Gairdner.[1] A hospital building had been begun in 1837 at the Methodist mission near Salem, Oregon. It grew very slowly and finally was needed to house the "great reinforcement" to the Methodist mission which arrived in 1840. It apparently was never used for its original purpose.
To add to Doctor Whitman's already great and diversified burden insanity found its way to the mission. Asahel Munger and his wife had somehow made their way across the plains for the purpose of becoming independent missionaries in the northwest. They reached Waiilatpu destitute and helpless. Whitman could not turn them away, and gave Munger carpenter work to do at the mission. On March 28, 1841, the doctor was obliged to write:[2] "Mr. Munger ... has become a monomaniac ... an unsafe man ... holds himself as the representative of the church & often having revelations ... only allows me to stay in the mission house for a time when he is ready to take it in some way away from me." This situation must have caused the doctor much uneasiness during his many absences from the mission. On his way home from the east in 1843 Whitman suffered from lameness caused by a tumor of the instep, which he feared was a bony growth. For a time he went about his duties at the mission with the aid of a crutch. Most of the statements he makes about himself are so casual as to make it difficult to get a picture of his own condition.
Mrs. Whitman also suffered poor health for a time. At one time the doctor writes[3] that she had been sick for nearly two months with inflammation of the kidneys. Subsequently she became seriously ill with what Whitman describes as enlargement of the ovary. During his absence in the east she had been under the care of Dr. Barclay at Vancouver, and of the physicians of the Methodist mission. In December, 1843, her condition was described as almost hopeless and she was in danger of sudden death from tympanitis.[4]
