Doc Holliday

John Henry "Doc" Holliday (August 14, 1851 - November 8, 1887) was an American gambler and gunfighter who is usually remembered for his associations with Wyatt Earp and the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

He was born in Griffin, Georgia to Henry Burroughs and Alice Jane Holliday. His mother died on September 16, 1866. Three months later, his father remarried Rachel Martin. Shortly after the marriage, the family moved to Valdosta, Georgia.

In 1870, John Henry, began dental school. On March 1, 1872 he received a degree of Doctor of Dental Surgery from the Pensylvania College of Dental Surgery in Philadelphia. Later that year he opened a dental office with Arthur C. Ford in Atlanta.

Not long after beginning his dental practice, he contracted tuberculosis. He was given only a few months to live although it was thought moving to the drier western part of the United States could help to reduce the deterioration of his health.

His first stop west was Dallas, Texas. He soon began gambling, and realized this was a more beneficial source of income. After getting into a disagreement and killing a man, Holliday quickly fled to Jacksboro, Texas.

In the years that followed, Holliday had many more such disagreements, fuelled by a hot temper and an attitude that death by gun or knife was better than that by tuberculosis.

In the end, though, it was the tuberculosis that got "Doc" Holliday. Fifteen years after the doctors gave him only months to live, he died peacefully in bed in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Dying in bed, his reputed last words were, "This is funny."