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the great event of the day; it usually formed on Circle street and marched to the grove in the State House yard; here, before disbanding, the female teachers and the scholars, both male and female, were treated to refreshments of rusk and water, while the men concluded their celebration with a dinner in the sugar grove at the east end of the town, as far removed as possible from those who observed the day in a more ascetic manner by fasting on rusk and water.
The August entries in the dairy indicate much sickness among the people; there were frequent heavy rains and the water stood for months in the low spots of the ravines which traversed the town.
Malarial diseases followed. In fact, the ague was so prominent a feature of early Indianapolis that Mr. Dunn says it calls for special notice as one of the institutions of the place. Most of the settlers who suffered with it could say, as Demas McFarland did, that he “served a regular apprenticeship at the ague and worked at journey work at the chills and fever.”
Mr. Demas McFarland, farmer, arrived in 1821. Many years after this date his daughters, maiden ladies, kept a school in the brick house on St. Clair street recently torn down to make way for the new Public Library. In this school the pupils learned the capitals of the states by singing, instead of reciting the lesson.
Because of the existing unhealthy conditions, it was fortunate for the settlers that five physicians established offices in Indianapolis at an early date. They were Drs. Mitchell, Scudder, Cool, Dunlap and Coe.
Dr. Mitchell was a very corpulent man, who never rode his horse out of a walk; he was made surgeon of the battalion raised in the town at the time of the Black Hawk war.
Young Dr. Scudder gave promise of a brilliant professional career, which was cut short by his death in 1829;
