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Sure... and this is an obvious point but I think needs to be said: we also didn't know nearly as much about the physiology of the arm as we do now. 80 years ago a torn ulnar ligament would have been diagnosed as a dead arm or a bum elbow and would have ended a player's career. Now we have Tommy John surgery. Rotator cuff tears are still pretty deadening but back in the day guys probably would have tried to pitch through the pain and ruined whatever chance they had of having their arm recuperate. There's a Roger Angell interview with Smokey Joe Wood in one of his books that talks about this in Wood's career.* Before baseball, there just was not, I don't think, a lot of reason to know about how the arms work in the way that there was reason to know how cholera infects or what have you.
When you have to make a decision between releasing a kid who was just throwing solid heat 2 weeks ago but now can't throw junk and paying his wages for the rest of the year, many, many people, particularly people who wouldn't know a humerus from Larry the Cable Guy, would ask the player to do what he could in the hopes that whatever was causing the problem just went away.
*IIRC the anthology is called Once More Around The Park and the interview is simply awesome not only because it's with one of baseball's great deadballists but takes place at a college game between Harvard and St. John's featuring Ron Darling and Frank Viola facing off against each other.
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