The Midwest pioneer, his ills, cures, & doctors - University Library ...

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whites who reached the Mississippi Valley. French explorers,
fur traders, and the habitans around Detroit and Vincennes
became familiar with the diseases of the region. The
Jesuit missionaries recorded summer illnesses among the
Indians around the missions: they connected them with the
eating of new corn, squashes, and watermelons. Sometimes
it was "a malignant fever, of the purple kind." At Fort
Miami in 1749 the twenty-two French inhabitants, including
the commandant, had the fever.
British and Americans had similar experiences. George
Morgan, Philadelphia merchant, western trader, and ambitious
empire builder, wrote from the Illinois country in
1766: "Ague & Fever has been remarkably prevalent—
Insomuch that of the Garrison & Inhabitants of Fort
Chartres & Kaskaskia few have escaped being more or less
afflicted therewith & altho 'tis not in itself Mortal yet the
frequency of it must be the Occasion of other Disorders
that are so— Insomuch that not a
single Person Male or
Female born at the Illinois of Parents of fifty Years of Age
& very few of Forty—Neither has there been any French
Native of the Country known to have lived to an old
Age. . .
." Again in 1768: "every officer & almost every
private Man, have been most Violently attacked with a
Feaver—For want of Experience—Attention & Attendance,
they were brought to a Most distressed Situation. . . .
They cintinued helthy until about the 20th of September,
When they Were Attack'd by twentys in a day & so
severely that in the Course of about a Week there was but
Nineteen Men capable of Duty at Fort Chartris & every
Officer was ill at the same Time. . . . The Groans & cries
of the Sick Was the only Noise to
be heard within the
Fort. . . . The Febrifuge you so warmly recommended
will do very well from this till May next. When each of
Us may expect to be attack'd in Turn." And George
Butricke, garrison officer, writing on October 30, 1768,
said: "in 3 days time there was not one Commissioned
Officer, non Commissioned or Private man But one Sergt.
1 Corpl. and about nine men but what was seized in the