Dr. Huie Pock was a well-respected Chinese physician who became wealthy through his practice of herbal medicine. Western medicine, especially on the remote frontier, was primitive by comparison to herbal remedies honed from thousands of years of practice in China.
Dr. Pock was one of several herbal doctors who made a profitable practice in Butte treating Chinese and EuroAmericans alike with herbal remedies and acupuncture.
Dr. Pock's practice was given a great boost when he successfully treated the ulcers of the daughter of William Andrews Clark, one of the famous Copper Kings of Butte and one of the wealthiest men in America. Dr. Pock developed an effective herbal poultice that used banana stalks. He shipped these through the mail as well as using them locally to treat various ailments. His reputation was established during an outbreak of influenza that killed hundreds in Butte in 1918. Pock had an effective herbal treatment that saved lives where western doctors could do nothing but watch their patients die.
However, Dr. Pock could not save his young wife, Chong Chie Huie, who died of botulism in 1923 after eating food from a tainted can.
When Dr. Pock died in 1927, his son squandered the money set aside to ship his wife's and his own remains for burial in China. His body lay in storage at a local funeral parlor until 1953 when Dr. Pock and his wife were finally buried in unmarked graves in the Chinese section of Butte's Mount Moriah cemetery.
In 2007, a group of Butte doctors financed a grave marker for Dr. Pock.