he fell behind the party for a time. He appears to have recovered, but in the spring of 1841 he writes to his brother:[1]
"By these several causes [hard work and exposure] I was reduced to the same affliction of which I complained before I left the United States. After taking medicine for two weeks and feeling somewhat relieved I was called to see a sick man at Walla Walla." On this journey of twenty-five miles Whitman suffered so much from exposure that he became ill again. He writes[2] that by the second day after this last exposure he was obliged to be bled and to go to bed for several weeks. He adds "from that time (the previous fall] to this [May 1841] I have not recovered nor do I ever expect fully to do so. I am, however, now in comfortable health, but unfit for bodily labor." Later in the year however, he writes: "My health has become good again."[3]
Whitman attended the white women in childbirth, several times riding horseback one hundred twenty to one hundred fifty miles on this errand, and remaining with his patients for weeks until they were on the road to strength again. There is no mention of his ever having served as obstetrician to the Indians. He also served as dentist for the mission. There is the interesting item: "Dr. Eells gave Dr. Whitman a two-dollar and a half gold piece in payment for filling a tooth."[4] This is the only mention of a fee I have found and must have been a misinterpretation on the part of the child, probably Myron Eells, who saw the transaction. It is much more likely that the gold was used to fill the tooth.
The numerous patients he had at times at the mission made it necessary to set aside hospital quarters. Dr. Whitman thus established the third hospital of record in old Oregon. The first was a temporary one at Nootka Sound, in the summer of 1788, for the scorbutic patients of Dr. John Mackay; the second was set up at Fort Vancouver in 1833 by Dr. Meredith
