Indian language, and do the duties meanwhile of a physician to the associate stations on the Clear Water and Spokan.
Whitman's medical care of his associates began before he reached the Columbia. Mrs. Spalding was so ill during much of the journey from the Mississippi that she was expected to die. Whether due to the doctor's administrations or to her own powers of recuperation she recovered sufficiently to complete the journey. On arriving at Fort Walla Walla in September, 1836, a statement of expenses for the expedition, including medicines and surgical instruments in the amount of $28.39, signed by Whitman, Spalding and Gray, was sent to the American Board.[1]
The doctor writes[2] that on November 7, 1837, he left his station to assist Mrs. Spalding in childbirth. This was more than a year after the arrival of the little company in Oregon. With three Indians and a Hawaiian, he traveled the one hundred and twenty miles to the Nez Perce mission on the Clearwater, through rain and snow, crossing the Snake River. He adds that on the morning of November 15, "after our arrival Mrs. Spalding became the mother of a fine, healthy daughter." He left the Spaldings on December 2 and reached home on December 9. In the same letter to the mission rooms in Boston he writes: "We now have a boy sent by Doct. McLoughlin & the attending physician at Vancouver for medical aid." It would be of interest to know more of the circumstances of this case. Why did McLoughlin and Tolmie, both physicians, the latter trained in Scotland, send this boy to Whitman? The record does not say.
When W. H. Gray returned to the states in 1837, Whitman requested him to consult with some physician about medical books.[3] Gray writes:[4] "Have since called upon Profs Delamater and Mussey and requested them to give me a list of Such Medicle Books as they could recommend for the benefit of
- ↑ Oregon Historical Quarterly, XXXVII, 128.
- ↑ Whitman to D. Greene, March 12, 1838. The letters herein cited are in the American Board archives, Boston; transcripts are in the Oregon Historical Society.
- ↑ Gray to Greene, Fairfield, November 29, 1837.
- ↑ Gray to Greene, Fairfield, January 10, 1838.
