Health Conditions and the Practice of Medicine Among the Early Norwegian Settlers, 1825-1865
    by Knut Gjerset and Ludvig Hektoen (Volume I: Page 1)

The general conditions of health, the prevalent diseases, and the nature of medical practice among early Norwegian settlers in this country have received so scant attention that this side of pioneer life is known, only imperfectly. The want of ordinary comforts, the lack of implements for tilling the soil in the wilderness, and the more dramatic incidents of conflicts with hostile Indians furnish a deep coloring to the pages of pioneer history; but the often hopeless struggle against disease in the unhealthful primitive environment, where even under the most exigent circumstances the only medical aid that could be secured was usually inadequate and unskilled, would probably furnish a tale even more sad and somber, if this part of the story could be told more fully.

Norwegian immigration to America began in 1825, when the little sloop "Restaurationen" sailed for New York on July 4 or 5 from the city of Stavanger, Norway, with fifty-two persons on board. Some years previously, in 1821, the Quakers of the Stavanger district had sent Cleng Peerson {1} and Knud Olson Eide to investigate conditions in America. The favorable report submitted upon Peerson's return in 1824 led to the first immigration to this country in modern times. A company was organized under the leadership of Lars Larson i Jeilane and the small sloop was bought in which the voyage across the Atlantic was successfully completed. When the immigrants arrived in New York, on October 9 of that year, they were met by Cleng Peerson, who had preceded them by some other route. They were then fifty-three in number, as the wife of the leader had given birth to a daughter on the voyage. The Quakers of the city showed them great hospitality and aided them by collecting a sum of money to defray the expenses of their journey to Kendall in Orleans County, New York, which Cleng Peerson had selected as a suitable location for a settlement. In Kendall they purchased a tract of land, but when they arrived there in the month of November they had neither houses nor provisions for the winter. As the region was forested, some of the settlers began the construction of a log cabin for shelter, while others hired out to the farmers of the neighborhood to thresh grain with the flail, work for which they received every eleventh bushel threshed. In this way they were able to provide themselves with a supply of the most necessary food, but, nevertheless, they suffered great privations, especially during the first year. One of the settlers some years later wrote thus of conditions in the colony during those first hard months: "After a long voyage we finally arrived safe in New York, and went thence to this place in the forest. We were all poor, and none of us could speak English. When we arrived in Kendall, the most of us became sick and discouraged. The timber was heavy, and it took a long time before we could raise enough to support us." {2} From 1825 until 1836 no ships carried immigrants from Norway to America and only a few persons, who had come by way of Gothenburg, Sweden, and Hamburg, Germany, arrived in the Kendall colony. But a new exodus was started when Knud Anderson Slogvig, one of the sloop immigrants from the Kendall colony, returned to Norway in 1835 and gave a highly favorable account of America. In 1836, the year following his return, two brigs, "Norden" and "Den Norske Klippe," carrying about two hundred persons, sailed from Stavanger to New York. Another band of immigrants followed in 1837 in the two ships "Œgir" from Bergen and "Enigheden" from Egersund.

The restless pathfinder, Cleng Peerson, did not remain long quietly at Kendall. With two companions he set out on foot in 1833 to explore the lands of the great West. They continued their journey as far as Chicago; and finally in the Fox River Valley, La Salle County, Illinois, Peerson found a region which he thought excelled all others in fertility and beauty. Here he founded a second settlement in 1834. Three years later he founded another in Shelby County in northeastern Missouri, but it did not thrive. After a few years the settlers left and established a new colony at Sugar Creek in Lee County, Iowa, a few miles west of Keokuk. In 1849 Peerson went to Texas, where he died in 1865, after spending many years in promoting the founding of Norwegian settlements in that state.

Of the immigrants who came in 1836 in the two brigs "Norden" and "Den Norske Klippe," only a few settled in Kendall. Some made their homes in Chicago, but most of them. went to the Fox River settlement. Even many of those who settled in Kendall went to Fox River after a few years and for some time this settlement experienced a rapid and uninterrupted growth [fig. 1].

FIG. I. EARLY NORWEGIAN SETTLEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES
KEY TO MAP

The two ships "Enigheden" and "Œgir," which sailed to America in 1837, brought 177 immigrants, who intended to go to the Fox River settlement. Many of those who came with "Enigheden" did so; but when the passengers of the "Œgir" reached Chicago they were warned by Bj²rn Anderson from the Fox River settlement that if they went there they would be exposed to the ravages of the deadly malarial fever. In their dismay and bewilderment they were encouraged by their leader, Ole Rynning, a well-educated and courageous man. Following the advice of some Americans who told them to go to Beaver Creek in Iroquois County, Illinois, about seventy miles south of Chicago, Rynning and three other trusted men set out to examine that region. They found the land rather low and sandy, but nevertheless they decided to settle there. The immigrants from the "Œgir" were brought out and log cabins were erected for the winter. They were now about fifty in number. The "Œgir" had carried eighty-four passengers, but some had gone to Fox River, N. P. Langeland and his family of seven had left the company at Detroit on the way to Chicago, and others had remained in Rochester. {3}

In the spring the region about Beaver Creek was flooded, the marshy bottoms became veritable lakes, and when the weather grew warm the settlers were attacked by malarial fever. In a short time fourteen or fifteen deaths occurred. In spite of the calamities which had befallen him and his people, Ole Rynning, unmindful of his own suffering, continued bravely to aid and comfort the settlers. On his sick-bed he wrote a truthful and optimistic account of America, which was soon after published in Norway and which did more than anything else to stimulate the early immigration movement.

In speaking of the danger from disease in America, Rynning says: "I shall not conceal the fact that the unaccustomed climate usually causes some kind of sickness among the new settlers during the first year. Diarrhea, or the ague, afflicts almost every one; but if a regular diet is observed, these sicknesses are seldom dangerous, and Nature helps herself best without medicine. The ague seldom returns unless one has attempted to drive it away by quack medical treatment." {4}

Soon Rynning, too, succumbed. In the fall of 1838 this heroic and beloved leader was carried away by an ailment which, according to the meager accounts given, seems to have been dysentery. At the time of his death every person but one in the settlement was sick. Those who were able left their homes and belongings and fled from the colony, most of them making their way to their countrymen in the Fox River settlement. A few lingered for a while, hoping that better days might dawn, but soon they, too, left and before long the unfortunate colony was extinct and forgotten.

In 1838 Norwegian immigrants began to establish themselves in Wisconsin. In July of that year Ole Nattestad from the unlucky Beaver Creek colony came to Rock County and settled in the town of Clinton, where a few American families had already built their homes. In 1839 his brother, Ansten Nattestad, who had gone to Norway from Beaver Creek and had published there Ole Rynning's account of America. returned in company with a hundred immigrants on the ship "Emelia." Some of these went to Fox River and others to Chicago, but the greater number followed Ansten to the region selected by his brother Ole, in the southeastern part of Rock County, Wisconsin. where they developed the Jefferson Prairie settlement. {5} Some went to the southwestern part of the same county, where they founded the Rock Prairie, or Luther Valley, settlement. To later immigrants this region became the gateway to the fertile lands of Wisconsin and the far West and Luther Valley, or Rock Prairie, where the noted Reverend C. L. Clausen became pastor in 1846, remained for some time an important center of activity of the early church leaders among the immigrants. {6}

A second Norwegian settlement in Wisconsin was founded in 1839 at Lake Muskego in Waukesha County by sixty immigrants from Telemarken and Stavanger. Upon. their arrival in Milwaukee they were induced by persons interested in the growth of the city to settle in that low and marshy region. The fall rains turned the low ground into swamps and the higher ridges, being covered with heavy timber, were ill suited to cultivation. Still the settlement continued to grow, until the great cholera epidemics in 1849, 1850 and 1852. During those years the dead and dying were found in every household and so great was the suffering that most of the settlers moved away. Already, in 1840, they had begun to establish new homes at Norway in Racine County, a little farther to the southward. The old colony .was almost abandoned, but the new settlement became permanent, the whole complex of settlements in this neighborhood being generally known as "the Muskego settlement." Cholera and malaria ravaged the new colony also, trying the settlers' endurance to the utmost. But the settlers clung heroically to the homes they had built and, in spite of hardships, the colony became an important center. Many resolute leaders were found among them, such as Even Heg, father of Colonel Hans C. Heg of Civil War fame; the editor and political leader, James D. Reymert; and the pioneer ministers C. L. Clausen and H. A. Stub. The first Norwegian newspaper in America, Nordlyset, edited by James D. Reymert and printed in Even Heg's cabin, was published there from 1847 to 1850. The first real Norwegian church edifice in America was also erected in the Muskego settlement in 1844. In time the swamps were drained, the forests were cut down, and Muskego became one of the most attractive and prosperous rural communities in the state of Wisconsin. {7}

The greatest of early Norwegian settlements was founded in 1840 at Koshkonong in Dane County, Wisconsin. The Reverend J. W. C. Dietrichson, an ordained clergyman of the state church of Norway, became pastor there in 1844. Within a year he organized ten congregations among his countrymen and churches were built at both East and West Koshkonong. Adam L²venskjold, Norwegian consul general in New York and charge d'affaires in Washington, after visiting the colony in 1847, wrote in an official report to the Norwegian government: "On Koshkonong Prairie there are two so-called churches, six miles apart. On the outside they resemble barns, but inside they present a neat and tasteful appearance. I attended religious service in one of these churches. Many people were assembled and the service was conducted by Rev. Dietrichson in a very stately manner." {8} Dietrichson's successors, the Reverend A. C. Preus, the first president of the Norwegian Lutheran Synod and pastor at Koshkonong from 1850 to 1860, and the Reverend J. A. Ottesen, pastor from 1860 to 1885, were men of learning and culture, who exerted great influence as church leaders. Many men later prominent in state and nation were reared at Koshkonong. In time the settlement became widely known for its fine homes and prosperous people. {9}

For a time the death of Ole Rynning and the news of the sad fate of the Beaver Creek colony produced a marked decline in immigration from Norway; but in 1843 two ships from Dr²bak and Bergen brought new bands of immigrants. Of these, fifty families settled at Pine Lake and Nashota, ,Wisconsin, where a Swedish settlement had been founded in 1841, {10} and new settlements were soon founded in various other places in Wisconsin. In 1843 and 1844 settlements were started at Rock River east of Watertown, at Skoponong, and at Blue Mounds, all in Wisconsin, and at Long Prairie, Illinois. In 1845 settlements were founded at Bonnet Prairie and Spring Prairie, northeast of Madison, Wisconsin, where the noted church leader, the Reverend H. A. Preus, became pastor in 1851. By 1847, according to L²venskjold's estimate, the Norwegians in the western states numbered between ten and twelve thousand. {11}

As early as 1846 a few Norwegian settlers had crossed the Mississippi into Clayton and Allamakee counties in northeastern Iowa and four years later an important Norwegian settlement was founded in this region east of Decorah. This was the Washington Prairie colony, of which the prominent church leader, the Reverend Ulrik V. Koren, became pastor in 1853. It was not long before other thriving settlements sprang up in northern Iowa and southern Minnesota. Mrs. Abraham Jacobson, who came to Washington Prairie in 1853 states that cholera did not harry this settlement. Those who went to Lansing on the Mississippi to work generally got the fever and ague, but with these exceptions the settlers were not troubled with any serious diseases.

Before many years all the land in the early Norwegian settlements had been taken and there was none left for the new immigrants who continued to arrive. To remedy this difficulty, the Reverend C. L. Clausen of Rock Prairie set out in 1849 to find a suitable place for a new settlement across the Mississippi. This journey, as well as another in 1851, was unsuccessful; but a third journey, in 1852, brought him to the beautiful and fertile region on the Red Cedar River in Mitchell County, Iowa, where St. Ansgar is now located, eighty-four miles west of the Mississippi. After making a second visit to this place in September of the same year, in company with a few trusted men, he agreed to lead to it a large company of settlers from Rock Prairie in the following spring and promised to settle with them as their pastor. Accordingly, in the spring of 1853 forty families, with a train of covered wagons and about three hundred head of cattle, set out upon the long journey of about three hundred miles over the trackless prairies. Mrs. Assur H. Groth, who as a girl of nineteen made the journey with this company of settlers, says:

"The whole company consisted of over thirty covered wagons. The journey lasted three weeks, and most of us walked on foot the whole way, driving the cattle. I can remember that I carried children across creeks and rivers, when we had to ford the streams. No settlers were found in Mitchell county when we came there, but at Osage some had raised tall poles with names on, to indicate that they claimed the land. The Indians were still there, but they were friendly, and did us no harm. Whenever they came to our home, we gave them half a loaf of bread, which made them glad and thankful. In the settlement I was married to Assur H. Groth. Our first house was a small log cabin thatched with sod. After a while a new family came to the settlement, and we let them stay with us in our cabin. We were then seven persons in all in our little home. The cabin had no up-stairs, but some boards were laid across the beams under the rafters, and there some of us slept on a tick filled with straw. A child was born to the visiting family shortly after their arrival. When we raised enough grain so that we had some to sell, it had to be hauled to McGregor, about a hundred miles. These trips required seven or eight days. Later we hauled our grain to Decorah, which was a little nearer. Thirteen children were born to us, all of whom are still living, except one, who died last year. During the years when our children grew up we never had a doctor in the house. At first there were no doctors and no medicines. Rev. Clausen helped those who were sick, as far as he was able. Mrs. Mikkel Tollefson Rust served as midwife, and S²nn²va Knutson, a trained midwife from Norway, served as midwife and also as doctor, practicing both cupping and bloodletting. There was no cholera in the new settlement, and no fever, except ague, which troubled us some. The people were well, and very few died during the early years. The houses were poor. Many families had no stoves, and had to build some sort of fireplace of rock. Kitchen utensils were few. In Rev. Clausen's cabin they had to bake bread in a pot which they covered up and hung over the fire. But the people were happy. The greatest hospitality was practiced, and we loved each other as if we were all brothers and sisters."

The lack of tools and utensils and the absence of any comforts beyond the bare necessities of life were hardships which time and hard work would lighten. But other trials and dangers which beset the early Norwegian settlers were more difficult to combat. One danger to which they were exposed, even in the undeveloped regions where they settled, was the unrestricted and excessive use of alcoholic liquors. In his great work on the diseases of the Mississippi valley, written in 1850, Daniel Drake, referring to the Norwegians, wrote, "Professor Brainerd of Chicago has informed me, that the Norwegian immigrants, on landing at that city, often sicken under the combined influence of meat and whiskey." {12} It is probably safe to conclude that whisky was the more effective of the two agents.

Excessive use of alcoholic beverages was very common in Norway at this time. The earlier restrictive laws governing the manufacture of distilled liquors had been repealed in 1816 at the instance of the leaders of the movement for national freedom, who considered such laws incompatible with the ideas of liberty and held that every citizen who paid taxes should have the right to distill liquors without interference from the government. As a result, private distilleries grew very numerous and the amount of alcoholic liquors used increased to seventeen quarts per capita in 1833, figured on the basis of a fifty per cent volume of alcohol. Restrictive measures in 1845 and 1848 abolished private distilleries, but the excessive use of alcoholic stimulants was still very common. In 1857 a general survey conducted by Eilert Sundt revealed the fact that over one-third of all married men in the country were more or less addicted to an excessive use of alcohol. Alcoholism was found to be one of the most potent causes of insanity, stillbirths, infant mortality, poverty, and crime--conditions which led to the strong temperance movement and the advanced temperance legislation of more recent times. {13}

The early immigrants carried their old habits with them to this country, where freedom with regard to the use of intoxicants was no less complete than in Norway. Overindulgence was therefore common and had a disastrous effect upon the settlers' social and economic well-being. The Norwegian Lutheran pastor and church leader, the Reverend O. J. Hatlestad, wrote in 1853: "We have received a paper called Afholdsvennen [" The Temperance Friend "], edited by L. P. Mossin. It is published monthly, and costs twenty-five cents a year. The purpose of the paper is to. work against the physical and moral evil of indulgence in alcoholic stimulants, which has ruined and poisoned our whole social life, an evil whose injurious and ruinous effects we can observe daily." {14} In a letter to Emigranten, dated July 18, 1859, one writer, speaking about conditions in the Norwegian settlement on Bonnet Prairie, near Columbia, Wisconsin says: "So in accordance with Mikkael's invention, and because many of these wicked people felt that it would satisfy their wants, we find them taking many a glass of whiskey. More and more people came into the community and the evil of drunkenness raged so fiercely that it is impossible for my pen to describe conditions." {15} The very. strong expressions used by this writer, who seems to be a man of marked pietistic leanings, can safely be regarded as exaggerations; but there is no doubt that excessive use of alcoholic stimulants was common among the early Norwegian settlers and often created most deplorable conditions.

During the early years the settlers suffered much from epidemic and other diseases, which carried away even the strongest and blighted the homes and happiness of the survivors. Especially tragic in their immediate results were the cholera epidemics. Cholera appeared in this country first in 1832. From Quebec and Montreal it spread to the shores of Lakes Ontario and Erie and thence to Lake Champlain and Albany. From New York also it was carried inland, following, it was noted by physicians in Chicago and elsewhere, the thoroughfares of travel. It was spread, no doubt, by immigrants coming by way of New York and Buffalo, where cholera existed when they passed through. In 1848-49 it broke out in New Orleans and on the Atlantic coast. {16} From New Orleans it spread over the Mississippi Valley. In St. Louis seventeen physicians died of cholera in the spring and summer of 1849.

On April 29, 1849, cholera was brought to Chicago by the canal-boat "John Drew." Her captain, who had contracted the disease from immigrants coming from New Orleans by way of the Mississippi and Illinois rivers and the canal, died a few hours after the boat arrived in Chicago, and others on the same boat died also. So many were stricken in Chicago that a cholera hospital was established. One person in every thirty-six of the population died during the epidemic. The height of this outbreak extended from July 7 to August 18 and, according to Dr. John Evans, who made a careful study of the epidemic, the greatest mortality occurred on the north side of the city in a neighborhood of three squares, where "scarcely an individual escaped an attack, either in the form of diarrhea, or the more aggravated disease." This section was situated on the highest ground in the vicinity of Chicago. "The soil," wrote Evans, "is very sandy and dry. These blocks are thinly built up, and are nearly surrounded by open, vacant ground. The inhabitants are mostly of the better class of Norwegians, in moderate circumstances, who live as comfortably as the average of Americans. The three blocks numbered 332 inhabitants. Of these forty-four died of cholera." Twenty-eight of the forty-four victims were sick less than one day. In not a single instance did the disease appear in a neighborhood that had not been in communication with affected persons or places and consequently Evans placed no stress at all upon its spread by drinking water. To quote again from Evans:

"From Andrew Nelson, janitor of Rush Medical College, I obtained the following: 'On the thirty-first of July Knut Hanson nursed Nels Nelson until he died, which was about noon. At 2 o'clock on the same day he took a diarrhea, and went to Andrew Nelson's: on the 3d of August he died. Nelson's family were in tolerable health up to this time. On the 4th one of his children was taken sick with the disease. Two days afterward another sister was taken with diarrhea, but was relieved by medicine taken at the onset of the attack. On the night of the 9th Mrs. Nelson, who had been washing up the clothes of Hanson that died the day before, and nursing her children, was taken violently sick, and died the next evening. On the morning of the 10th Mr. Nelson's brother was taken sick, and died before night. Two members of the family, only, escaped an attack.' " {17}

The disease reappeared in Chicago in July, 1850, and by September it had carried off 420 persons. There were deaths from cholera in Chicago in 1851; 630 in 1852; 26 in 1854; and 147 in 1855. There were no cases after this until 1863. In 1866 there were 990 deaths from cholera in the city, including that of Dr. Daniel Brainerd, the founder of Rush Medical College; in 1867 there were 67 deaths in all; and in 1873 there were only eight. The present system of water supply from Lake Michigan was started in 1851 largely on account of the many deaths from cholera in 1849 and 1850 in localities where well water was used, particularly on the north side. At that time the predominant role of drinking water in the spread of cholera was not understood and obviously both carrier and contact infection played a highly significant part in the events both in Chicago and in the settlements.

From Chicago cholera traveled on to Aurora, Naperville, and other places, as well as out along the Milwaukee road. In Milwaukee cases appeared early in July, 1849, and in the first half of August six or seven deaths occurred daily. At the end of August it was reported that of 209 cholera patients, 104 had died. {18}

The Norwegian settlement at Fox River suffered frightfully from cholera, which was brought in 1849 by newcomers who had been taken sick on their way through infected places. A carpenter who was employed to make coffins for the cholera victims in the settlement was unable to supply the demand. In order that he should not be exposed to the disease, his neighbors pushed boards through the window into. his shop and the coffins were delivered through the same opening. One of the settlers has stated that in her home her stepfather, her mother, two brothers, and a laborer died within a few days. {19}

In the Muskego settlement the same epidemic created the greatest suffering. So dark a pall of sorrow fell upon the colony that Muskego became known as "the region of death." Among those carried away during the outbreak was Dr. Squires, who succeeded Dr. Otis, the first physician to locate in that district. One of the settlers, John Evenson Molee, describes the summer of 1849 as "the awfulest summer I have ever experienced in my life." "By this time," he wrote, "there were a great number of our people in Muskego. When the cholera epidemic struck our settlement, there were, at one time, only seven families, all well, so that they could get away to help their neighbors. From three to four persons died every day. Hans Tveito and myself had all we could do to. carry the dead out of the houses and haul them to the grave with our oxen, while others dug the graves." {20}

In another account the writer speaks of the "terrible and indescribable scenes" which "followed the breaking out of this fearful scourge, as the poor and ignorant people did not know how to diet or abate its ravages in the least." "A hospital,'' he continues, "was finally established on the shores of Big Muskego lake, in a large barn, where scores of the poor people died. This plague broke out here again in 1851, and raged with frightful violence and fatality. A log house near the town line in Norway was then an improvised hospital, and graves were dug and kept open for expected corpses. The plague resulted in so many deaths, and carried such terror into the community, that all but a few of the surviving Norwegian families left the town. {21} In 1852 the few settlers still remaining in the colony again had to carry out their dead in a new cholera epidemic.

In other Norwegian settlements similar conditions prevailed. The Koshkonong settlement was harried by cholera in 1849 and again in 1850 it was visited by an epidemic during which many people died. One of the settlers of the Rock Prairie settlement wrote that cholera, brought along by immigrants, had closed the eyes of many in that colony. The Reverend H. A. Stub, pastor in Muskego, was asked to go to Dodgeville during the cholera epidemic at that place. "He was advised not to go," writes his son, "but nothing could deter him. One part of the town was almost depopulated, one corpse after the other being carried to the grave. My father stayed near the part which was least affected, and in a small church there he conducted religious services for the people of the neighborhood." {22} At Bonnet Prairie and Spring Prairie, Wisconsin, where the Reverend H. A. Preus was pastor, there was an epidemic of cholera in 1851 and 1852. Preus's son gives the following description of conditions there:

"The courage of the pastor and his wife was often put to the severest test. Greatest perhaps were the difficulties during the cholera epidemic. Mr. Zii²lner has told me that at one time he accompanied father from Portage to Bonnet Prairie. It was late before they started, and it soon grew so dark that they did not know where they were. They then decided to stop over night wherever they could find quarters. In the first house which they found all were dead. In the next house nearly all were sick with the cholera, and so they continued from house to house until they came home. Sickness and death they found everywhere." {23}

There seems to be no record of cholera in the Norwegian settlements after 1852, but in 1854 Norwegian immigrant groups passing through Milwaukee took cholera with them on their way, and in one case at least they buried the dead by the road side.

Apparently nothing was done to disinfect or properly to dispose of the highly infectious discharges of cholera patients. Dr. J. W. Magelssen states that in the early settlements no privies were built. All houses were built of logs, as sawed boards were too expensive, and no one thought of building a log house for so simple a purpose. The discharges of both the sick and the well were deposited in the open, where they were accessible to hogs and chickens, as well as to the myriads of flies which always infested the homes, for no window screens were used. In all cases of sickness the swill-pail was used as a chamber-pot. Even after privies came into use they represented scarcely any real improvement, as they were poorly constructed, accessible to flies, never disinfected, and, as a rule, highly unsanitary.

But even the fatal inroads of the dreaded cholera seem to have been regarded by the settlers as a less serious affliction than the fever and ague, or malaria--known among Norwegian immigrants as agern, klimatfeber [" climate fever"], koldfeber, and sumpfeber [" swamp fever "] -- from which they were never free and which, like a vampire, sapped their strength and mined their lives, even if it did not produce as high a mortality rate as cholera, which occurred only at intervals. Although the disease was seldom fatal, it left the settlers for long periods too weak to work, and consequently many families were in want. Furthermore, those once stricken with the disease were usually subject to new attacks every year. {24}

According to Knud Langland, editor of Demokraten and later of Skandinaven, "everywhere in the West the ague attacked the settlers more or less severely during the first development of the country; but on high land, far from swamps and morasses, the affliction was quite easily overcome." {25} Wherever new land was broken in swampy regions, the ague harried the people with the most disastrous results, as in the Beaver Creek colony. Langland wrote that in 1839 "malarial fever prevailed in the whole Fox River valley from Muskego in Wisconsin to the Mississippi river in Illinois, as well as in other river valleys in the West, but this the immigrants did not understand." {26} In 1847 the Norwegian consul-general in New York reported that "few if any of the immigrants escape the fever and ague .... Last year the suffering among the immigrants is said to have been very great. In many homes the husband, wife and children were all in bed, no one being able to help the other." {27}

In 1839 Knud H. Roe came to Chicago in company with about fifty immigrants from Norway, most of whom found employment in digging canals near the city. Of the subsequent fate of these immigrants Roe wrote:

"According to what I learned later many of these immigrants were soon attacked by disease, and as a result many of the families were in great want of the necessaries of life. At this time malaria ravaged Chicago very severely, and especially many of the poor hard-working immigrants, who were poorly fed and lived in miserable huts, fell victims to the disease. When fall came, only a few were alive. Most of them had succumbed to the unhealthy climate, and had closed their eves in death, soon after they had reached the destination for which they had longed so earnestly." {28}

The Muskego settlement especially felt the ravages of the dread, disease. A letter from one of the settlers to his parents in Norway describes conditions in that colony in 1841:

"I became sick as soon as I came here, and have been sick for eighteen months with malarial fever, which is very .severe and painful, and sometimes fatal. My wife and I are now somewhat better, but far from being well. This year seventy or eighty Norwegians died here. . . . My son Knud was sick fifteen days, and died three-quarters of a mile from the Norwegian settlement. My son Kittel has been sick with the fever, but is now well again. Our child Knud was the eleventh child which died on the way hither. . . . Many became widows and fatherless this year." {29}

Seventy or eighty deaths in so small a community -- the population was only six hundred in 1846 and so it must have been considerably smaller in 1841 -- was an unusual death rate even in those days. The writer does not state from what disease the twelve children died, but it could not have been malarial fever, since they died before reaching the colony. A letter which he wrote to his parents in 1844 is more optimistic in tone:

"We and our little son are now well, content and comfortable, so that I would not care to go back to Norway to live. . . . My brother Ole got sick with the fever, but not very severely, and he is now well again. Last year the ague raged very badly, but this year few have had it, and no one has died from it. Of those who in other places not many were attacked. Therefore I will move away from here, and so will most of those who live here." {30}

In. 1843 the Reverend C. L. Clausen became pastor in the Muskego settlement. When he came there, ague and bilious fever were so common that in every home but one there was sickness and deaths occurred almost daily. According to the clergyman's official report there were in that year fifty-three burials- thirty-two in the month of November, eight in one day. In 1844 conditions improved somewhat and only seventeen deaths occurred. {31}

Reports from other settlements were no less dismal. According to one of the first settlers in the Rock County colony, most of the people in that settlement were attacked by malarial fever. {32} Knud Aslakson Juve stated that when they came to Koshkonong in August, 1844, he and his brother became sick with malarial fever and did not refrain their health until the fall of the year following. {33} Dr. C. R. Head, who came to Rock County in 1839, entered the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City in 1844. In 1845 he returned to Wisconsin and began to improve a farm which he had entered.

One day while he was chopping in the forest a man came in great haste for him to visit a sick man near Koshkonong and from that day he was compelled to continue his services as medical doctor, without being able to return to the medical school until 1847. In 1846 he had at one time seventy-two cases of fever under his care. {34}

Many diseases developed on board the immigrant ships which were sometimes carried to the early settlements. Among them were typhoid fever, dysentery, and possibly typhus fever. Because of its frequent origin on shipboard, typhoid fever was commonly known as "ship fever," but it is not unlikely that "ship fever" sometimes also denotes typhus fever. The early immigrant vessels were often ill-ventilated and unsanitary old hulks, lacking all suitable equipment for carrying passengers. In early days not even a ship surgeon was provided, the captain of the vessel being expected to dole out medicines to the sick. As a result these ships became breeding places for dangerous diseases, which often carried away large numbers of passengers on the ocean voyages and infected the survivors with dangerous contagions to be transmitted to the settlements which they later visited. {35}

J. R. Reiersen wrote in 1846 that the immigrants were supplied with water from barrels which were "in such a condition that on the voyage across the ocean the water becomes putrid. This was the case on the ship on which I and my family came this year, and a general diarrhea developed on board." {36} Mrs. C. K. Preus, who came to America with her parents in 1860 on the vessel "Dr²bak," which carried four hundred persons, said that before the end of the voyage, which lasted thirteen .weeks, water and provisions ran short. There was no doctor and so much sickness developed that .fifteen persons died on the voyage. Most of the deaths were those of children, and, as she remembered, the prevailing disease was a violent diarrhea.

Knud Langland states that there was much sickness on board the boat on which he came to America in 1843. Two children died and were buried at sea. When the ship. reached New York, seven or eight of the passengers had to be placed in a hospital. One of the patients, a woman, who left the hospital before she had fully recovered, died of typhoid fever after -leaving New York for the West. {37} John Evenson Molee, who came to America in 1839, states in a letter to Professor R. B. Anderson: "My wife came over from Tin by way of Drammen, Norway, in 1843. She had a harder time in crossing the Atlantic than I had. The ship was thirteen weeks in crossing, and fourteen persons died of typhoid fever while sailing over the Atlantic. They were buried in that great ocean. Her own mother, Anne, and her twin sister, Susanna, were buried at sea." {38} It is possible that what the writer calls typhoid fever was really typhus fever. It is known that in the fifties a short but highly fatal outbreak of typhus fever occurred among the passengers of the steamer "Alleghany," on arriving in Milwaukee from Buffalo.

Dr. Bernhard I. Madsen, who established himself as a physician in Chicago in 1851, but moved to Cambridge in the Koshkonong settlement in 1856, is said to have died of typhus fever there in 1864. In describing conditions in Chicago in 1852, the Norwegian-American weekly newspaper. Friheds-Banneret, says: "From the middle of May till the month of September, according to the report of grave-diggers, 1500 persons, including Americans, Irish, Germans, Norwegians, and Swedes, died of various diseases. The rate of mortality was highest among the Irish and the Swedes. The prevalent diseases were cholera, bilious fever and typhoid fever." {39}

Leprosy was a disease of rather frequent occurrence in Norway in this period, especially in some of the seacoast districts. In 1856 there were 2,833 leprosy patients in Norway, but later efforts to study and control the disease have borne such fruit that in 1920 there were only 160 cases. In 1863 Dr. Jens Andreas Holmboe of Bergen was sent to the United States to study leprosy among the immigrants. In his extensive travels in the Norwegian settlements he found no cases of leprosy among persons born in America. The few cases which he did find were among those who had immigrated from Norway and most of them were already infected with the disease when they came. In a few instances the disease had developed in America, but "always in cases where the persons affected were adults when they came, or have lived in such a way, both in Norway and here, that the disease has been fostered, and that they have reaped no benefit from the natural advantages of conditions of life in America." Leprosy transmitted to America generally appeared in a milder form than in Norway, "with a greater tendency to self-restriction and cure." Dr. Holmboe ascribed this comparative absence of leprosy to the change in living conditions and the general well-being among the immigrants, "who in respect to physical comfort are so much better situated here than they were in Norway." Many of the immigrants who were untouched by the disease in all probability would have been attacked by it had they remained in Norway. "The climate seems to have 'a great influence on these changes," wrote Dr. Holmboe, "as it is not so damp and severe as in Norway, and does not tax the physical constitution, so severely .... The people in America do not need to expose themselves so much to the rigor of the climate as in Norway, and if they do so, they are better armed and have consequently greater strength to resist it. Leprosy will disappear among the Norwegians in America, and will appear only as isolated imported cases, which will not be transmitted from one generation to the other as an endemic." {40}

Itch was common among the early settlers and was due to unsanitary conditions, according to Dr. Magelssen. So also was the contagious eye disease, conjunctivitis, .which spread among the people because of their habit of using the same towel, even at large gatherings. That the immigrants from Norway brought trachoma with them seems doubtful, in view of the statement by Dr. E. Boeckmann of St. Paul, Minnesota, that trachoma was unknown in the parts from which they came.

Pneumonia was prevalent and tuberculosis was very common in the early Norwegian settlements, according to Dr. Magelssen. In many houses either the wife or the husband was a sufferer from tuberculosis and night and day would spit on the floor or on the walls of their ill-ventilated sod hut or log cabin, as that disease was not known to be contagious. "If it is really as contagious as it is now considered to be, no one at that time could have escaped it," remarks Dr. Magelssen. It is probably safe to assume that when subsequent generations of Norwegians, born and reared in this country, have been so sorely afflicted with tuberculosis, it has been due to a large extent to the conditions in the pioneer homes, which enabled the disease to get a firm foothold in so many families. It is established that poverty, unsanitary conditions, hard work, homesickness, sorrow, suffering, and general misery--conditions which existed everywhere in. the early settlements --contribute to the development and spread of this disease. Fewer persons seem to have died of tuberculosis in those early days than later, perhaps because the immigrants who came from Norway were healthy and had robust constitutions.

But those who belonged to the generation reared in the pioneer sod huts and log cabins were not so strong and often carried with them from their early homes weakened constitutions and, in many cases, well-rooted infections. The high rate of mortality resulting from tuberculosis among the Norwegian people in America, even up to our own day, is probably the heavy penalty they have had to pay for the poverty, squalor, and hardships of pioneer times.

The lack of knowledge of bacteria and of the true nature of infectious diseases .was at that time characteristic, not only of the general public, but of the best representatives of the medical profession as well. Dr. Magelssen, who entered Rush Medical College in 1863 and was graduated in 1866. says that Professor J. Adams Allen, one of the most noted teachers in that college, told his students that malaria was due to certain gases in the air, the presence of which could be detected by exposing starch to the air at night. If malarial gases were present, the starch would assume a bluish color. This was based upon the ozone idea that prevailed in those days as an explanation of various diseases. Professor Brainerd, the founder of the same college, who was regarded as one of the greatest surgeons in the country, told his students that in treating wounds the doctor should try to secure so-called "healthy" or "laudable" pus. At that time the healing of wounds without infections rarely occurred and yellow or laudable pus was an indication of the least dangerous wound infection. At the present day such ideas seem almost medieval, but it should be remembered that the modern science of bacteriology really dates from the epoch-making discoveries of Pasteur and Koch in the eighth decade of the nineteenth century. Through them the foundation was laid for the scientific knowledge of microbes, the use of antiseptics, serum therapy, and the sanitary science of the present.

It is noteworthy that in speaking of the infectious diseases with which they were afflicted the Norwegian immigrants do not mention smallpox. No serious epidemics of this disease seem to have developed among them, no doubt because they had all been vaccinated in Norway and because they continued the practice of vaccinating their children in the new settlements in America. Vaccination was introduced in Norway by law in 1810 and no person could thenceforth be confirmed or married without submitting his certificate of vaccination [fig. 2].

FIG. 2. THE VACCINATION CERTIFICATE OF A NORWEGIAN IMMIGRANT, 1833

These valuable documents were therefore carefully preserved by the people and many immigrants brought them to America. According to J. W. Magelssen, variation was practiced to some extent in the early settlements because of the difficulty of obtaining vaccine. {41} By this process inoculations were made with virus from a smallpox patient, from which developed a rather mild form of the disease which rendered the patient immune to new attacks; but the disease thus produced was contagious and some patients died from it. Dr. Magelssen says that he gathered the children of his neighborhood in a schoolhouse and vaccinated them with vaccine taken from a calf which he had inoculated with virus from a smallpox patient. In many cases arm to arm vaccination was practiced and sometimes human vaccine virus in the form of scabs was used. Faithful to their knowledge and tradition from Norway of the importance of inoculation against smallpox, the Norwegian settlers constantly practiced vaccination in some form.

Against malarial fever the immigrants were naturally helpless, until the insect-breeding sloughs and swamps which surrounded them in the new and undeveloped country had been drained and the soil had been cultivated. Cholera, so-called "bilious fever," dysentery, typhoid fever, and summer complaint probably were spread by contaminated drinking water in many cases; but it seems certain that the unsanitary and crowded. conditions in the homes led to more direct infection through various forms of contact.

The early Norwegian settlers did not dig wells. In Norway they had taken water for the household from sparkling brooks of pure water coming in rapid falls from the snow-capped mountains. In America they followed the same custom of taking their water from streams, without understanding the difference in climate and other conditions. They built their homes near brooks and rivers, where they could find timber and flowing water. For the household they hauled water from springs and stored it in barrels; but before long the water in the barrels would be covered with green scum and the ever-present mosquito would fill it with myriads of its pup˜, so that it was necessary to strain the water through cloth before drinking it. When springs could not be found, the settlers dug shallow holes near standing pools and let the water seep into these surface reservoirs. Only gradually did they begin to dig wells and these at first were so shallow that the water easily became contaminated from the surface. In 1843 Reiersen .wrote the following description of conditions in the Muskego settlement: "The land around Muskego is very low and flat, surrounded on all sides with sloughs and swamps, the like of which I have not seen elsewhere in the whole territory (Wisconsin). As a result the water is not very good, and the ease with which it can be found by digging a hole a few feet deep at the edge of a slough, has had the result that the settlers have not taken the trouble to dig wells to greater depths on land of a higher elevation." {42} L²venskjold reported that about the Rock Prairie, or Luther Valley, settlement the soil was rich but the water was "partly wanting." "Small brooks are found in a few places," he said, "but most of the settlers have to dig wells to the depth of twenty to forty feet .... At Ashipun, west of Pine Lake water is difficult to obtain, and is seldom found except at a depth of twenty to thirty feet." {43} To sink wells to such depths without proper apparatus was a real hardship; but in most places wells were dug only a few feet into the ground and would fill with water drawn from the surface or from upper strata of vegetable mold.

The sanitary conditions in the small, ill-ventilated, and overcrowded log cabins, sod huts, and dugouts were, of course, bad, as no opportunity was afforded for the observance of even elementary hygienic rules [fig. 3]. The conditions in the Muskego settlement described by Reiersen had their counterpart probably in all the Norwegian settlements. "The greater number of the immigrants who came this year flocked to this settlement," he 'wrote, "many of them being sick from their voyage across the ocean, and crowded together in small log cabins, so that often there were fifteen or twenty persons in one little cabin. The respiration of so many persons in one small room, together with the squalid habits of our countrymen, naturally intensified the mentioned causes of disease, creating an epidemic which, as doctors were seldom called, assumed a dangerous character, the malarial fever developing into the far more dangerous bilious fever, which carried away a great number of people. About fifty or sixty persons have died in this settlement this year." {44} L²venskjold reported similar conditions in the Koshkonong settlement: "As we know the Norwegian farmers in Wisconsin live in log cabins of only one room, in which they live, cook and sleep in genuine chalet manner, for with anything else it can not be compared. One finds on a shelf under the roof of the low cabin milk, butter and cheese, which naturally evaporate and corrupt the air. Such an arrangement, unpleasant even in the cold North, becomes unbearable in so warm a climate as this, not to mention its bad effect upon the general health." In another place L²venskjold says: "As a rule there are only log houses, but those who have settled on the prairie dwell, to a large extent, in sod huts under ground, with only the roof projecting above the surface." {45}

For people raised under the very different circumstances of our own time it is difficult to form a conception of the conditions often prevailing in the small pioneer log cabins and sod huts. At one time, seven families were living in one log cabin in the Koshkonong settlement, according to Mrs. J. D. Jacobsen. They were young people without children, but even so the situation is difficult to understand. Dr. Magelssen at one time had seven typhoid fever patients in one cabin at Highland Prairie, Iowa, but all recovered. He says that the sick and the well were often forced to occupy the same bed and in a little room where several persons were sick with fever food and milk stood in open vessels on a small shelf not far from the beds of the patients. Kitchen utensils were often so scarce that the sick and the well had to use the same spoons and dishes. One family had so few utensils that they were obliged to cook their food in the cover of a milk can. Great squalor prevailed in many of these primitive homes and the most ordinary rules of health were ignored often enough. Jens J. Naeset of the Koshkonong settlement has told of a little boy who licked an unwashed spoon used by a cholera patient but did not contract the disease. Sometimes the squalor reached the point of the ludicrous. Once upon entering the cabin of a sick man Dr. Magelssen noticed something moving in the bed beside the patient and suddenly he heard the loud "moo" of a newborn calf. Fearing that the calf might die in the cold winter weather, the man had taken it to bed with him. With the tiny cabin serving as a cookroom, a washroom, a bedroom for many persons, and a storehouse for food and milk as well as for numerous other articles, who shall blame the busy housewife if it often presented the appearance of discomfort and disorder? But life obeys its own laws and in the midst of it all children were born and the sick and dying were nursed to life or laid away in death.

The mortality early in life must have been high. In a Wisconsin settlement that escaped epidemics 194 deaths are recorded in the church books from 1855, when the first death took place, to 1865; and of these, as shown in the following table, no less than 94 were deaths of children under five years.

DEATHS, COON PRAIRIE SETTLEMENT, 1855-65   {46}

The medical aid given the sick in the early settlements was often crude and inadequate. As there was no field for remunerative medical practice among the first pioneers, no physicians from Norway accompanied the early immigrants. Medical assistance was therefore often limited to questionable

remedies recommended by "wise" women, superstitious old men, or unscrupulous quacks, all of which did little good and sometimes a great deal of harm. In the Koshkonong settlement, John Smith, a Swede by birth, a man of questionable character, served for a time as both clergyman and physician. Another such quack in the same settlement in the sixties is described by Svein Nilsson, editor of the Illustreret Billed-Magazin, as follows:

"Some years ago Cambridge (Wis.) became a center of pilgrimage for sick people, not only from Wisconsin, but from Iowa, Minnesota, and other places. At that time the goddess of medicine revealed herself in the form of a woman. A midwife from Norway, who was living there, began practice as a medical doctor and soon gained widespread reputation for her miraculous cures. The influx of people was immense, and many had to wait for days before they could get an opportunity to speak to her. Early and late she was busy. No case was so difficult that she could not cure it with her medicines, pills and powders. She was a necromancer on a large scale, and was regarded as a person of extraordinary gifts, her reputation increasing with the distance which people had to travel to see her. But her knowledge of medicine does not seem to have been very profound. When she ordered her supply of medicine from the drug-store, her orders read about as follows: 'Send me medicines of different tastes and colors; bitter, sour and sweet; also different kinds of powders, and large and small pills; and also sirup for the children.' But no matter what medicine she administered the people thought that she had cured them. For many years she continued her practice to the surprise of those who knew her qualifications. She was the Mother Saether [a noted healer in Norway] of the Norwegians in America. But finally the deception became manifest. Her practice fell off, and finally ceased altogether. Now only the memory is left of the extent to which a bold humbugger can prey upon a gullible and ignorant public. {47}

Dr. Magelssen, in describing conditions in the Norwegian settlement founded at Rushford, Minnesota, in 1853, tells of two Norwegian "doctors," Holm and Fr²ken, who practiced as physicians there in early days. One of them had been a clerk in a drug-store in Norway for a short time and this service seems to have been the extent of his medical training. At one time the two performed an operation upon a woman; and when the patient died the people became so angry that the "doctors" had to leave. At North Prairie, between Rushford and Lanesboro, there were two Norwegian farmers, Rom²ringen and Hallingen, honest and well-meaning men, who practiced bloodletting, cupping, and the administering of more or less harmless remedies. Some of these home-remedy quacks could also set broken limbs; and after setting a limb it was their practice to give the patient the filings of an old brass comb, which, they thought, would serve as a solder for joining the broken bones. A poultice of sheep dung was regarded as a good remedy for tuberculosis and the dung of a young heifer was considered an effective remedy for certain ailments. In the Norwegian settlement at Highland Prairie in Fillmore County, Minnesota, lived a man known as "King Haakon," or as "the king," who practiced cupping and bloodletting and who could also cure toothache by putting a wooden peg into the hollow of a tooth, mumbling some charm over it, and then throwing the peg into the well of his neighbor, Elling Peerson, who became so offended that the bitterest hostility existed between the two. In Rushford lived an old bachelor, Sone Knudsen, who had acquired so much knowledge of medicine by nursing the sick during the cholera epidemics that he served as family physician for several families in the settlement. Similar quacks and home-remedy men were found in all the early Norwegian settlements.

Another source of medical assistance sought by many in their need were the patent medicines. In the first Norwegian newspapers published in this country the patent-medicine quack appears with his showy advertisements of his wonder-working remedies. {48} In Nordlyset one druggist advertises that he sells "the best, most reliable and excellent 'Fever and Ague' medicines, the strength and effect of which he guarantees." In another place in the same paper he advertises fever and ague medicines, guaranteed to cure without fail, and blood purifying remedies .which will cure colds, tuberculosis, pneumonia, liver complaint, and other ailments. "Come one and all," he says, "who believe in good remedies, and prefer good health to sickness and misery." He also sells Golden Drops for liniment and Balsam for rheumatism. Other advertisements tell of "the great remedy . . the famous and original Arabian Liniment for human beings and animals." And then there were Halloway's Salve and Pills. The pills could cure malaria, headache, all kinds of fevers, epilepsy, rheumatism, colic, venereal diseases, jaundice, liver complaint, constipation, indigestion, gravel, female diseases, dropsy, and so forth. Any ailment which the advertiser neglected to mention when he recommended the pills as an absolute cure could be cured by the salve, which was a sure remedy in cases of sore feet, burns, swollen glands, backache, skin diseases, sores, boils, cancer, mosquito bites, sore throat, scurvy, and rheumatism. The market was overstocked with such panaceas for all human ills [fig. 4]. There were Ayer's Pills, "a remedy for all diseases," concocted by James C. Ayer. There were Dr. David Jayne's "famous Family remedies," H. Ayer's Cherry Pectoral, S. T. Townsend's Sarsaparilla, Corbett's Shaker Sarsaparilla, Ginsott's Yellow Dock and Sarsaparilla, Dr. J. S. Houghton's Pepsin, and "Dr. Philotokon, or the Family Friend," to mention only a few. What need was there of being sick and miserable when there were so many unfailing remedies for all the ills to which human flesh is heir? Undoubtedly many of the settlers thought that there was no need, as some people are still in the habit of thinking, and the patent medicine quacks reaped a lucrative harvest.

These patent remedies as well as common drugs were sold in general stores together with other staple wares for the household. The small volume of trade made it impossible to specialize and drugs had to be handled like other commodities in the early general store, which aimed to administer to every want of the household. Real drug-stores were found, as a rule, only in the larger cities. Moreover, there were few trained pharmacists who understood the nature of the drugs which they sold, as is evidenced by the advertisements of those days, and the people had to use their own judgment in buying what they thought they needed. Thomas Hecking of Rochester, Wisconsin, dealt in medicines, chemicals, and groceries. Later he entered into partnership with De Verard and sold medicines, chemicals, oils, paints, groceries, clothing, and so forth. {49} Thompson and Company of Ottawa, Illinois, dealt in dry, goods, groceries, crockery, and medicines. A.H. Morgan of Waterford, Wisconsin, advertises as follows in Nordlyet :

"Yes Nels- How do you do- It is true that I have lots of fine coffee for sale, and besides I have all sorts of things, among others Poor Man's Pills, a very good laxative, which costs only one shilling; Sirup of Horehound, which cures cough without fail; mercury, magnesia, camphor, cream-of-tartar, red pepper, black pepper, Epsom salt, sulphur, borax, salve for itch and scab, tartar emitic for vomiting, percussion caps, powder, shots, Poor Man's Plaster for sore back, slates, pencils, school books of all kinds, house traps, Wineas' Vermifuge, which never fails to cure children for worms, violin strings, salve for lousy cattle, shoe-pegs, shoemaker's pitch, and many other things which I could tell you about, if you did not have to leave Ola waiting outside. You must tell your wife to call and see Morgan in Waterford. {50}

Even in drug-stores the staple articles most commonly sold seem to have been patent medicines. H. M. Hanson of Milwaukee advertised in 1847 that he had opened a new drugstore and that he sold the most tried and excellent fever and ague cure, the strength and effect of which he guaranteed. {51} S. Johnson of the same place advertised in 1850 that he was a wholesale and retail dealer in all branches of medicine -- patent medicines, Thompsonian medicines, Shakers' herbs and extracts, surgical and dental instruments, glass, et cetera. {52}

As physicians were few and often far away, the settlers avoided as far as possible both the trouble and the expense connected with consulting them. The doctor was called only in extreme cases and his visit to a home was generally taken as a sure indication that some one was lying at the point of death. The druggist and the patent-medicine vender were more easily reached and, as their advice could be had without cost, they were the medical advisers most frequently consulted. Often pretending a medical knowledge which they did not possess, they became, no less than the glowing newspaper advertisements, influential agents in distributing to the public the products of the patent-medicine quacks.

But even in those days there were some who rendered noble and valuable medical aid, though they could lay claim to no real medical knowledge. Such were Mrs. Johan Nordboe, who practiced as midwife in the Kendall settlement: Gunhild Grovum, who came to Koshkonong some time prior to 1847 and served as midwife there; Anne Springen, who was a midwife in the Koshkonong settlement in early days; also S²nn²va Knutson, midwife in the St. Ansgar settlement in Mitchell County, Iowa. And there was Alberta (Ulfers) Hanssen, wife of Dr. S²ren Johan Hanssen of Cambridge, Wisconsin, who during the Civil War served as nurse in the Fifteenth Wisconsin Regiment, in which her husband was a military surgeon [fig. 5]. These are only a few of the many brave women who labored heroically in these important fields of medical work.

There were also a few honest medical practitioners in the early Norwegian settlements .who had received no professional training but who possessed high intelligence and qualities of leadership and who, through self-training and varied experience, were able to render the settlers valuable aid. To these men the people turned for assistance and advice and, as this was freely given without pay, they naturally occupied a position of esteem and confidence among the settlers. Men of this type were Gudmund Haugaas, Ingebret Larson Narvig, and Johan Nordboe.

Gudmund Haugaas, one of the immigrants who came to America in the sloop "Restaurationen" and settled at Kendall, New York, practiced medicine with success among the early immigrants. He was by trade a wheelwright, but he was intelligent and well read. In the Kendall colony he married Julia Madland, who bore him ten children. In 1834 he moved to the Fox River settlement in Illinois, where his wife died in 1846. He later married Caroline Hervig, who died in 1852. In Illinois Haugaas became a leader in the Mormon church, with the title of "Highpriest of the Order of Melchizedec in the Church of the Latterday-Saints." He died of cholera on his farm near Ottawa, Illinois, on July 28, 1849. One of his sons by his first wife became a priest in the Mormon church. {53}

Ingebret Larson Narvig, a Quaker, came to. Boston in 1831 at the age of twenty-one and made his way on foot to the Norwegian settlement in Kendall. In i833 he left that colony 'with Cleng Peerson in search of a better location for a new settlement in the West. When they reached Detroit, Narvig hired out to a farmer not far from that city, where he remained for many years, picking up some knowledge of medicine during spare moments. As he seems not to have studied medicine in Norway, his knowledge in that field could not have been extensive, but he practiced medicine to some extent among the American people of the neighborhood. He was a quiet, conscientious, and religious man [fig. 6]. His daughter says of him:

"He was born near Stavanger, Norway, January 8, 1808. His father owned the farm he lived on and was by occupation a farmer on a small scale, keeping at the same time a number of cattle, sheep and goats. My father's youth was spent in taking care of the sheep and goats in the rocky hills of grandfather's farm, and at the same time he studied religious books, catechism, etc. of the Lutheran Church. In that church he was confirmed as a small boy. But his heart was not with the faith of his fathers, and he became a member of the Quaker Society in 1826, when he was only eighteen years old. He loved and revered the teachings of the Friends throughout his long life. He served as sailor for a short time, but his companions were so rough and profane that he left the sea after one voyage. In 1831 he came to America and settled in Michigan in 1833. In 1840, while living in. Michigan, ten miles from Adrian, Lawrence County, he married Lydia E. Smith of Farmington, N.Y. Two children were born to them: Even D. and Gilbert B. These two children, he often said to me, were as dear to him as the apple of his eye. Lydia died in 1844. Her death came to him like a cloud in a clear sky, and was the first great sorrow of his life. In 1847 he married Chloe A., a sister of Lydia, and my mother. In 1856 he moved to Wisconsin, and bought a farm in Green Lake County, three miles from the village of Marquette. There he lived and did quite well as a farmer. His son Even died at the age of twenty-one, and once more his heart was filled with the deepest grief. In 1876 my mother passed away, and then his home was broken up. After many discouraging experiences with renters he sold the farm and came to Minnesota in 1885, and made his home with Gilbert and myself, living with us alternately. He passed to the great beyond, January, 1892, at the age of eighty-four, at the home of his son Gilbert, and was buried, January 23 in the cemetery near the village of Tyler, Minnesota, far from the land of his birth, and far from the graves of his mother, wives and child.

Narvig did not use his knowledge of medicine for pecuniary gain. For his services as doctor he never charged anything, but did it all for charity. {54}

Johan Nordboe, an itinerant physician from Ringebu, Gudbrandsdal, Norway, came to America in 1832 and settled in the Norwegian colony in Kendall, New York, where his wife practiced as midwife. He had received no medical training, but such services as he could render were welcome, as no medical aid could be secured by the first settlers in the wilderness. He vaccinated children in the colony and gave the sick medical assistance. He was unable to agree with the settlers, however, and, being especially piqued by the authority exercised by their leader, Cleng Peerson, he moved to Fox River, Illinois, in 1836. The following year he moved to Shelby County, Missouri, where Cleng Peerson had founded a new Norwegian settlement. In 1838 he moved again, this time to Dallas County, Texas, where he secured for himself and his family a large tract of land embracing 1,920 acres. So far as is known, he was the first Norwegian settler in Texas. His wife and three sons accompanied him. His daughter stayed :at Fox River, where she married George Johnson, one of the Norwegian immigrants who came to America in the sloop "Restaurationen" in 1825. Nordboe was living in Dallas County when the Norwegian pioneer, J. R. Reiersen, went to Texas in 1843. He preferred to live apart from his countrymen, but he longed to see them. When a Norwegian settlement was founded at Four Mile Prairie, he walked the long distance from Dallas to spend the Christmas holidays with them in 1851. With Cleng Peerson he seems to have become fully reconciled. In a letter to R. B. Anderson, Mrs. Elise W˜renskjold, one of the leading settlers in the Norwegian colony in Texas, described him as a student of history and science, possessing skill in drawing and talent for sculpture. She says that he was a kind, small, feeble, old man. From Dallas he moved to Tarrant County, where he died some time in the sixties. His widow and sons then moved to California. {55}

Even though there was slight opportunity at first for remunerative professional service in the newly founded Norwegian settlements, the untrained medical practitioners were soon replaced in some of the settlements by properly trained physicians. The first educated Norwegian physician who offered his services to the Norwegian immigrants in America was Hans Christian Brandt, son of a baker, Christian Brandt, and Caroline Winge Brandt, born on March 16, 1814, in Christiansand, Norway [fig. 7]. In 1833 he went to Oslo, where for a year and a half he taught in the normal school. He then entered upon the study of medicine in the University of Oslo and took the required medical examination in 1838. During the following two years he served as military surgeon in Fredriksv˜rn. In 1840, at the age of twenty-six, he emigrated to America, as some claim, because of an unhappy love affair and devoted himself to medical practice among his countrymen in various places in Illinois. Before very long he moved to Iowa, where he bought a farm. After a short stay in that state he moved to Indiana, where he practiced medicine among the Americans and established a great reputation as an able physician. Later he went to Kansas City, Missouri, where he practiced for many years and accumulated a considerable fortune. Here he died unmarried in 1893. {56}

Theodor Alexander Schytte, son of a merchant, Peter Schytte, and Sophie Tyrholm Schytte, was born on April 5, 1812, in Fredrikshald, Norway. He received his preliminary education in the schools of his own town and later entered upon the study of medicine in the University of Oslo. After his graduation in 1840 he was engaged in hospital practice in Oslo for some time and later became a practicing physician in S²rum. From November, 1841, until December, 1842, he served as assistant surgeon in the Bratsberg Amt Hospital. In 1843 he went to America as physician on an immigrant ship and established himself as practicing physician in the Norwegian settlement at Koshkonong, ,Wisconsin. He found the practice among the poor immigrants very unsatisfactory and in the winter of 1847-48 he returned to Norway. In 1848 he was appointed district physician in Finmarken and the following year he died at Vard². After his return he brought out at Stockholm in 1849 a book entitled Vïgledning for Emigranter (" Guide for Emigrants "). {57}

Johan Christian Brotkorb Dundas (Dass), son of the merchant Isak J²rgen Coldevin Dass and Kornelia Flor Str²m Dass, was born at Lurey, Helgeland, Norway, in 1812 [fig. 8]. He was a descendant of Benjamin Petersen Dass (Dundas), a brother of the celebrated poet and clergyman, Petter Dass (Dundas), whose father had emigrated from Scotland to Norway in 1647 because of religious persecution in his own country. Dundas received his preliminary education in the Bergen schools and later entered upon the study of medicine. Svein Nilsson, editor of Illustreret Billed-Magazin, says of him:

"Johan Christian Dass (Dundas) studied medicine for three years at the University of Christiania (Oslo), and went then to Copenhagen, and later to Germany to continue his studies. He then served as assistant physician in the Bergen hospital for two years, When he again went abroad and studied for some time in the universities of Upsala, Sweden; Helsingfors, Finland; and in Germany and Switzerland. Being then employed as doctor on a Dutch man-of-war sailing to Java he remained in that country as practicing physician for about three years. He then went as ship physician on an immigrant ship to America. In New York he met Consul L²venskjold, who had recently returned from a visit to the Norwegian settlement at Koshkonong, and who requested him to go there and help his countrymen in the new colony, as they were sorely afflicted with malarial fever. Soon after his arrival in Wisconsin he effected a couple of cures which established his reputation as an able physician. But soon cholera began to rage in the Northwest, and Dundas then went to Chicago and St. Louis, where he practiced as long as the epidemic lasted. After a two years' trip to China and Japan, and a stay of nine months in London, he returned to Koshkonong, and has since resided in Cambridge. Dundas has performed many operations which belong to the most difficult known to medical science. Not only among his own countrymen, but also by the Americans he is regarded as one of the ablest medical doctors in the Northwest. Through diligent study and extensive reading he has trained his mind and developed interest for everything which denotes progress in every line. {58}

This biographical sketch, which undoubtedly rests upon information given by the doctor himself, is no doubt in large part correct. But it is noteworthy that Dundas' name does not appear upon the roll of students at the University of Oslo, where he is said to have studied medicine for three years. {59} The year 1815 is given by his biographers as the year of his birth, but the records show that he was born in 1812. His biographers also state that he came to America in 1850 or 1851. In 1847, however, he published in Nordlyset the following announcement:

"I take the liberty herewith to announce to my honored countrymen in Wisconsin that I will practice as physician at Koshkonong Prairie, and as I have already practiced as such for some time, I hope that those of my countrymen who are in need of medical assistance will show me that sincere confidence which I hope I shall always deserve.

JOHAN CHR. DAS
Doctor Medicinae from Norway"

This announcement was repeated in many succeeding issues of the paper, which would scarcely have been done if the doctor were not already in America; and since upon his arrival in New York he met Consul L²venskjold, who had recently returned from his visit to the Koshkonong settlement, which he made in 1847, it is quite certain that Dr. Dundas first came to America in that year. The cholera epidemic which broke out after his arrival must have been the epidemic of 1849. It is also to be noted that Dr. Dundas was not descended from the poet, Petter Dass, as his biographers generally state, but from Petter Dass's brother, Benjamin Petersen Dass. {60}

In early days the practice of medicine was often attended by great difficulties, as there were no hospitals and the most necessary medical supplies were often wanting. The anaesthetic properties of ether and chloroform had been discovered in 1846 and 1847, but as some time passed before these great aids to medical practice came into common use, we hear of Dr. Dundas still performing important operations without the use of an˜sthetics.

Dr. Dundas had a personality so marked that no one who met him could forget him. Bj²rnstjerne Bj²rnson, who became acquainted with him in this country, regarded him as one of the most remarkable persons he had ever met. Ole Bull was very fond of him and visited him twice in his home in Cambridge, Wisconsin. "He was, no doubt, a very remarkable character," says one writer, "very eccentric, rough, and possibly conceited. He treated his colleagues with the greatest contempt. But he must have been a doctor of considerable ability--above the average country doctors in those days." He seems to have possessed a fearlessness and a practical judgment which enabled him to act with great success in critical situations. But because of his impressive personality, his haughty bearing, and the hard-handed way in which he treated many, the people stood in awe and fear of him and called him only in very serious cases. When Henrik Lien, a boy in the Koshkonong settlement, became ill with pneumonia his parents called a doctor, who gave the patient various medicines to be taken at intervals according to directions. The case grew critical, however, and they finally decided to call Dr. Dundas. When he came into the poorly ventilated log cabin, he immediately ordered the windows to be opened. The parents thought that this would mean the death of their boy, but they dared not disobey the stern and terrible doctor. The windows were opened and the cold winter blast swept through the little cabin. Wringing her hands the mother whimpered, "Dr. Dundas will kill our boy!" Then the doctor drew up his tall, dark figure before her and said in his customary gruff tone, "Do you not understand that a person with sick lungs needs air?" The windows had to remain open. Then he examined the bottles of medicine on the chair in front of the bed and flung them all through the window with the angry remark, "And such a fellow you call a doctor!" The boy recovered, became a prominent man in the Koshkonong settlement, and lived to a ripe old age.

Dr. Dundas was a man of literary taste. In his later years he was a prolific writer of verse, much of which was printed in the Norwegian papers in this country. But the plan which he had long cherished of publishing a collection of his poems was never carried out. In 1856 he married Malina E. Tracy, a woman of American birth. He died in Madison, Wisconsin, on April 17, 1883. {61}

Gerhard Styhr Christian Hjort Paoli, son of Pascal Paoli (Essendrop) and his wife, Bolette Regitze (Lehne) Paoli, was born in Trondhjem, Norway, on June 23, {1815 [fig. 9]. } {62} At the age of fourteen he became a clerk in a drug-store and remained in that service until 1839, when he began the study medicine at the University of Oslo. He did not possess the required knowledge to enter the regular course of study; but at that time an arrangement existed according to which students might be exempted from taking the degree of bachelor of arts and, after passing a preliminary examination, were allowed to pursue the study of medicine and to take examination in that branch. Such students were known as praeliminarister. This was the course taken by Paoli, who, according to the records, continued his studies at the university until 1844.{63 After failing three times to pass the required examination, he went to Stockholm, Sweden, where he continued the study of medicine in the Carolingian Institute and the Serafimer Lazaret and was licensed to engage in medical practice. Because of his attractive personality he was very popular and became a member of many societies. In politics as Well as in religion he was a liberal. In 1846 he emigrated to America in a sailing vessel. From New York he followed other immigrants bound for the West and finally arrived in Milwaukee. After a short stay there he went to Madison, Wisconsin, at that time a village of about two hundred people, and without delay he appeared before the local authorities, declared his intention of becoming an American citizen, and received his first papers. He remained in Madison about Six months and then went to Springfield, Ohio. In Springfield he established himself as a practicing physician and took an active part in political life, supporting the Abolition candidate, John H. Hall, in the presidential campaign of 1852.

Throughout his active career Paoli's interest was centered chiefly in the study of chemistry. He invented a process by which fusel-oil could be separated from alcohol, a discovery for which he received a medal at the Crystal Palace exposition in New York in 1853. Soon afterwards Dr. J. V. Z. Blaney, a professor in Rush Medical College, persuaded him to move to Chicago, where the two formed a company and built a distillery in which Paoli's new process was to be used. While engaged in this venture Paoli continued his practice as a physician. Two years later the distillery was destroyed by fire and, as it carried little insurance, the Blaney-Paoli Company was financially ruined. Paoli was now forced to devote himself even more energetically than before to his practice of medicine, but he still found opportunity to take an active part in political life. When the Republican party was organized in 1856 he joined it and worked so diligently for its success that he was made chairman of the city campaign committee. He wrote articles in the Norwegian papers and made campaign speeches both in Chicago and in many rural districts. In recognition of his political services as well as of his ability as a physician he was appointed city physician by Mayor Wentworth and .was reappointed by Mayor Haines. In 1866 he was granted an honorary degree of doctor of medicine by Rush Medical College. He was an honorary member of the Ohio Medical Society and a corresponding member of many ether medical societies. Twice he was elected president of the Chicago Medical Society and twice vice-president. He was one of the founders of the Women's Medical College in Chicago, an institution in which he was professor emeritus at the time of his death. Being favorably inclined to all liberal views, he also supported the women's movement and advocated women's suffrage. He was a Mason of high standing, having joined the order in 1856. He was also one of the founders of the Scandinavian Medical Society of Chicago, organized in 1887. At the celebration of its tenth anniversary in Chicago in 1897 he was guest of honor, but was then so old and frail that he felt that he would not again meet the society. He died quietly on January 30, 1898, and was buried from the central lodge Number 33 of the A. F. and O. M. His old friend, Judge Patterson, speaking at the funeral, gave a sketch of his life and praised him as a physician, friend, and citizen. Throughout his whole life he had been an enthusiastic advocate of liberty and a generous friend to the poor. {64}

Bernhard I. Madsen was born in Bergen, Norway, where is father was engaged in the lumber and shipbuilding industries. He studied medicine, probably as a praeliminarist, at the University of Oslo and had been engaged in medical practice for about five years when he emigrated to America with his wife and children. He established himself as practicing physician in Chicago in 1851 and remained there about five years. He then moved to Cambridge, Wisconsin, where he continued in general medical practice for a few years until he died, according to report, of typhus (typhoid ?) fever. Together with a few others Dr. Madsen built at Cambridge the first Norwegian Methodist church ever erected. His wife was Ingeborg Nordal Madsen. They had five children. {65}

Possibly the ablest and best educated physician who came to the early Norwegian settlements was S²ren Johan Hanssen, who was born in Skein, Norway, in 1820 [fig. 10]. At the age of fifteen he found employment in a lawyer's office and when he became of age he was made head instructor in the public schools of the city, a position coveted by many able teachers. He devoted his spare moments to study in the hope of being able to enter the university. He finally resigned as teacher and, after receiving the degree of bachelor of arts and passing the examen philosophicum with high honors, he began the study of medicine at the University of Oslo. He completed the medical course at the university in 1855 and practiced for a short time as physician in the government hospital in Oslo. Being a fearless and adventurous man he went to Denmark during the cholera epidemic there and practiced with success in Copenhagen until the epidemic subsided.

In the hope of improving his pecuniary circumstances, Hanssen emigrated to America in 1856 and went to the Koshkonong settlement in Wisconsin [fig. 11]. Because of his medical education and his recognized ability as a physician, he soon gained an extensive practice. In 1861, shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War, the Fifteenth Wisconsin Regiment was organized by Norwegian volunteers, with the brave officer, Hans Christian Heg, as colonel. Dr. Hanssen was appointed second surgeon of the regiment on November 11 of that year and accompanied it to Island No. 10. In that marshy and unhealthful region the efficient hospital service organized by the medical staff of the regiment aided greatly in preserving the health of the soldiers. Hanssen's brave wife, whom he had married shortly before leaving Norway, accompanied him as nurse, and remained steadfastly at her post throughout his term of service in the army. From Island No. 10 he followed his regiment to Iuka in Mississippi, .where he had charge of a general hospital. But he had contracted the ague, an ailment which forced him to resign on October 20, 1862. He returned to his practice as physician at Koshkonong, but suffered constantly from ague and dysentery. He was remembered by President C. K. Preus of Luther College as a large, powerful man with bushy eyebrows, dressed in his dark blue officer's uniform, lying on a sofa in front of the oven shivering with fever. He never applied for a pension and never received one, though he had fully earned it. In the hope that a change of climate might improve his health he returned to Norway in 1866 and was appointed district physician in Romsdal, where he died in 1885.

Dr. J. W. Magelssen, who succeeded Hanssen as physician at Koshkonong and who knew both Dr. Dundas and, Dr. Hanssen, bought from Dr. Hanssen his house and land. "Hanssen had a two-room house, and a horse and a cow in a dugout in a hillside," says Dr. Magelssen. "When he was away on sick-calls, the horse would get hay and water, otherwise, when he was home, only if Mrs. Hanssen had time and opportunity to feed it. There was no well, and cistern water, he thought, was too good for animals. Dr. Dundas, on the other hand, was a real horseman, and took great pride in his black stallion, which he gave the best of care. Both Dr. Hanssen and Mrs. Hanssen were gifted persons, witty, and sharp-tongued as razors. Hanssen was quite a poet, and worked every day on a poem which, I believe was called Det Evige Mennske [The Eternal Man "], something like Wergeland's ' Creation.' Once he wrote a lampoon about his neighbor Tollef Springen, which is something of the most humorous I have ever read. I regarded Dr. Hanssen at that time and do so yet, as a more gifted man and a better doctor than Dundas." In 1865 Dr. Hanssen published a work entitled Orthodoxi og Kristendom ("Orthodoxy and Christianity"). He had also planned to turn the Book of Revelation into verse, but does not seem to have carried it out. He was an ardent lover of freedom and expressed his opinions freely on all topics. He was as upright as he was intelligent, but he had a violent temper, and could brook little opposition. By his neighbors he was regarded as an infidel, which he probably was. The Reverend J. A. Ottesen, pastor at Koshkonong, has told that at one time when Dr. Hanssen was very sick with the ague he called on him, and, seated in front of his couch, talked to him about salvation and the life to come. Dr. Hanssen listened attentively and, when the pastor ceased talking, he remarked: "That is all very beautiful, Rev. Ottesen, but you know that such things are impossible." He often assailed the ministers violently, and consequently some of them would try to prejudice the people against him, with the result that many thought that they could not be saved if they were treated by Dr. Hanssen. But it was a general opinion that he was the ablest physician in that part of the country. Mrs. A. Ferman, of Haywood, California, who as a child stayed for many years in his home, speaks of him as a most kind-hearted and democratic man, but remarks that he was not fully understood or appreciated by his countrymen. {66}

Of the early Norwegian medical doctors who served in the United States Army in the Civil War must be mentioned also Stephen Oliver Himoe and Niles Theodore Quales [fig. 12]. Himoe was born in Norway on March 10, 1832. At the age of thirteen he came to America with his parents, who settled in Wisconsin. After graduating from the Plattville Academy he began the study of medicine in a medical college at St. Louis, Missouri, and upon completing his course he settled in Kansas, where he practiced medicine. When the Civil War broke out he became a surgeon in the Sixth Kansas Cavalry Regiment: but when the Fifteenth Wisconsin Regiment was organized by Norwegian volunteers, he resigned and joined that regiment as first surgeon. He had married a sister of Colonel Heg, the commander of the regiment. When he received his commission on November 11, 1861, he was twenty-nine years old. He was with his regiment in the battles of Perryville and Murfreesboro, and in the battle of Chickamauga he had charge of the field hospitals at Crawfish Springs. On November 13, 1863, he resigned because of ill health, receiving the praise of the headquarters of the Army of the Cumberland for his efficient service. He then moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where he continued his practice until his death on April 19, 1904. {67}

Niles Theodore Quales, son of Torgils Johnson Õvrequale and his wife, Guri Torgilsdatter Tjoflat, was born in Kinservik, Norway, on January 17, 1831 [fig. 13]. As a boy he worked on his father's farm in the summers and attended school in the winters. At the age of seventeen he entered the agricultural school at Kvindherred, from which he was graduated in 1851. After spending a year as manager of a large estate at Utstein, near Stavanger, he went to Denmark and entered the Royal Veterinary College in Copenhagen and was graduated in 1856. On his return he was appointed veterinary surgeon for S²ndre Bergenhus Amt. In 1859 he emigrated to America, and arrived at Chicago in July. At the outbreak of the Civil War he enlisted in the army and was placed by General Sherman in charge of the veterinary hospital at Nashville, Tennessee, where he served until the expiration of his enlistment in 1864. He then entered Rush Medical College, from which he was graduated in 1866. After a competitive examination by the medical board of the Cook County Hospital he was appointed interne, the first in that hospital. From 1868 until 1870 Dr. Quales was city physician and had charge of the smallpox hospital in the epidemic of that time. In 1870 he was appointed surgeon to the United States Marine Hospital and he remained in charge of that hospital until it was destroyed in the great fire of 1871. In 1892 he helped to organize the Tabitha Hospital and in 1896 he aided in establishing the Lutheran Deaconess Home and Hospital in Chicago. For many years he was attending physician in these institutions. He was also one of the founders of the Norwegian Old People's Home in Norwood Park. In 1910 he was made knight of the Order of St. Olaf by King Haakon VII of Norway. He was a member of the Illinois State Medical Society and an honorary member of the Scandinavian-American Medical Society of Chicago of which he was president in 1894. In 1870 he married Miss Carrie L. Lawson. Dr. Quales was a quiet and earnest man and a trusted physician to whom patients, mostly Norwegians, flocked in large numbers. {68}

John T. Billington was born in Norway in 1832. When he came to America he entered upon the study of medicine in Rush Medical College. After his graduation from this school he established himself in November, 1861, as a physician in Decorah, Iowa, where he practiced until within a short time of his death. He died in, Decorah on February 1, 1893. {69}

Some Norwegian doctors who came to America in early years did not remain long enough to render their countrymen in the pioneer settlements any appreciable aid. Their sojourns here were rather in the nature of visits, which enabled them to observe general conditions. In this connection may be mentioned men like Dr. Holmboe and Dr. Anders Daae. Jens Andreas Holmboe, born in Bergen, Norway, on November 18, 1827, was the son of Rector Hans Holmboe and Welgjerd Endriette L²berg Holmboe [fig. 14]. Upon his graduation from the medical department of the University of Oslo in 1853 he was appointed district physician in Ether Haranguer, where he served until 1858, when he moved to Bergen. Here he served as physician in the hospitals for lepers until 1861, when he was appointed city physician. In 1863 he came to America with the intention of entering the United States Army as surgeon and also/or the purpose of studying leprosy among the Norwegian immigrants. He traveled through Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota and after the battle of Chickamauga he visited the military hospitals at Chattanooga. On receiving notice that he had been appointed head physician of the Bergen City Hospital he returned to Norway the same year. Dr. Holmboe married Sara Margarethe Paasche. He died July 26, 1876. {70}

Anders Daae, a second cousin of Dr. Anders Doe (Daae) of Chicago, was born in Bergen, Norway, on April 21, 1838 [fig. 15]. After he was graduated from the department of medicine of the University of Oslo in 1861, he entered the government service as army surgeon and physician for the fisheries. In 1864 he went to America with the intention of remaining there permanently. He visited several universities and hospitals and traveled about in the Norwegian settlements in the Northwest to become acquainted with conditions, practicing as physician here and there on his journeys. Emigranten for July 2, 1864, says that he will certainly find a hearty welcome, among his countrymen, who with the exception of one or two settlements, are entirely without doctors in whom they can have any confidence. Dr. Daae returned to Norway after a short stay, as he did not like the conditions then prevailing in the medical profession here and also because of the religious intolerance which, he says, he encountered everywhere. Upon his return to Norway he became physician at Krager², where he remained until 1887, when he became inspector-general of the penitentiary at Trondhjem. {71}

Herman Wedel Major may also be mentioned in this connection, though he is of interest only in relation to a tragedy incident to immigration [fig. 16]. He .was born in Kristiansand, Norway, on February 23, 1814, and was graduated in medicine from the University of Oslo in 1842. In 1847 he was placed in charge of the Oslo Hospital for the Insane. He received a stipend from the government to study the diseases and care of the insane in foreign countries and upon his return was employed to organize proper hospital and medical service for insane patients at home. He took a leading part in preparing the law of August 17, 1848, touching this branch of medicine, as well as in the founding of the hospital for the insane at Gaustad. Of this institution he was chosen managing director, but he declined to accept the position. In 1854 he emigrated to America, sailing with his family on the ship "Arctic." The vessel collided with the "Vesta" outside of Sandy Hook, September 26, and Dr. Major and his whole family perished. {72}

The statement of Emigranten that, with the exception of one or two settlements, the early Norwegian settlers were entirely without physicians in whom they could have any confidence seems to be applicable in part especially to the period prior to 1845 or 1850, though in some frontier settlements the same condition prevailed later. During the early years physicians were few in the West and their training was often limited. Dr. C. R. Head of Albion, Wisconsin, near the Koshkonong settlement, entered the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York in 1844, but settled on a claim in Wisconsin the following year and had to practice as physician until 1847, when he was able to return to the medical school to complete his course. {79} Henry D. Adams located in Paris Township, Kenosha County, Wisconsin, in 1846 and at once entered into a large and lucrative practice, according to his biographer. But he entered Rush Medical College in 1850 and was graduated in 1852. {74} Marvin Waterhouse of Columbia County, .Wisconsin, near the Spring Prairie and Bonnet Prairie settlements, was graduated from the Rush Medical College in 1860 but he had practiced as physician since 1855. William Meacher of the same county pursued a course of study at Rush Medical College and the following summer he practiced medicine in Waushara County, Wisconsin. He met with little success, however, and returned to the medical school, from which he was graduated in 1862. {75} Eugene W. Beebe of Evansville, Rock County, Wisconsin, was graduated from the Hahnemann Medical College in Chicago in 1865 but he had practiced medicine since 1860. {76}

The biographers of some of the early doctors do not enlighten us as to where they obtained their medical training. O. C. Magoon came to Whitewater, Walworth County, Wisconsin, in 1839 and engaged in medical practice until he died in the cholera epidemic of 1849. {77} Samuel R. McClellan came to Janesville, Wisconsin, as a physician in 1846, but his biographer does not state where he had studied medicine. {78} O. P. Robinson also established himself as a physician in Janesville in the same year, but nothing is said as to where he had obtained his medical training. Some of the early doctors had studied in the office of some practicing physician, but had attended no medical school. Horace B. Frink, who practiced in Dane and Rock counties, Wisconsin, had studied medicine with an allopathic doctor, but adopted homeopathic practice after 1858, according to his biographer. {79} C. B. Bannister studied medicine with Dr. Samuel Fuller and later with Dr. L. Nash. He lived on a farm near Mukwanago, Waukesha County, Wisconsin, where he began practice as homeopathic physician in 1845. {80} Harman Gray came to Walworth County, Wisconsin, in 1840 and located on a farm at Sugar Creek, where he engaged in the practice of medicine. He had studied in the office of Dr. Henry C. Mitchell at Norwich, New York, and had obtained a license from the county board of Chenango County of that state. {81}

Even prior to 1850 there were some physicians in the new settlements who were graduates of medical schools and who, through youthful enterprise and a spirit of adventure, sought their fortune in the new communities of the West. George H. Young, a graduate of the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Castleton, Vermont, came to Elkhorn, Walworth County, Wisconsin, in 1843 and engaged in the practice of medicine. {82} O. C. Otis, .who established himself as physician in the Muskego settlement toward the close of 1847 or in the early months of 1848, was a graduate of Rush Medical College. He practiced only for a short time, and was succeeded by Dr. Squire, who died in the cholera epidemic of 1849. John M. Evans of Vermont, graduate of La Porte Medical College, settled as physician in Evansville, Rock County, Wisconsin, in 1846. {83} The same year Philo R. Hoy, a graduate of the Ohio Medical College, Cincinnati, and A. H. Hoy, came to Racine, Wisconsin. {84} George W. Chittenden, a graduate of Albany Medical College, at Albany, New York, settled in Janesville, Wisconsin, in 1846 and practiced as homeopath. {85} Jehiel Smith of New Hampshire, a graduate of the Eclectic Medical College at Cincinnati, Ohio, came to Waukesha County, Wisconsin, in 1847 as representative of the eclectic school of medicine {86} and John L. Page, graduate of the medical department of the University of St. Louis, located in Racine, Wisconsin, in 1848. {87}

After 1850 the number of physicians in the West who had received their professional training in schools increased rapidly. A medical service in which the public could have full confidence developed gradually after the establishing of state control over medical practice.

Notes

<1> Rasmus B. Anderson, Cleng Peerson og Sluppen Restaurationen (Chicago, 1925); Anderson, "Kleng Peerson, the Father of Norwegian Immigration to America," in American-Scandinavian Review, 8:502 ff. (July, 1920); Theodore C. Blegen, "Cleng Peerson and Norwegian Immigration," in Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 7:303 ff. (March, 1921); Olaf M. Norlie, History of the Norwegian People in America, 112 ff. (Minneapolis, 1925); Kendric C. Babcock, The Scandinavian Element in the United States (University of Illinois, Studies in the Social Sciences, vol. 3, no. 3--Urbana, 1914).

<2> Rasmus B. Anderson, The First Chapter of Norwegian Immigration (1821-1840) ; Its Causes and Results, 79 ff. (Madison, Wisconsin, 1895). For accounts of early Norwegian immigration see also George T. Flom, A History of Norwegian Immigration to the United States (Iowa City, 1909); Hjalmar R. Holand, De norske Settlementers Historie (Ephraim, Wisconsin, 1908); Johan Schr²der, Skandinaverne i de Forenede Stater og Canada, 180 ff. (La Crosse, Wisconsin, 1867); Babcock, Scandinavian Element; and a series of articles by Svein Nilsson entitled, "De skandi naviske Setlementer i Amerika," in Billed-Magazin, volumes 1 and 2

<3> Theodore C. Blegen, "Ole Rynning's True Account of America," in Minnesota History Bulletin, 2:22I ff. (November, 1917); Knud Lange-land, Nordm˜ndene i Amerika: Nogle Optegnelser om de norskes Udvandring til Amerika, 28 ff. (Chicago, 1889).

<4> Ole Rynning, Sandf˜rdig Beretning om Amerika til Oplysning og Nytte for Bonde og Menigmand (Christiania, 1838). A later edition of this work is that published by Rasmus B. Anderson in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1896. See also Rynning, in the Minnesota History Bulletin, 2: 221 ff., 259

<5> Nilsson, in Billed-Magazin. 1: 82 ff., 93 ff., 102 ff., 107 ff.

<6> Jens C. Roseland (formerly J. C. Jensson), American Lutheran Biographies. 138 ff. (Milwaukee, 1890); J. A. Bergh, Den norsk-lutherske Kirkes Historie i Amerika. 15 ff. (Minneapolis, 1914); Olaf M. Norlie. Norsk lutherske Prester i Amerika. 1843-1913. p. I5 ff. (Minneapolis. 1914); Svein Strand, "Pastor C. L. Clausen," in Symra, 9: 204 ff. (Decorah, Iowa, 1913); Nilsson, in Billed-Magazin, 1:154 ff., 171 ff., 182 ff., 186 ff.

<7> Nilsson, in Billed-Magazin, 1: 7, 10, 11; Hjalmar R. Holand, "Muskego," in Symra, 3:187 ff. (1907); Theodore C. Blegen, "Colonel Hans Christian Heg," in Wisconsin Magazine of History, 4: 140 ff. (December, 1920); Anderson, First Chapter of Norwegian Immigration, 266 ff.; Langeland, Nordm˜ndene i Amerika, 42 ff.; Norlie, Norwegian People in America, 160 ff.

<8> Beretning om de norske Settlere i Nordamerika efter den norske General-consuls, Adam L²venskjolds, til Departementet under 15de Oktober 1847 indgivne Beretning om hans i afvigte Sommer i de nordameri-kanske Fristaters vestlige Provindser i de norske Settlementer aflagte Bes²g (Bergen, Norway, 1848). A translation of this by Knut Gjerset is in Wisconsin Magazine o[ History, 8:77 ff. (September, 1924). In 1841 a settlement was also established in La Fayette County, Wisconsin. Holand, De norske Settlementers Historie, 176 ff.

<9> Nilsson, in Billed-Magazin, 1: 226 ff., 234 ff.; Ditlef G. Ristad, Minde om Jubelfesterne paa Koshkonong (1925); Flom, Norwegian Immigration, 172 ff.; Anderson, First Chapter of Norwegian Immigration, 326 ff.; Babcock, Scandinavian Element, 44; Holand, De norske Settlementers Historie, 142 ff.

<10> Flom, Norwegian Immigration, 297 ff.; Gustaf E. M. Unonius, Minhen frïn en sjuttonïrig Vistelse i nordvestra Amerika, 3:3 (Upsala, 1861-62).

<11> It will accordingly be seen, by comparing the number of families in the different settlements, that there are about 1500 in all; and if we suppose that each family numbers five persons, there must be about 7500 people. To this total must also be added a number of Norwegians who live scattered partly in the country and partly in the towns throughout the western states; also a settlement of some size in southern Michigan. . . . Many Norwegians are also found in Chicago, Illinois, as well as in Indiana. The Norwegians in the western states of the United States may therefore be assumed to number about 10,000 or 12,000." L²venskjold, in Wisconsin Magazine of History, 8: 77 ff.

<12> Daniel Drake, A Systematic Treatise, Historical, Etiological, and Practical, on the Principal Diseases of the Interior Valley of North America (Cincinnati, 1850).

<13> Knut Gjerset, Braendevinssamlagene og Afholdsarbeidet i Norge (Decorah, Iowa, 1911).

<14> Friheds-Banneret (Chicago), March 12, 1853.

<15> Richard B. Eide, Norse Immigrant Letters; Glimpses of Norse Immigrant Life in the Northwest, in the Fifties, 16 (Minneapolis, 1925).

<16> Cholera may appear simultaneously, or nearly so, at widely distant points and still come from the same place. In 1848 cholera appeared practically at the same time in New York and New Orleans. There was no possible way by which it could have been carried from one of these places to the other within the time and this enabled people to say, as they had been saying for centuries and as some continue to say, that an epidemic is due to some terrestrial influence, something which vitiates the air all around the world at the same time. Fortunately, it turned out that the simultaneous appearance of cholera in New York and New Orleans could be easily explained. In October and early November of 1848 German emigrants from a cholera-infected district assembled at Havre. There was no cholera at Havre at that time. On the ninth of November the "New York" sailed for the city of that name with 315 of these steerage passengers. She was preceded by the "Swanton," which sailed from Havre for New Orleans on the third of November with another batch of these infected emigrants. Cases developed on both ships when they were a thousand miles apart and in this way practically on the same day cholera cases appeared in New York and New Orleans. In the latter city the disease became epidemic and was carried up the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Missouri Rivers so far as they were navigable; and in the spring of 1849 the seeds of this disease found transportation in the wagons of the gold-seekers and its ravages followed the miner into the most remote camps. Victor C. Vaughan, Epidemiology and Public Health, 359 (1923).

<17> John Evans, "Observations upon the Spread of Asiatic Cholera and Its Communicable Nature," in North-Western Medical and Surgical Journal, 6:245 (1850). Evans obtained the names of the forty-four victims and the details as to the way in which the disease spread from N. H. Ellickson. See also Chicago Board of Health, Report for 1867, 1868, and I869 and a Sanitary History of Chicago from 1833 to 1870 (Chicago, 1871); John B. Hamilton, The Epidemics of Chicago. (Society of Medical History of Chicago, Bulletins, 1:73 (1911); and Louis F. Frank, Medical History of Milwaukee, 1834-1914 (Milwaukee, 1915).

<18> Evans, in North-Western Medical and Surgical Journal, 6:245 (1850).

<19> Anderson, First Chapter of Norwegian Immigration, 153, 251.

<20> Anderson, First Chapter of Norwegian Immigration, 321.

<21> Quoted in Anderson, First Chapter of Norwegian Immigration, 275 ff.

<22> H. G. Stub, "Fra Fars og Mors Liv," in Symra, 3:14 ff. (1907). The Reverend H. G. Stub is president emeritus of the Norwegian Lutheran Church of America.

<23> C. K. Preus, "Minder fra Spring Prairie Prestegaard," in Symra. 2: 18 ff. (1906).

<24> L²venskjold, in Wisconsin Magazine of History. 8: 77 ff.

<25> Langeland, Nordm˜ndene i Amerika, 20.

<26> Langeland, Nordm˜ndene i Amerika, 32.

<27> L²venskjold, in Wisconsin Magazine of History, 8:77 ff.

<28> Nilsson, in Billed-Magazin, 2: 15.

<29> Norge og Amerika--et maanedlig Flyveblad (Arendal, Norway), January, 1847, pp. 113 ff.

<30> Norge og Amerika--et maanedlig Flyveblad, January, 1847, pp.

<31> Bergh, Den norsk-lutherske Kirkes Historie i Amerika, 17.

<32> Nilsson, in Billed-Magazin, 1: 172.

<33> Nilsson, in Billed-Magazin, 2: 24.

<34> The History of Dane County, Wisconsin, 1185 (Chicago, 1880).

<35> H. Cock-Jensen, "Emigrantfart for 50-60 aar siden," in Nordmands-Forbundet, 1 :51 ff. (December, 1907); Holand, De norske Settlementers Historie, 60 ff. An English translation of the Cock-Jensen document is printed post, p. 126.

<36> Norge og Amerika--et maanedlig Flyveblad, January, 1847, p. 103. Reiersen's letter is dated Alexandria on the Red River (Texas), January 16, 1846.

<37> Langeland, Nordrn˜ndene i Amerika, 53 ff.

<38> Anderson, First Chapter of Norwegian Immigration, 317.

<39> Friheds-Banneret, October 26, 1852.

<40> Holmboe, "Leprosy among the Norwegians in America," in Norsk Magazin for Laegevidenskaben, series 2, vol. 19, P. 153 ff. (1865). He wrote this valuable article on his return to Norway. See also Emigranten (Madison, Wisconsin), April 10, 1865.

<41> Variation was introduced in Europe in the beginning of the eighteenth century, but it had been known in China and in eastern parts of India from ancient times.

<42> Johan R. Reiersen, Veiviser for norske Emigranter til de forenede nordamerikanske Stater of Texas, xix ff. (Christiania, 1844). Reiersen states that in the winter of 1843-44 the Muskego settlement numbered between fifteen hundred and two thousand people, but he does not fail to point out (p. 155) that a large proportion of these planned to start for the interior in the spring. The settlement was founded in 1839 by fewer than sixty immigrants. During the first years the death rate was high, and the influx of new settlers was not heavy. The statement by the Reverend J. W. C. Dietrichson, probably based upon church membership, that in 1846 the settlement had about six hundred people must be regarded as trustworthy.

<43> L²venskjold, in Wisconsin Magazine of History, 8: 78.

<44> Reiersen, Veiviser for norske Emigranter, xix-xx.

<45> L²venskjold, in Wisconsin Magazine of History, 8: 87.

<46> There were twenty-two deaths of children under one month, not including stillbirths.

<47> Nilsson, in Billed-Magazin, 1: 399.

<48> These early Norwegian newspapers were Nordlyset (Racine, Wisconsin), 1847-50; Demokraten (Racine, Wisconsin), 1850-51; De Norskes Ven (Madison, Wisconsin), 1850; Friheds-Banneret (Chicago), 1852-53; and Emigranten (Madison. Wisconsin), which first appeared in 1852.

<49> Nordlyset, December 23, 1847.

<50> Johannes W. C. Dietrichson, Reise blandt de norske Emigranter i de forenede nordamerikanske Fristater, 105 ff. (Stavanger, Norway, 1846). Anderson, First Chapter of Norwegian Immigration, index.

<51> Nordlyset, September 23, 1847.

<52> Nordlyset, February 23, 1850.

<53> Dietrichson, Reise blandt de norske Emigranter, 105 ff.; Anderson, First Chapter of Norwegian Immigration, index.

<54> Letter from J. F. Fries to Dr. Ludvig Hektoen, June 6, 1907, in Luther College Archives; Anderson, First Chapter of Norwegian Immigration, 141-146, 179-182, 220, 356,367, 396, 430; Flom, Norwegian Immigration, 52 ff., 114. Narvig's daughter is Carena Vine of Porter, Minnesota.

<55> Anderson, First Chapter of Norwegian Immigration, 138 ff.; Holand, De norske Settlementers Historie, 30, 87; Flom, Norwegian Immigration, 52, 122., 153.

<56> I. Kobro, Norges Laeger 1800-1908, 1: 149.

<57> F. C. Kjaer, Norges Laeger i der nittende Aarhundrede ( 1800-1886), 2. 325.

<58> Nilsson, in Billed-Magazin. 1 : 399.

<59> Letter from Prosector H. Hopstock, secretary of the medical faculty of the University of Oslo, Norway, September 9, 1923, in Luther College Archives.

<60> Extract from the genealogical collection of Jacob Horneman in the State Archives at Trondhjem, in Luther College Archives.

<61> Letters to Dr. Ludvig Hektoen from Professor Julius E. Olson, February 26, 1911, and from Mrs. Malina Dundas. March 1, 1911, and obituary of Dr. Dundas by Professor Olson in Luther College Archives. See also History of Dane County, Wisconsin, 1171 ff. (Chicago, 1880); Verdens Gang, April, 1883; Folkebladet (Minneapolis), May 10, 1883; Olof N. Nelson, History of the Scandinavians and Successful Scandinavians in the United States, 2: 342 ff. (first edition, Minneapolis, 1893-97); and Nordlyset, 1847-48.

<62> Letter from Prosector H. Hopstock, University of Oslo, Norway, September 9, 1923; extract copied by S. H. Finne-Gr²nn from the "Inscriptions Protokol" of the medical faculty of the University of Oslo, in Luther College Archives. According to the report copied by Archivist Finne-Gr²nn from the archives in Oslo, Pascal Paoli (Essendrop), the father of Dr. Paoli, was the son of Andreas Essendrop (a brother of Bishop Essendrop of Oslo) and Susanne Cathrine Gabrielsdatter. Andreas Essendrop is said to have visited the island of Corsica about 1770, at the time when the revolutionary leader Pascal (Pasquale) Paoli ruled the island, and when a son was born to him, he named him Pascal Paoli in honor of the revolutionary leader, whom he admired. Pascal Paoli (Essendrop) was baptized at Copenhagen in 1770, and when he grew up, he became a merchant in Oslo, but in 1799 he was convicted of counterfeiting, and was sentenced to lose his right hand. This sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and he was placed in the fortress of Munkholmen, near Trondhjem, in 1803. Six years later he was pardoned and set free. In the fortress he was well liked and enjoyed such liberty that he was able to win the love of Bolette Regitze Lehne, daughter of Mogens Lehne, the commandant of the fortress. He married her on November 1, 1811. Probably because of his imprisonment he dropped the family name, Essendrop, and was henceforth known as Pascal Paoli. He and his wife made their home in Trondhjem for some years, where their son Gerha