guise, none other than that of the most dreaded calamity of those years, an outbreak of Asiatic cholera.
Just as, after the widespread epidemic of 1832, there had been sporadic cases in 1833 arising from carriers, so in 1835 appeared sporadic cases, the legacy of the epidemic of 1834. Such a carrier was in the caravan of 1835, and at the camps near where the Platte joins the Missouri, one of the caravan sickened with cholera.
Today one can but inadequately imagine the terror that seized a group of individuals at that date when it was known that cholera was at hand. The terror of Indian raids could be better endured for one knew whence they came, but none knew whence cholera came, nor how it was communicated. Only those physicians who had been through earlier epidemics could allay the terror of the laity by example of their own courage when they faced the scourge.
The entire expedition was threatened by this outbreak. The men were likely to desert, or if they did not and any considerable number died, the caravan would be too shorthanded to go on.
As Dr. Marcus Whitman rode the byways of rural Steuben County, New York, in 1832 and 1834, and as he discussed cholera with his professional colleagues wherever he met them, little did he imagine that he was preparing himself to meet the first great emergency in his part in the settlement of old Oregon. He had learned the treatment that succeeded in cases taken early in robust men, and all the members of the caravan were robust. None other would be engaged.
The first case in the caravan occurred June 10, on the banks of the Missouri, two hundred miles from any considerable town. In 1835, for the first time in its history, the caravan had in it, although not of it, a graduate physician. He was no youngster just come from one course of lectures. He was a graduate of one of the best medical schools in the United States and experienced in practice. While some members of the caravan had occasionally faced death in Indian battle, Dr. Whitman for seven years had daily faced Death and loosened his grasp on his intended victims, for he had been schooled in the emergencies of seven years of independent country practice.
