For several days the pestilence raged at Fort Dearborn with violence similar to that previously manifested at Fort Gratiot. The official medical report shows that two hundred cases were admitted to the hospital in the course of six or seven days, fifty-eight of which terminated fatally.[837] The terror which the cholera inspired was due as much, apparently, to the rapid progress of the disease as to the high percentage of mortality which prevailed among its victims. The first soldier who perished on the "Henry Clay" was stricken in the evening of July 5 and died seven hours later.[838] On Scott's vessel, the "Sheldon Thompson," men died in six hours after being in perfect health. Sergeant Heyl "was well at nine o'clock in the morning—he was at the bottom of Lake Michigan at seven o'clock in the afternoon."[839] The author of the statement which has just been quoted gives a graphic description of his own illness, from which at the time of writing he was in process of recovering. He was serving as officer of the day when the "Sheldon Thompson" arrived at Chicago, and superintended the landing of the sick on board the vessel. "I had scarcely got through my task," he wrote two days later, "when I was thrown down on the deck almost as suddenly as if shot. As I was walking on the lower deck I felt my legs growing stiff from my knees downward. I went on the upper deck and walked violently to keep up the circulation of the blood. I felt suddenly a rush of blood from my feet upwards, and as it rose my veins grew cold and my blood curdled.... My legs and hands were cramped with violent pain."[840]
[837] Hyde, Early Medical Chicago, 18-19. I have not had access to the original report on which this statement is based. Hyde says these two hundred cases occurred among "the Entire force of one thousand." This statement, which does not include Whistler's two companies, is evidently erroneous. The entire force ordered to Chicago numbered only a thousand men, and several hundred of these had already been dissipated through death and desertion, or by delaying at Fort Gratiot and elsewhere. I have not learned the number of men at Fort Dearborn at this time, but evidently it was much less than one thousand; the rate of sickness and mortality was, of course, correspondingly greater.
[838] New York Mercury, July 18, 1832.
[839] Letter from an officer of Scott's command, dated Fort Dearborn, July 12, Niles' Register, August 11, 1832.
[840] Ibid.
Some interest attaches to the methods employed by physicians in treating the disease, especially in view of what transpired at Chicago. In general it may be said that on both sides of the ocean the medical profession was helpless to stay its course. In London over one-half of the twenty-three hundred and eighty-two cases which occurred prior to April 12 terminated fatally.[841] At the same time the deaths in Paris from cholera numbered several hundred daily. It was everywhere noted that persons addicted to intemperance were especially prone to fall before the disease. The first six victims among the soldiers on the "Henry Clay" were all intemperate men.[842] The surgeon who attended Scott's men at Fort Dearborn treated all cases with calomel and blood-letting. This proved so efficacious, according to his report, that he regarded the disease as "robbed of its terrors."[843] In view of the nature of the remedies employed, and the fact that fifty-eight of the two hundred cases admitted to the hospital terminated fatally, in addition to the deaths which occurred on board the steamer, the grounds for his satisfaction are not entirely clear. But few fatalities occurred among the men of Major Whistler's two companies, who had been removed some distance from the fort and were attended by another physician, Doctor Harmon.[844] Strangely enough he attributed his success to the fact that he did not employ calomel in the treatment of the disease. That some of the soldiers who came with Scott to Chicago were subjected to other treatment than the blood-letting and calomel described in the surgeon's report seems evident from the statements of the officer whose sudden seizure on board the "Sheldon Thompson" has been described. The doctor administered eight grains of opium to him and made him rub his legs as fast as he could; he was also made to drink a tumbler and a half of raw brandy. At the time of writing the patient described himself as "out of danger," but whether because of this treatment would be hazardous to affirm.
[841] New York Mercury, May 23, 1832.
[842] Letter from Fort Gratiot dated July 7, 1832; ibid., July 18, 1832.
[843] Hyde, Early Medical Chicago, 19.
[844] Ibid., 14.