Medicine on the Lewis and Clark Expedition

Peruvian bark (cinchona), one of the expedition's staple medicines, from Phil. Jos. Schalbaecher's Icones plantarum (1800). Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark weren't doctors, but they carried a well-stocked medicine chest — and needed it.

Medicine in 1803

Medical knowledge was limited. Bloodletting was common, and people believed laxatives and purgatives flushed contagions from the body.

"Rush's Thunderbolts"

• Instruction: in summer 1803, Lewis met Dr. Benjamin Rush in Philadelphia, the country's leading physician, who gave him some basic medical training.
• The pills: Rush supplied about 600 of his "Bilious Pills," nicknamed "Rush's Thunderbolts" — calomel (mercurous chloride) and jalap, both strong purgatives of the day.
• A cure-all: the captains gave them for almost everything. Clark wrote that he found them "extreamly efficacious" in fevers.
• A trail of mercury: they used so many that scientists today can identify the expedition's campsites by the mercury in the soil of their latrines.

The rest of the chest

• Peruvian bark: a large supply for general use — when in doubt, Peruvian bark. Lewis mixed it with saltpeter for snakebites, and used it on his own gunshot wound in August 1806.
• Opium and laudanum: pain relief.
• Camphor: for fever.
• Balsam of copaiba with calomel: for venereal disease, common among soldiers.
• Essence of peppermint: for stomach complaints. In August 1805, when Peter Weiser fell "very ill with a fit of the cholic," Lewis gave him peppermint and laudanum; within half an hour Weiser had recovered enough to ride Lewis's horse while Lewis walked.

Skill and luck

With so little training even by the standards of their time, it's remarkable that Lewis and Clark treated their crew's many illnesses and injuries as well as they did. More than once, sheer luck may have decided between recovery and death.

Sources

Based on "Medicine on the Lewis and Clark Expedition," part of Pivotal Places: Stories from the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, National Park Service, quoting the expedition journals; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The 1800 illustration is in the public domain.