THE MERIWETHER MYSTERY:The Final Steps of America's Greatest Pathfinder (by Vonn McKee)

Meriwether Lewis

        

In my very first blog post for Western Fictioneers, “A SACRED PATH,” I shared some history of the old Natchez Trace, which meanders within a few miles of my house. (If you’d like to read that post for backstory of the Trace’s beginnings as a buffalo and Indian path, click here.

  I mentioned that the grave of Meriwether Lewis is located at Mile 385.9, near Hohenwald, Tennessee. I was amazed to learn that the man called “America’s Greatest Pathfinder” met an untimely and mysterious demise in the dense forest of south central Tennessee.

 It’s a lot like one of those “The Rest of the Story” segments written by the late radio broadcaster Paul Harvey. We all know a bit about the Lewis and Clark Expedition…that President Thomas Jefferson handpicked Meriwether Lewis (who happened to work as his personal secretary) to lead the Corps of Discovery Expedition across the great American West in search of a waterway to the Pacific.

Lewis was bright, energetic and forceful…else he would not have survived working for the obsessively organized Jefferson. In order to round out the skills needed to command such a journey, the president arranged for his aide to study medicine, astronomy, and navigational methods. By the time he assembled the Corps of Discovery team, Meriwether Lewis was quite the Renaissance man.

Map Detail
(Drawn by William Clark)

He recruited William Clark, with whom he had served in the Army, and their company of thirty-three men embarked westward from near St. Louis, spending more than two years battling extreme terrain, disease and hostile natives.While they were unable to find a continuous river route to the west coast, they returned with hundreds of plant, seed, and soil samples, along with Lewis’s meticulous flora and fauna illustrations and splendid maps drawn by Clark.

From Meriwether Lewis's Journal
(Corps of Discovery Expedition)

After dedicating years of his young life to preparing and carrying out the adventure of a lifetime, Lewis suddenly found himself without a purpose. President Jefferson appointed him Governor of the Louisiana Territory, which esssentially shackled the former explorer to a desk in St. Louis. Always prone to moodiness, Lewis proved ill-suited to politics and brokered several questionable deals that brought criticism from Washington. He began to neglect his duties and took to drinking heavily.

On September 3, 1809, Meriwether Lewis boarded a ship at St. Louis bound for New Orleans and, ultimately, Washington, D.C. He hoped to resolve financial issues surrounding his government dealings and to present his expedition journals to a publisher, although he reportedly had not completed them—even after Jefferson’s continual admonishments.

There are some reports that Lewis, in mental distress, attempted suicide on the voyage but was restrained. For unknown reasons, he changed his mind about making the trip by boat and disembarked at Memphis. He struck out overland via the Natchez Trace—a dangerous trail fraught with robbers and murderers.

On the evening of October 10, he stopped at Grinder’s Stand. (“Stand” was the common term for “inn” at that time.) During the night, the proprietess heard two gunshots and peeked through the cracks of the cabin to see Lewis crawling to the door, asking for water. She was too terrified to let him in, possibly since her husband was away. Early the next morning, October 11, Meriwether Lewis was found dead in his room with bullet wounds to his head and abdomen. He was thirty-five years old.

                                                                                

The cabin at the Meriwether Lewis gravesite is not
an exact replica of Grinder's Station

Most who knew him well believed it was suicide. Thomas Jefferson noted his “sensible depressions of mind.” William Clark, upon hearing the news of Lewis’s death, wrote “I fear the weight of his mind has overcome him.” It is thought that Lewis may have contracted syphilis or malaria, the latter of which can cause dementia.

Descendants of the Lewis family have long maintained that he was murdered and have campaigned unsuccessfully to have his body exhumed. (The grave is on National Park Service property.) Their claims are explained at solvethemystery.org Some scholars agree, although speculations of the murderer’s identity run the gamut from highway robbers to a government-hired assassin. They point out that Meriwether Lewis was too skilled a marksman to botch his own suicide.
 
The answers lie beneath a stately monument of Tennessee blue limestone. Even after 200 years, forensics could accurately analyze the skull (if intact) for gunpowder residue and fracture patterns. DNA samples could reveal details about Lewis’s health.

A broken column...
the symbol of a life cut short

We may never know the truth of Meriwether Lewis's last night on earth. Whether suicide or murder, it was a tragic and senseless end for the courageous American explorer. Rather than dwell on his final moments of suffering, I choose to picture him sitting tall in a keel-boat, journal in hand, ready to document the sights waiting around the next bend in the river.


 Information about the Meriwether Lewis Monument:
 http://www.nps.gov/natr/planyourvisit/upload/M-Lewis-Site-Bulletin-8-30-13.pdf
                   

“I could but esteem this moment of my departure as among the most happy of my life."  Meriwether Lewis  

All the best,
Vonn McKee

2015 WWA Spur Finalist (Short Fiction)
2015 Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Finalist (Short Fiction)

ON THE TRAIL WITH DR RUSH'S BILIOUS PILLS

THE DOCTOR'S BAG

BY

KEITH SOUTER  aka  CLAY MORE

You may think that doctors in the Old West had relatively few drugs at their disposal. In fact, the town doctor who had the time and inclination could compound hundreds of medicines and remedies using the US Pharmacopeia, which was first published in the 1820s. This was a tome containing all of the recognised formulae for compounding the medicines of the day. The year 1875 represented its fifth edition.

Most of the remedies used were botanicals, although many mineral based remedies were also used. And of course, there were many formulae which combined the two.

Heroic medicine 

Medicine in the early19th century was only starting to become scientific. Many doctors practiced heroic medicine, involving bleeding and purgation. This had been a practice extending back to the days of antiquity. It was based on the Doctrine of Humors, the belief that there were four fundamental humours or vital fluids that determined the state of health or illness of a person. These were blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. Diagnosis of the imbalance led the doctor to the treatment, which could be to blister, bleed, purge or give an enema.

Dr Benjamin Rush

Then name of Dr Benjamin Rush (1746-1813) is stamped on the early history of the USA. He was one of the founding fathers of the United States. He was a signatory of the Declaration of Independence and was a physician, politician and social reformer. He was a personal friend of Thomas Jefferson and had been the Surgeon General of the Colonial Army. He is considered to be the father of American psychiatry. 

Dr Benjamin Rush (1746-1813)

Without doubt he was the most famous physician of his day. His medical influence was extensive and it is not surprising that Thomas Jefferson asked him to advise Meriweather Lewis and William Clark about medical practice and the medication that they should take with them on their expedition to explore the Great Plains following the Louisiana Purchase. 

Dr Rush was an advocate of heroic medicine, involving bleeding and purgation. Accordingly, he advised them to take copious quantities of calomel in tablets of his own manufacture.

Dr Rush's Bilious Pills

Calomel was one of the most powerful drugs known in the 19th century. It is actually mercurous chloride. It was effective against syphilis and was a powerful 'alterative.' This meant that it affected the patient's constitution. In large doses it was an extremely efficient purgative  (laxative). Unfortunately, it was often prescribed in small doses for long periods, when it would induce what we now know to be mercury poisoning. A consequence of this was that the teeth fell out. Almost certainly George Washington lost his test because of this, as well as his life after heroic medicine physicians treated him for a throat infection by bleeding him and giving him large doses of calomel.

Lewis and Clark

The Lewis and Clark expedition set off from St Louis in 1804 and lasted 2 years, during which they travelled 4,000 miles across the land, during which time they lost only one man, due to appendicitis. It is said that they were both adept wilderness doctors, who treated their men with Dr Rush's Bilious Pills.

Lewis and Clark's expedition 1804-1806

Dr Rush advised that at the first sign of illness they should give one or two of his pills. This meant effectively, at the signs of constipation and abdominal pain, they were to give his calomel-containing laxatives. So effective were they, that they were known as Rush's Thunderbolts!

These pills, which Rush made himself for them contained large amounts of calomel. They purged quickly and furiously, producing a perspiration and an intense salivation reaction that was concluded to be a sure sign that a toxin was being removed from the body. 

The Civil War and the Calomel Rebellion

By the time of the Civil War calomel was immensely popular with doctors. It was not so popular with Dr William Hammond, however. He was a neurologist who was appointed Surgeon General of the Union Army at the age of 34 years, by Abraham Lincoln. He was concerned about the use of calomel and also of 'tarter emetic' (a preparation of antimony and potassium tartrate, which also produced vomiting and a perspiration reaction) and removed them from the Army supplies. He was concerned about the side effects from overuse, including salivation, gum disease, tooth loss and mercurial gangrene. 

Circular Number 6 from him stated that calomel use....'has so frequently been pushed to excess by military surgeons that the only way to deal with it is to banish the drug.'

He went on to say: 'No doubt can exist that more harm has resulted from the misuse of both these agents, in the treatment of disease, than benefit from their administration.' It was his firm belief that they caused more deaths than they apparently saved. 

The medical profession was outraged and led to what has been termed the Calomel Rebellion. To understand this you have to appreciate that there were numerous schools of thought in medicine: Thomsonians, who were against all mineral remedies, hydropaths, who advocated therapeutic bathing, homoeopaths, who used minimum doses of like to deal with like, and Botanics, who prescribed plant remedies. All of these were considered 'faddists,' or quacks by the main medical profession. By removing Calomel and Tarter emetic he was seen as siding with the faddists. He was lampooned as the king of the quacks. 

General William Hammond (1828-1900)

The upshot was that Hammond was effectively framed and had trumped up charges brought against him by a rival. He was court marshalled in 1864.

A watering down

So, calomel and tarter emetic were both reinstated into the Army supplies and continued to be used by both the North and South throughout the war. A sort of concession was made, however, with a reduction in the amount of mercurous chloride used. 

Calomel continued to be used extensively by doctors up until the 1940s, when superior and safer laxative drugs were introduced. 

On the latrine trail of Lewis and Clark

As we know, Lewis and Clark made their way across America from St Louis to Fort Clatsop in Oregon. Interestingly, archaeologists have been able to follow the trail (and their movements) by finding the sites of their latrines, where the heavy metal mercy salts have been detectable in the ground, thanks to the purgative effects of Dr Rush's Bilious Pills.

The formula for watered down Dr Rush Bilious Pills in 1946

******

Keith's latest health book is available in March 2015 from Summersdale

GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING AND DEALING WITH DEMENTIA

Clay More's novel about Dr George Goodfellow is published in the West of the Big River series by Western Fictioneers. 

Available at Amazon.com:

THE DOCTOR by CLAY MORE

And his collection of short stories about Doc Marcus Quigley is published by High Noon Press

Available at Amazon.com:

ADVENTURES FROM THE CASEBOOK OF DR MARCUS QUIGLEY

And his latest western  novel Dry Gulch Revenge was published by Hale on 29th August.