he gained a
reputation as a drinker, fighter, and killer; he also probably married one Kate
Elder.
Holliday had befriended Wyatt Earp in Dodge City and, when in
Tombstone, joined the Earp brothers in the celebrated gunfight at the O.K.
Corral against the Clanton gang. From then (1882) on, he was again a drifter
(having abandoned Kate Elder) and died five years later in Glenwood Springs,
Colo., where he had gone for treatment of his tuberculosis.
Doc
Holliday claimed he almost lost his life a total of nine times. Four attempts
were made to hang him and he was shot at in a gunfight or from ambush five
times. In May , 1887, Doc went to Glenwood Springs to try the sulfur vapors, as
his health was steadily growing worse, but he was too far gone. He spent his
last fifty-seven days in bed and was delirious fourteen of them. On November 8,
1887, he awoke clear-eyed and asked for a glass of Whiskey. It was given to him
and he drank it down with enjoyment. Then he said, "This is funny", and died.
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