Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 37.djvu/268

 his professional points, and so far as our practice goes I do not know as I have lost any more X patients that he has. I may not have had as severe cases. I cannot say—I may have felt too sensitive on 'medicine business,' as Mr. Smith says—but this will not alter the facts as they stand in the Docts. treatment forms." Whitman had protested to the board in October, 1839, against reporting Gray as a physician, asking: "What can a man learn in 16 wks. of public lectures. . . to entitle him to that distinction?"

Gray's letter to Doctor Mussey was, no doubt, one result of this attitude. Because this letter gives the best description available of one of the epidemics among the Indians it may be quoted in part:

"The patients complain of a pain in the head back upper and lower extremities pulse strong and rather quick tungue point red, root coated with a white coat cheeks flushed and quite red —some cases complain of nausea and want of a petite. The third day there is an eruption upon the head face and arms of small watery blisters, about the fifth day they assume a light grayish or yellow color circumscribed with rather a palish red hue, from the sixth to the seventh day a scab forms and about the eighth or ninth day falls off leaving rather a rounded surface. I have noticed and administered to a number of cases that so nearly resemble what I have just described that I am quite of the opinion that it is a contagious disease of some kind. About this time the last year a complaint prevailed quite extensively among the Natives having different symptoms. Those in the Spring of 1839 complained of severe pains in the head chest back and extremities. Tong coated with a thick yellow or dark brown coat pulse about 40.45—bleeding or caustic or cathartic generally gave immediate relief …

No one is suspecting the appearance of the small pox among us, or I might … think that the disease."

He calls it "disease Innominita." His own son at the time of writing was in the 10th day of the epidemic. Eliza and Henry Spalding were in the 5th and 3rd days, respectively. He continues: "The Indian children lie as dead, but still breathe. Inclined to consider it, according to Eberle, a milder form of small pox—vaccination has been quite extensively introduced among this people the last two or three years. I have vaccinated some hundreds."