Apparently the real theme of Dr. Jin is that, often, modern people are too reliant on devices and on the optimum way to do things. They aren’t used to gutting it through on determination, persistence, and resourcefulness.
By putting a top doctor back in the 1860′s, they make him use Spock’s proverbial “stone knives and bearskins” to save lives, whereas in the modern era, they showed that he tended to decide too quickly that operations were futile or conditions not right to make a try.
There’s also a girl who looks just like his girlfriend who’s in a coma, but she’s probably going to turn out to be her great-great-great-grandmother instead of her previous incarnation.
