Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 37.djvu/267

 Others of the little band suffered from various complaints. On Whitman's return with the wagon train of 1843, he was met by messengers who urged him to hasten ahead of the train to care for the Spaldings, who were seriously sick. He found them at their station recovering from scarlatina. He writes that he feared Mrs. Spalding was tending to a pulmonary consumption, but later states that she was not in as dangerous a condition as he had thought. In 1844, he writes: "Mr. Walker and oldest son were both sick with remittent fever, but both recovered well." During the overland journey with the caravan of 1843 we have glimpses of the doctor, cheerful, courageous, forceful, now helping a mother in childbirth, again attending to some one injured in the march, sharing the toils of the day, looking after the sick far into the night.

Busy as he was at his station with many duties, Whitman must have kept some kind of records of his cases. These however, have not come to light. Presumably they were destroyed with his medical equipment after the massacre. We have no statements from him directly, except the brief mention in his letters, regarding the ills he treated or his methods of combatting them. In addition to treating the white people of the missions and at Fort Walla Walla, as well as those who came with the successive wagon trains from 1843 and on, Doctor Whitman gave medical aid to the Indians without sparing himself. There is abundant contemporary evidence for this statement, as well as mention in his own letters of treating the Indians.

The only descriptions of the ills from which the natives suffered come from H. H. Spalding and W. H. Gray of the mission, and from Dr. Forbes Barclay of Vancouver. Gray, in 1840, wrote a description of an epidemic to Dr. R. D. Mussey, of Dartmouth, asking for aid in diagnosis. In a previous letter to David Greene he had written regarding his relations with Whitman: "The Doct. & I differ in some of