Venereal Disease and the Lewis and Clark Expedition

P. Lowry Thomas

Description

One of the greatest challenges faced by William Clark and Meriwether Lewis on their 1804–6 Corps of Discovery expedition was that of medical emergencies on the trail. Without an attending physician, even routine ailments and injuries could have tragic consequences for the expedition’s success and the safety of its members. Of these dangers, the most insidious and potentially devastating was the slow, painful, and oftentimes fatal ravage of venereal disease.

 

Physician Thomas P. Lowry delves into the world of nineteenth-century medicine, uncovering the expedition’s very real fear of venereal disease. Lewis and Clark knew they were unlikely to prevent their men from forming sexual liaisons on the trail, so they prepared for the consequences of encounters with potentially infected people, as well as the consequences of preexisting disease, by stocking themselves with medicine and the latest scientific knowledge from the best minds in America. Lewis and Clark’s expedition encountered Native peoples who experienced venereal disease as a result of liaisons with French, British, Spanish, and Canadian travelers and had their own methods for curing its victims, or at least for easing the pain it inflicted.

 

Lowry’s careful study of the explorers’ journals sheds new light on this neglected aspect of the expedition, showing in detail how sex and venereal disease affected the men and their mission, and describes how diverse peoples faced a common threat with the best knowledge and tools at their disposal.

Sujets

• Expeditions
• Histoire
• USA
• United States of America
• History of medicine
• History of the Americas
• États-Unis
• History

Informations

• Publié par: UNP - Nebraska
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2005
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780803204911
• Langue: English

Extrait

VenerealDisease and the Lewis and Clark Expedition

Thomas P. Lowry

With a foreword by Edwin C. Bearss

University of Nebraska Press Lincoln and London

©  by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. Set in the Enschedé type foundry’s Trinité by Tseng Information Sys- tems. Book design: Richard Eckersley. Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lowry, Thomas P. (Thomas Power), – Venereal disease and the Lewis and Clark expedi- tion / Thomas P. Lowry ; with a foreword by Ed- win C. Bearss. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. --- (cloth : alkaline paper) . Lewis and Clark Expedition (–) . Sex- ually transmitted diseases – United States – His- tory – th century. . Medicine – United States – History – th century..Title. .. .'—dc 

Contents

List of Illustrations Foreword Preface Acknowledgments Introduction . Venereal Disease Today . What Did Lewis and Clark Know about Venereal Disease? . The Famous Shopping List . Indian Medicine . The Voyagers Speak . Aftermath Notes Bibliography Index

vii ix xiii xvii  

       

Illustrations

 . Effects of secondary syphilis . ‘‘Death Disguised as a Beautiful Woman’’ . Meriwether Lewis’s famous shopping list . Aerial view of Knife River Hidatsa village

 Tribes with venereal disease, as described by Lewis and Clark

 . Sexually Transmitted Diseases and Their Causes . Lewis’s Medical Shopping List

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







 

Foreword

A mid-October  telephone call from longtime friend, historian, and author Thomas P. Lowry was exciting and intriguing. He in- formed me that he and his wife, Beverly – his equal as a researcher – had finished a manuscript highlighting an often-ignored but last- ing medical problem that haunted members of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery, and the Native peoples they encountered, nearly two centuries ago. Tom inquired, ‘‘Would you be interested in reading the manu- script and, if warranted, writing the foreword?’’ After voicing con- cerns about time constraints and weighing them against a busy schedule, I answered, ‘‘Yes.’’ My decision to do so was reinforced by my interest in Lewis and Clark, which predated my infatuation with the Civil War. This later romance began in the winter of –, when my father, a Marine Corps veteran of the Great War and a Montana rancher, read to me John Thomason’sJeb Stuart. Some six years before, Sarah Evans Morse, my maternal grand- mother – a women’s rights crusader, educator, and social worker – introduced me to the Corps of Discovery and to Lewis and Clark. This was only natural, because Sarah Evans had come to Montana in the mid-s, fresh out of college, to teach in the Indian School at Crow Agency. By  she held elective office as superintendent of schools in Yellowstone County, and for many years before her death on January , , she served as executive secretary of the Mon- ix