five grains of calomel with fifteen grains of jalap; calomel and opium powders, two grains of calomel in each, with a quarter of a grain of powdered opium.”[1]
Castor oil was regarded as invaluable. "Fifteen or twenty drops of laudanum, mixed with an ounce or half an ounce of castor oil is an advantageous combination, where there is much twisting or uneasiness in the stomach or bowels." With these measures, "rigidly carried into effect" the mortality was reduced to an estimated one in ten of those attacked.[2] The same authority recommends blood letting, in the first stage of cholera, as universally applicable. As much as three teacupfuls were drawn from adult patients, sometimes by non-medical "bleeders." The attack of cholera was regarded as checked or retarded, and the patient was "in a favorable state for the administration of internal remedies, and for the repetition of the operation, if deemed necessary,” by the physician when he arrived.[3]
Undoubtedly, by 1835 these methods of treatment, disseminated throughout the English speaking world by the authoritative reports on cholera published by Hammett and Kennedy in 1832, were known to Whitman. It is probable that he followed the methods of treatment above described. He told Fontenelle that strong men, if treated early, might hope to escape death. Only three of the fur company's men died, and these were already sick when Whitman joined the party. How much the several successive moves of Fontenelle's party away from the river town of Bellevue and into the comparatively unpopulated region along the trail had to do with the cessation of the scourge among these men can only be left to conjecture. There can be little question that Whitman was of material assistance in the serious emergency. The grateful Fontenelle and his men accepted the praying missionaries as part of their company to the Rendezvous on Green River, Wyoming, and the men ceased their egg-throwing.
Regarding the causes of other epidemic-diseases, knowledge was as meager. Yellow fever and malaria were dread scourges whose dissemination was not understood. The dread "yellow
