Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 37.djvu/249

 east of the Mississippi River, progressing along routes of water travel.

No period in American history so tried the souls of American physicians as the months from June to October, 1832. No one of them had received any instruction on this disease. None had ever seen a case. The books that they had studied or owned contained no reference to this disease. No one knew its cause or how it was contracted, but they saw men and women by the score about their usual tasks on one day and in their graves the next day. Wild conjectures were made as to the cause of the disease. The more frequently alleged cause was fresh vegetables and fruits, and in all the cities their sale was prohibited.

It was soon observed that following a brisk summer shower or thunderstorm a new group of cases developed. Consequently many thought that the disease was spread through damp air, others believed it came from electricity in the air following lightning. No one guessed that it was due to the surface washings of effluvia of former patients into the wells and cisterns, springs, and streams that served to supply drinking water.

By trial and error the profession learned that certain therapeutic measures were successful in cases early recognized in robust patients. Children and the aged and the dissipated all succumbed. The mortality rate on real cases of the disease in some places was more than 75 percent, but statistics are not reliable since many cases of ordinary summer diarrhea were called cholera, and there is no reliable record of diagnosis of the cases that recovered.

These partially successful therapeutic measures were published by medical societies in the newspapers, and the weekly newspaper became the physician's textbook.

The Erie canal had been completed in 1825. Along this water travel route the disease spread. Dr. Whitman lived about forty miles from the canal. There is no record of any cases in the town where he lived, but there were several cases and deaths in a town six miles distant on the shore of a long lake, on which there was navigation connecting with the Erie canal. It is highly probable that he saw some of these cases.

All through this summer and in the following months when-