# B. Medical and forensic brief: Meriwether Lewis, 1803-1809

Every quotation below was copied from a file saved under the project's `sources/` tree; each one can be checked against the named file.

## 0. Conventions and where to check

- **MED** = `sources/medical/` (this brief's saved sources; each file has CITATION / URL / FETCHED lines at the top). **SRC** = `sources/` and **SRC/scholarship/** = files saved for the companion notes (cited where they hold something MED does not).
- **UNL** = the Moulton edition online, `https://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu/item/lc.jrn.YYYY-MM-DD`. The [Lewis] and [Clark] sections of 36 day pages are saved verbatim in MED `unl_journals_health_entries_1803-1806.txt` (each block is headed by its own URL).
- **FO** = Founders Online (`https://founders.archives.gov/documents/...`), fetched through the Wayback Machine (see `notes/ACCESS.md`). Superscripts are flattened by the HTML-to-text conversion ("S t Louis" = S^t Louis, "Ag t" = Ag^t).
- **WPO** = *We Proceeded On* (Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation), PDFs at `https://lewisandclark.org/wpo/pdf/volNNnoN.pdf`. Page numbers given are the printed page numbers; "PDF p." is used where only the PDF page is known. Text was extracted with PyMuPDF; line breaks and end-of-line hyphenation are joined silently in the quotations below, nothing else is changed.
- **Marshall** = T. M. Marshall, ed., *The Life and Papers of Frederick Bates*, vol. 2 (1926); quoted from the archive.org OCR in MED `bates_letters_1809_marshall_1926_v2.txt` (OCR double-spacing collapsed to single spaces).
- **Jackson** = Donald Jackson, ed., *Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition*, 2nd ed. (1978), 2 vols. Not read; page numbers are those given by the authors quoting it.
- Wilson's 1811 letter is quoted from the uncorrected OCR of *The Port Folio* (MED `wilson_1811_portfolio_1812.txt`); obvious scanner errors are followed by the correct reading in square brackets.
- Forensic papers: PMID = `https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/<PMID>/`; abstracts are saved verbatim in MED `pubmed_abstracts_forensic_and_lewis.txt` and `pubmed_abstracts_forensic_batch2.txt`. Only abstracts were read (section 6).
- Quotation marks inside a quotation are rendered as single quotes (the saved files have double, often curly, quotes there). The *Port Folio* OCR's garbled marks (‘* , * , “ O) are reproduced as they stand.
- Footnote numbers that Founders Online and the WPO PDFs embed in the running text (e.g. "expedition 46 the constant", "his 4 Servant", "mercurial15", "Indian War200") are omitted from quotations; running heads and page numbers that fall inside a quotation at a PDF page break are dropped.
- In the Ravenholt Word-file extractions, Word's non-breaking and optional hyphens survive as the control characters U+001E and U+001F, which print as nothing; they are rendered here as a hyphen or nothing ("self-destruction", "1808-1809", "relevant").
- Type codes in the table: ILL illness, SYM symptom/behaviour, MOOD mood statement, DRINK drinking report, MED medication, WOUND, RETRO retrospective statement by a witness, HEARSAY second-hand report.

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## 1. Dated table of illness, symptoms, mood, drinking and medication, 1803-1809

### 1a. Ohio River and expedition, 1803-1806 (journals)

| Date | Author, document | Words (verbatim) | Type | Check |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1803-05 (Philadelphia) | Lewis's purchases from Gillaspy & Strong (medicine chest) | Rush's "Bilious Pills": "Dr. Rush's pills (a.k.a. 'thunderbolts') contained 10 to 15 grains of calomel and an equal amount of jalap. Unsurpassed as a purgative. Rush recommended to Lewis that two pills be given every four hours until the patient's bowels 'operate freely.' Lewis took along 50 dozen (600)." Laudanum: "Laudanum is tinctured (alcohol-diluted) opium ... Lewis could have replenished the small amount he purchased (4 ounces) from his store of alcohol and opium. At Fort Clatsop on February 15, 1806, he administered 35 drops to George Gibson." Also opium, calomel, mercury ointment, Peruvian bark. | MED (supplies) | Lentz, WPO 26:2 (May 2000) pp. 10-19; MED `wpo_2000-05_vol26no2_lentz_lewis_medicine_chests.txt` |
| 1803-09-14 | Lewis, journal (Ohio) | "The fever and ague and bilious fevers here commence their banefull oppression and continue through the whole course of the river with increasing violence as you aproach it's mouth." | observation on endemic fever | as quoted by Danisi, WPO 28:1 (Feb 2002) p. 11, MED `wpo_2002-02_vol28no1_death_of_lewis_section.txt`; UNL lc.jrn.1803-09-14 (day page not saved) |
| 1803-11-13 | Lewis, journal | "siezed with a violent ague which continued about four hours and as usual was succeeded by feever which however fortunately abated in some measure by sunrise the next morning." | ILL | as quoted by Danisi, WPO 28:1 p. 11 (Moulton 2:86 per Loge, WPO 28:2 p. 33); MED `wpo_2002-02_...txt`; UNL day page not saved |
| 1803-11-14 | Lewis, journal | "I took a doze of Rush's pills which operated extremly well and I found myself much to my satisfaction intirely clear of fever by the evening." ... "felt myself much better but extreemly weak—" | MED / ILL | UNL lc.jrn.1803-11-14; MED `unl_journals_health_entries_1803-1806.txt` (Moulton n. 1 there: the pills "consisted generally of ten grains of calomel, or mercurous chloride, and fifteen grains of jalap") |
| 1805-06-10 | Lewis | "I still feel myself somewhat unwell with the disentary, but determined to set out in the morning up the South fork" | ILL | UNL lc.jrn.1805-06-10; MED `unl_journals_...` |
| 1805-06-11 | Lewis | "I was taken with such violent pain in the intestens that I was unable to partake of the feast of marrowbones. my pain still increased and towards evening was attended with a high fever" -- treated himself with a chokecherry-twig decoction -- "by 10 in the evening I was entirely releived from pain and in fact every symptom of the disorder forsook me; my fever abated, a gentle perspiration was produced" | ILL / MED | UNL lc.jrn.1805-06-11; MED `unl_journals_...` |
| 1805-07-27 | Lewis (about Clark) | "Capt. C. thought himself somewhat bilious and had not had a passage for several days; I prevailed on him to take a doze of Rushes pills, which I have always found sovereign in such cases" | MED (Lewis's therapeutics) | UNL lc.jrn.1805-07-27; MED `unl_journals_...` |
| 1805-08-13/14 | Lewis (Shoshone camp) | No illness or sexual contact recorded by Lewis. Ravenholt places Lewis's syphilitic infection on these nights (section 2b): an inference from opportunity, not from any text. | -- | UNL lc.jrn.1805-08-13, -14; MED `unl_journals_...`; MED `ravenholt_1994_triumph_then_despair_author_copy.txt` |
| 1805-08-18 | Lewis, 31st birthday | "This day I completed my thirty first year, and conceived that I had in all human probability now existed about half the period which I am to remain in this Sublunary world. I reflected that I had as yet done but little, very little indeed, to further the hapiness of the human race, or to advance the information of the succeeding generation. I viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence, and now soarly feel the want of that information which those hours would have given me had they been judiciously expended. but since they are past and cannot be recalled, I dash from me the gloomy thought and resolved in future, to redouble my exertions" | MOOD | UNL lc.jrn.1805-08-18; MED `unl_journals_...` |
| 1805-08-19 | Lewis, on the Shoshone | "the husband will for a trifle barter the companion of his bead for a night or longer if he conceives the reward adiquate" ... "no evil has yet resulted and I hope will not from these connections." ... "I was anxious to learn whether these people had the venerial, and made the enquiry through the intrepreter and his wife ; the information was that they sometimes had it but I could not learn their remedy; they most usually die with it's effects." | venereal enquiry | UNL lc.jrn.1805-08-19; MED `unl_journals_...` |
| 1805-09-19 | Lewis | "several of the men are unwell of the disentary. brakings out, or irruptions of the Skin, have also been common with us for some time." (whole party; Lewis does not say he had them) | SYM (party) | UNL lc.jrn.1805-09-19; MED `unl_journals_...` |
| 1805-09-20 | Clark (not Lewis) | "I eate much & am Sick in the evening." | ILL (Clark) | UNL lc.jrn.1805-09-20; MED `unl_journals_...` |
| 1805-09-23 | Clark | "Capt. Lewis & 2 men verry Sick this evening" | ILL | UNL lc.jrn.1805-09-23; MED `unl_journals_...` |
| 1805-09-24 | Clark | "Capt Lewis Sick all Complain of a Lax & heaviness at the Stomack, I gave rushes Pills to Several" ... "Capt Lewis Scercely able to ride on a jentle horse which was furnishd by the Chief, Several men So unwell that they were Compelled to lie on the Side of the road for Some time" ... "I gave rushes Pills to the Sick this evening." | ILL / MED | UNL lc.jrn.1805-09-24; MED `unl_journals_...` |
| 1805-09-25 | Clark | "Capt Lewis verry Sick hot day" | ILL | UNL lc.jrn.1805-09-25 |
| 1805-09-26 | Clark | "Capt Lewis Still very unwell, Several men taken Sick on the way down, I administered Salts Pils Galip, Tarter emetic &c." | ILL / MED | UNL lc.jrn.1805-09-26 |
| 1805-09-27 | Clark | "Capt Lewis very Sick nearly all the men Sick." | ILL | UNL lc.jrn.1805-09-27 |
| 1805-10-04 | Clark | "Capt Lewis Still Sick but able to walk about a little." | ILL | UNL lc.jrn.1805-10-04 |
| 1805-10-05 | Clark | "Capt Lewis not So well to day as yesterday" | ILL | UNL lc.jrn.1805-10-05 |
| 1805-10-06 | Clark (on himself) | "I am taken verry unwell with a paine in the bowels & Stomach, which is certainly the effects of my diet" (the party-wide illness was attributed by Clark to the change to roots and dried fish) | ILL (Clark) | UNL lc.jrn.1805-10-06 |
| 1806-01-27 | Lewis | "Goodrich has recovered from the Louis veneri which he contracted from an amorous contact with a Chinnook damsel. I cured him as I did Gibson last winter by the uce of murcury." | MED (mercury given to the men) | UNL lc.jrn.1806-01-27; MED `unl_journals_...` |
| 1806-01-31 | Lewis | "discovered that McNeal had the pox, gave him medecine." | MED | UNL lc.jrn.1806-01-31 |
| 1806-02-16 | Lewis; Clark | Lewis: "Gibson's fever still continues obstenate tho' not very high; I gave him a doze of Dr. Rush's" [pills]. Clark: "we gave him a dose of Dr. Rushes pills which in maney instancis I have found extreamly efficacious in fevers which are in any measure Caused by the presence of boil." | MED | UNL lc.jrn.1806-02-16 |
| 1806-07-02 | Lewis | "Goodrich and McNeal are both unwell with the pox" (quoted by Ravenholt; day page not saved) | -- | MED `ravenholt_1994_...txt` |
| 1806-08-11 | Lewis (shot by Cruzatte) | "a ball struck my left thye about an inch below my hip joint, missing the bone it passed through the left thye and cut the thickness of the bullet across the hinder part of the right thye" ... "I took off my cloaths and dressed my wounds myself as well as I could, introducing tents of patent lint into the ball holes, the wounds blead considerably but I was hapy to find that it had touched neither bone nor artery." | WOUND | UNL lc.jrn.1806-08-11; MED `unl_journals_...` |
| 1806-08-12 | Lewis; Clark | Lewis: "much less inflamation than I had reason to apprehend there would be. I had last evening applyed a poltice of peruvian barks." Clark: "the ball had passed through the fleshey part of his left thy below the hip bone and cut the cheek of the right buttock for 3 inches in length and the debth of the ball." | WOUND / MED | UNL lc.jrn.1806-08-12 |
| 1806-08-22 | Clark | "my worthy friend Capt Lewis is recovering fast, he walked a little to day for the first time. I have discontinud the tent in the hole the ball came out—" | WOUND | UNL lc.jrn.1806-08-22 |
| 1806-08-27 | Clark | "My friend Capt Lewis hurt himself very much be takeing a longer walk on the Sand bar in my absence at the buffalow than he had Strength to undergo, which Caused him to remain very unwell all night." | WOUND | UNL lc.jrn.1806-08-27 |

Note on the 1805 "biliary" episodes: the word Lewis and Clark use is "bilious" (27 July 1805, Clark "somewhat bilious"; 14 Sept 1803 "bilious fevers"); the treatment was always Rush's calomel-and-jalap pills. The Sept-Oct 1805 sickness on the Clearwater was party-wide and Clark ascribed it to diet; Lewis himself kept no journal for most of those days.

### 1b. St Louis, 1807-1809, and the last journey

| Date | Author, document | Words (verbatim) | Type | Check |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1801-1803 (retrospective, written 1813) | Jefferson to Paul Allen, 18 Aug 1813 | "while he lived with me in Washington, I observed at times sensible depressions of mind; but knowing their constitutional source, I estimated their course by what I had seen in the family. during his Western expedition the constant exertion, which that required, of all the faculties of body & mind, suspended these distressing affections; but after his establishment at S t Louis in sedentary occupations, they returned upon him with redoubled vigor, & began seriously to alarm his friends." | MOOD (RETRO) | FO Jefferson/03-06-02-0341-0002 (Papers of TJ, Ret. Ser. 6:418-26); MED `jefferson_to_allen_1813-08-18_biography.txt` |
| 1807-05-20 | Lewis's account book (Philadelphia) | "Puchased one pair of pistols of Mr. Booth near the Merchants Coffeehouse, $87." | (pistols; see 3b) | Carrick, WPO 35:4 (Nov 2009) p. 38 n. 5; MED `wpo_2009-11_vol35no4_carrick_lewis_pistols.txt` |
| 1807 (Ravenholt's reading) | -- | "for some months in 1807, following his return from the expedition, he was incapacitated by illness, the nature of which was not divulged" (Ravenholt's thread 7; no document quoted) | HEARSAY / inference | MED `ravenholt_1994_...txt` |
| 1807-11-03 | Lewis to Mahlon Dickerson | "I feel all that restlessness, that inquietude, that certain indiscribable something common to old bachelors, which I cannot avoid thinking my dear fellow, proceeds, from that void in our hearts, which might, or ought to be better filled. Whence it comes I know not, but certain it is that I never felt less like a heroe than at the present moment. What may be my next adventure god knows, but on this I am determined, to get a wife." | MOOD | Jackson 2:719-20, as quoted by Cutright, WPO 12:1 (March 1986) p. 8; MED `wpo_1986-03_vol12no1_cutright_rest_rest_perturbed_spirit.txt` |
| 1809-07-14 | Frederick Bates to Richard Bates | "Gov Lewis leaves this in a few days for Phila. Washingn &c. He has fallen from the Public esteem & almost into the public contempt. He is well aware of my increasing popularity (for one scale sinks as the other rises, without an increase of gravity except comparative) and has for some time feared that I was at the head of a Party whose object it would be to denounce him to the President and procure his dismission." | SYM (political, as seen by an enemy) | Marshall 2:67-69; MED `bates_letters_1809_marshall_1926_v2.txt`; also SRC `1809-07-14_bates_to_richard_bates.md` |
| 1809-07-25 | Bates to James Abbott | "Our Gov. Lewis, with the best intentions in the world, is, I am fearful, losing ground. His late preparations for Indian War have not been popular. He acted for the best. But it is the fate of great men to be judged by the results of their measures. He has talked for these 12 Mos. of leaving the country — Every body thinks now that he will positively go, in a few weeks." | SYM | Marshall 2:75; MED `bates_letters_1809_...txt` |
| 1809 (undated, told 9 Nov 1809) | Bates to Richard Bates, ball-room quarrel | "He also rose — evidently in passion, retired into an adjoining room and sent a servant for General Clark, who refused to ask me out as he foresaw that a Battle must have been the consequence of our meeting. He complained to the general that I had treated him with contempt & insult in the Ball-Room and that he could not suffer it to pass." ... "Oh Lewis, how from my Love, I pity thee!" | SYM (temper) | Marshall 2:108-12; MED `bates_letters_1809_...txt`; SRC `1809-11-09_bates_to_richard_bates.md` |
| 1809-08-26 | William Clark to Jonathan Clark (day after Lewis left) | "I have not Spent Such a day as yesterday for maney years, ... [I] took my leave ofGovr. [of Govr.] Lewis who Set out to Philadelphia to write our Book, (but more perticularly to explain Some Matter between him and the Govt.[).] Several of his Bills have been protested, and his Crediters all flocking in near the time of his Setting out distressed him much. which he expressed to me in Such terms as to Cause a Cempothy which is not yet off-I do not beleve there was ever an honester man in Louisiana nor one who had pureor motives than Govr. Lewis. if his mind had been at ease I Should have parted Cherefully." ... "I think all will be right and he will return with flying Colours to this Country" | MOOD (first-hand) | Holmberg, WPO 18:4 (Nov 1992) p. 10, n. 31 (W.C. to J.C., 26 Aug 1809, Filson Club); MED `wpo_1992-11_vol18no4_holmberg_clark_letters.txt` |
| 1809-09-04 | Departure from St Louis by boat | Merritt's chronology (from Ambrose pp. 461-65): "September 4: Departs St. Louis by boat ... Twice tries to kill himself while on board. September 11: Writes his last will and testament." (The two attempts rest on Russell 1811 and House 1809, below; Clark, 26 Nov 1809, says Russell "sais he made his will at the Bluffs".) | chronology | WPO 28:1 p. 13; MED `wpo_2002-02_...txt` |
| 1809-09-04 (report of 2 Nov) | *Missouri Gazette*, 2 Nov 1809, p. 3 col. 3 | Lewis departed "afflicted with fever." | ILL (newspaper) | Danisi, WPO 28:1 p. 11 and n. 20; MED `wpo_2002-02_...txt` |
| 1809-09-15 | Gilbert Russell to Jefferson, 4 Jan 1810 | "He came here on the 15 th September last from whence he set off intending to go to Washington by way of New Orleans. His situation I tho't rendered it necessary that he should be stoped until he would recover, which I done & in a short time by proper attention a change was perceptible and in about Six days he was perfectly restored in every respect & able to travel." ... "he waited six or eight days expecting that I would go on with him" ... "I tho't I had been the means of preserving the life of one valuable man" | ILL / SYM (first-hand, 3.5 months later) | FO Jefferson/03-02-02-0088-0001 (Ret. Ser. 2:120-2); MED `russell_to_jefferson_1810-01-04.txt`; SRC `1810-01-04_russell_to_jefferson.md` |
| 1809-09-15 | Russell, statement of 26 Nov 1811 (Jackson 2:573-74) | "On the morning of the 15th of September, the Boat in which he was a passenger landed him at Fort Pickering in a state of mental derangement, which appeared to have been produced as much by indisposition as other causes. The Subscriber being then the Commanding Officer of the Fort on discovering his situation, and learning from the Crew that he had made two attempts to kill himself, in one of which he had nearly succeded, resolved at once to take possession of him and his papers, and detain them there untill he recovered, or some friend might arrive in whose hands lie [he] could depart in safety. In this condition he continued without any material change for about five days, during which time the most proper and efficatious means that could be devised to restore him was administered, and on the sixth or seventh day all symptoms of derangement disappeared and he was completely in his senses and thus continued for ten or twelve days." | SYM / HEARSAY (crew) / MED (unspecified) | WPO 28:1 (Feb 2002) p. 14, reprinting Jackson 2:573-74; MED `wpo_2002-02_...txt`. Authenticity disputed: Gale, WPO 35:4 (Nov 2009) pp. 4-5 (section 5) |
| 1809-09-15 (told 28 Sept) | Capt. James House to Frederick Bates, 28 Sept 1809 | a person from Chickasaw Bluffs told House "that Governor Lewis had arrived there [at Fort Pickering] ... in a state of mental derangement [and] that he had made several attempts to put an end to his own existence." Gale adds that the letter said Russell was keeping "a strict watch over him to prevent his committing violence on himself and had caused his boat to be unloaded and the key to be secured in his stores." | HEARSAY | Danisi, WPO 38:4 (Nov 2012) p. 18 n. 2 (Frederick Bates Papers, Missouri History Museum; Danisi 2012 pp. 230-31; *Argus of Western America* 4 Nov 1809); MED `wpo_2012-11_vol38no4_danisi_uncovering_jeffersons_account.txt`; Gale, WPO 42:4 (Nov 2016) p. [PDF p. 12] n. 4 (Starrs & Gale p. 233); MED `wpo_2016-11_vol42no4_gale_assassination_argument.txt` |
| 1809-09-15/18 | Neelly to Jefferson, 18 Oct 1809 | "I arrived at the Chickasaw Bluffs on or about the 18 th of September, where I found the Governor (who had reached there two days before me from S t Louis) in Very bad health" ... "having recovered his health in Some digree at the Chickasaw Bluffs, we Set out together." | ILL | FO Jefferson/03-01-02-0478 (Ret. Ser. 1:606-8); MED `neelly_to_jefferson_1809-10-18.txt`; SRC `1809-10-18_neelly_to_jefferson.md` |
| 1809-09-16 | Lewis to Madison, Chickasaw Bluffs | "I arrived here yesterday about 1 P.M. very much exhausted from the heat of the climate, but having taken medicine feel much better this morning. My appreh[en]sion from the heat of the lower country and my fear of the original papers relative to my voyage to the Pacific ocean falling into the hands of the British has induced me to change my rout and proceed by land through the state of Tennesee to the City of washington." ... "Provided my health permits no time shall be lost in reaching Washington." Editors: "Lewis first wrote '2 OCk' then deleted the exact time."; "Lewis wrote a following sentence—'Mr. Bates is left in charge'—then deleted it."; "Lewis wrote his complimentary close twice, then deleted a portion. The troubled mannerisms evident in the composition of this letter support an Indian agent's testimony that Lewis 'appeared at times deranged in mind'". | ILL / MED (own words) | FO Madison/03-01-02-0420 (Papers of JM, Pres. Ser. 1:380-1); MED `lewis_to_madison_1809-09-16.txt`; SRC `1809-09-16_lewis_to_madison.md` |
| 1809-09-22 | Lewis to Amos Stoddard, Fort Pickering | "I must acknowledge myself remiss in not writing you in answer to several friendly epistles which I have received from you since my return from the Pacific Ocean, continued occupation in the immediate discharge of the duties of a public station will I trust in some measure plead my apology. I am now on my way to the city of Washington and had contemplated taking Fort Adams and Orlianes in my rout, but my indisposition has induced me to change my rout and shall now pass through Tennessee and Virginia, the protest of some bills which I have lately drawn on public account form the principal inducement for my going forward at this moment, an explanation is all that is necessary I am sensible to put all matters right, in the mean time the protest of a draught however just has drawn upon me at one moment all my private debts which have excessively embarrassed me." ... "You will direct to me at the City of Washington untill the last of December after which I expect I shall be on my return to St. Louis." | ILL ("indisposition") / MOOD (own words) | Thwaites, *Original Journals* 7 (1905) p. 368 (Jackson 2:466-67); SRC `1809-09-22_lewis_to_stoddard.md` (OCR of Thwaites); partial quotations in Chuinard, WPO 17:3 p. 10 and Guice, WPO 24:2 p. 6 |
| 1809-09-15 to 29 | Russell to Jefferson, 31 Jan 1810 | "his untimely death may be attributed Solely to the free use he made of liquor, which he acknowledged verry candidly to me after he recovered & expressed a firm determination never to drink any more Spirits or use Snuff again both of which I deprived him of for Several days & confined him to Claret & a little white wine—But after leaving this place by some means or other his resolution left him & this Ag t being extremely fond of liquor, instead of preventing the Gov r from drinking or puting him under any restraint, advised him to it, & from every thing I can learn gave the man every chance to seek an opportunity to destroy himself—And from the Statement of Grinders wife where he Killed himself I can not help beleiving that Purney was rather Aiding & abeting in the murder than otherwise—" | DRINK (first-hand) | FO Jefferson/03-02-02-0153 (Ret. Ser. 2:191-2); MED `russell_to_jefferson_1810-01-31.txt`; SRC `1810-01-31_russell_to_jefferson.md` |
| 1809-09-29 | Russell 1811 statement | "On the 29th of the same month he left Bluffs, with the Chickasaw agent the interpreter and some of the Chiefs ... By much severe depletion during his illness he had been considerably reduced and debilitated, from which he had not entirely recovered when he set off, and the weather in that country being yet excessively hot and the exercise of traveling too severe for him; in three or four days he was again affected with the same mental disease. He had no person with him who could manage or controul him in his propensities and he daily grew worse untill he arrived at the house of a Mr. Grinder" | ILL / MED ("depletion" = bleeding and purging) | WPO 28:1 p. 14; MED `wpo_2002-02_...txt` |
| 1809-10-02 to 06 | Neelly, 18 Oct 1809 | "on our arrival at the Chickasaw nation I discovered that he appeared at times deranged in mind, we rested there two days & came on." | SYM (first-hand) | MED `neelly_to_jefferson_1809-10-18.txt` |
| 1809-10-06 to 10 (Pernier's report) | Clark to Jonathan Clark, 26 Nov 1809 | "Govr. Lewis was there detaind by him 15 IJi1ys [Days] in a State of Derangement most of the time and that he had attempted to kill himself before he got there-his servent reports that on his way to Nashville, he would frequently 'Conceipt [conceive] that he herd me Comeing on, and Said that he was certain [I would] over take him. that I had herd of his Situation and would Come to his releaf'" | SYM (HEARSAY via Pernier) | Holmberg, WPO 18:4 p. 11; MED `wpo_1992-11_...txt` |
| 1809-10-10, evening | Mrs Grinder as told to Alexander Wilson (letter dated Natchez 28 May 1811 in *The Port Folio*; Ord/Grosart print the same letter as 18 May 1810) | "Governor Lewis, she said, came there about sun-set, alone, and inquired if he could stay for the night; and, alighting, brought his saddle into the house. He was dressed in aloose [a loose] gown, white, striped with blue. On being asked if he came alone, he replied that there were two servants behind, who would soon be up. He called for some spirits, and drank a very little. Whenthe [When the] servants arrived, one of whom was a negro, he inquired for his powder, saying he was sure he had some powder in acanister [a canister]. The servant gave no distinct reply, and Lewis, in the mean while, walked backwards and forwards before the door, talking to himself. Sometimes, she said, he would seem as if he were walking up to her; and would suddenly wheel round, and walk back as fast as he could. Supper being ready he sat down, but had not eat but a few mouthfuls when he started up, speaking to himself in a violent manner. At these times, she says, she observed his face to flush as if it had come on him ina [in a] fit. He lighted his pipe, and drawing a chair to the door sat down, saying to Mrs. Grinder, in a kind tone of voice, ‘* Madam this is a very pleasant evening.” He smoked for some time, but quitted his seat and traversed the yard as before. He again sat down to his pipe, seemed again composed, and casting his eyes wishfully towards the west, observed what a sweet evening it was. Mrs. Grinder was preparing a bed for him; but he said he would sleep on the floor, and desired the servant to bring the bear skins and buffaloe robe, which were immediately spread out tur [for] him; and it being now dusk the woman went off to the kitchen, and the two men to the barn, which stands about two hundred yards off. ... the woman being considerably alarmed by.the [by the] behaviour of her guest could not sleep, but listened to him walking backwards and forwards, she thinks, for several hours, and taiking [talking] aloud, as she said, * like a lawyer.”" | SYM / DRINK ("drank a very little") (HEARSAY, seven months later) | *Port Folio* n.s. 7:1 (Jan 1812) pp. 36-37; MED `wilson_1811_portfolio_1812.txt`; SRC `1811-05-28_wilson_letter_portfolio_1812.md`, `1810-05-18_wilson_letter_grosart_1876.md` |
| 1809-10-10, evening | Neelly, 18 Oct 1809 | "he reached the house of a M r Grinder about Sun Set, the man of the house being from home, and no person there but a woman who discovering the governor to be deranged gave him up the house & slept herself in one near it" | SYM (HEARSAY via Mrs Grinder) | MED `neelly_to_jefferson_1809-10-18.txt` |
| 1809-10-10, evening | Russell 1811 | "After he arrived [at Grinder's Stand] and refreshed himself with a little Meal & drink he went to bed in a cabin by himself and ordered the servants to go to the stables and take care of the Horses, least they might loose some that night" | DRINK (HEARSAY) | WPO 28:1 p. 14 |
| 1809-10-11, c. 3 a.m. to sunrise | (wounds and last words: section 3a) | Neelly: "I have done the business my good Servant give me Some water. he gave him water, he Survived but a short time". Wilson: "He often said, “I am no coward; but I am so strong, so hard to die.” ... He expired in about two hours, or just as the sun rose above the trees." Brahan: "he lived until Sun rise & expired". *Democratic Clarion* 20 Oct 1809 (from the facsimile column, whose OCR in the saved file is garbled by the long-s type; these are my readings of it, to be checked against the image, PDF p. 46 of vol35no3.pdf): "the governor said he had now done for himself" ... "expired about 7 o'clock in the morning of the 11th"; "He had been under the influence of a deranging malady for about six weeks-the cause of which is unknown, unless it was from a protest to a draft which he drew on the secretary at war, which he considered tantamount to a disgrace by government." | -- | MED `neelly_...`, `wilson_...`, `brahan_...`, `wpo_2009-08_vol35no3_giesecke_1809_newspapers_clarion_norfolk_enquirer.txt` (Giesecke, WPO 35:3, Aug 2009, pp. 44-45) |
| 1809-10-18 | John Brahan to Jefferson (on Pernier) | "I would have given him more but was fearful it might cause him to drink as I discover he has a propensity at present. but perhaps it may be from distress of mind at the death of the Governor" (the servant, not Lewis). On Lewis: "the Governor appeared some days thereafter while on their Journey, to be Some what deranged in mind" | DRINK (Pernier) / SYM (HEARSAY via Neelly) | FO Jefferson/03-01-02-0476 (Ret. Ser. 1:602-4); MED `brahan_to_jefferson_1809-10-18.txt`; SRC `1809-10-18_brahan_to_jefferson.md` |
| 1809-10-28 | Clark to Jonathan Clark, Shelbyville (on reading the *Argus of Western America* report that Lewis "had killed himself by cutting his throat") | "I fear this report has too much truth, tho' it may have no foundation-my reason for thinking it possible is founded on the letter I received from him at your house, ... I fear O' I fear the weight of his mind has overcome him, what will be the Consequence?" (c. 8 Nov: "his death is a turble Stroke to me, in every respect.") | MOOD (RETRO, first-hand knowledge) | Holmberg, WPO 18:4 pp. 10-11; MED `wpo_1992-11_...txt` |
| 1809-11-09 | Bates to Richard Bates | "Gov. Lewis, on his way to Washington became insane." Clement Penrose "asserted in several respectable companies that the mental derangement of the Governor ought not to be imputed to his political miscarriages; but rather to the barbarous conduct of the Secretary." | SYM (RETRO) | Marshall 2:110-11; MED `bates_letters_1809_...txt`; SRC `1809-11-09_bates_to_richard_bates.md` |
| 1809-11-23 | Thomas Freeman's inventory of Lewis's effects, Nashville | Turnbow: "The inventory of Lewis's possessions included an old razor box but the razor was apparently missing." (inventory itself not seen: Jackson 2:470-72) | -- | Turnbow, WPO 38:2 (May 2012) n. 38; MED `wpo_2012-05_vol38no2_turnbow_man_who_abandoned_lewis_neelly.txt` |
| 1810-02-06 | *Virginia Argus* | Turnbow: the paper "appears to have printed a clarification of the 'supposed cause of the rash deed' as a fever that went to Lewis's brain." (newspaper not seen) | ILL (newspaper) | Turnbow, WPO 38:2 n. 38; MED `wpo_2012-05_...txt` |
| 1810-04-18 | Jefferson to Russell | "we have all to lament that a fame so dearly earned was clouded finally by such an act of desperation. he was much afflicted & habitually so with hypocondria. this was probably increased by the habit into which he had fallen & the painful reflections that would necessarily produce in a mind like his." | MOOD / DRINK ("the habit into which he had fallen", answering Russell's 31 Jan letter) | FO Jefferson/03-02-02-0290 (Ret. Ser. 2:336); MED `jefferson_to_russell_1810-04-18.txt`; SRC `1810-04-18_jefferson_to_russell.md` |
| 1810-04-29 | Pernier's death (Süverman to Jefferson, 5 May 1810) | "on Saturday last he procured himself a quantity of Laudenam. on Sunday Morning under the pretence of not being so well went upstairs to lay on the bed, in which situation he was found dead, with the bottle by his Side that had contained the Laudanam." | (servant's opiate death) | FO Jefferson/03-02-02-0321 (Ret. Ser. 2:364-5); SRC `1810-05-05_suverman_to_jefferson_pernier_death.md`; Jackson, *WMQ* 3d ser. 21 (1964): 445-8 |
| 1813-08-18 | Jefferson to Paul Allen ("Life of Captain Lewis") | "Governor Lewis had, from early life, been subject to hypocondriac affections. it was a constitutional disposition in all the nearer branches of the family of his name, and was more immediately inherited by him from his father. they had not however been so strong as to give uneasiness to his family." ... "he was in a paroxysm of one of these, when his affairs rendered it necessary for him to go to Washington. he proceeded to the Chickasaw bluffs, where he arrived on the 16 th of Sep. 1809. with a view of continuing his journey thence by water. mr Neely, agent of the US. with the Chickasaw Indians, arriving there two days after, found him extremely indisposed, and betraying, at times, some symptoms of a derangement of mind." (n. 48: "Reworked in Dft from 'in extremely ill health.'") ... "altho' he appeared somewhat relieved, mr Neely kindly determined to accompany & watch over him." ... "his wife, alarmed at the symptoms of derangement she discovered, gave him up the house" ... "about three aclock in the night, he did the deed which plunged his friends into affliction". Also of the boy: "when only eight years of age, he habitually went out, in the dead of night, alone with his dogs". | MOOD / ILL (RETRO; family knowledge plus Neelly's and Russell's letters) | FO Jefferson/03-06-02-0341-0002; MED `jefferson_to_allen_1813-08-18_biography.txt` (+ `jefferson_to_allen_1813-08-18_editorial_note.txt`, `jefferson_to_allen_1813-08-20_cover.txt`; the 1814 printing in `jefferson_life_of_lewis_1814_printing.txt`); SRC `1813-08-18_jefferson_to_paul_allen_lewis_biography.md` |

What the table does **not** contain, because no saved source contains it: any statement by Lewis himself that he drank to excess; any contemporary naming of the "medicine" he took on 15-16 Sept 1809; any mention of "pills" in Russell's three documents (the "opium pills" of the literature come from Ambrose 1996 p. 450 as cited by Peck 2009, section 2c); any mention of malaria or ague by Neelly, Russell, Mrs Grinder, Clark or Lewis in the last weeks (Crosby's point, section 2a).

---

## 2. The medical hypotheses, each stated fairly

For each: the claim, its best evidence in the sources (quoted), its best counter (quoted), and a line separating what is evidence from what is inference.

### 2a. Malaria ("ague") with cerebral involvement, and the 1809 fever season

**Proponents and versions.** Chuinard (surgeon; WPO 17:3-18:1, 1991-92): malaria produced fever and delirium, i.e. the "derangement", and Lewis was then murdered. Danisi (WPO 28:1, Feb 2002; letters WPO 36:2 and 36:3, 2010; Danisi & Jackson, *Meriwether Lewis*, 2009; Danisi, *Uncovering the Truth about Meriwether Lewis*, 2012): chronic untreated malaria caused paroxysms of localized agony and a delirious impulse to destroy the painful part, so that the shots were "self-surgery, not suicide". Bakeless 1947 and Jenkinson 2011 accept malaria as a contributor. Peck 2002 (not read) and Peck 2009-2013, Loge 2002 and Crosby 2013 argue against. Paton 2001 (*Lewis and Clark: Doctors in the Wilderness*) could not be obtained (section 6).

**Best evidence.**
- Lewis's own 1803 words: "siezed with a violent ague which continued about four hours and as usual was succeeded by feever" (13 Nov 1803, table 1a). Danisi reads "as usual" as marking "a longstanding illness" (Danisi, Missouri State Archives talk, SRC/scholarship `danisi_missouri_archives_talk_transcript.txt`: "The phrase 'as is usual' implied that Lewis suffered from a longstanding illness."). Chuinard's *Only One Man Died* held that "every member of the Corps of Discovery who set off from Camp Dubois in the spring of 1804 was 'infected with chronic malaria.'" (as quoted by Danisi, WPO 28:1 p. 11).
- The 1809 fever words: *Missouri Gazette* 2 Nov 1809, Lewis departed "afflicted with fever" (Danisi n. 20); Lewis to Madison, "very much exhausted from the heat of the climate, but having taken medicine feel much better this morning"; Lewis to Stoddard, "my indisposition"; Russell 1811, derangement "produced as much by indisposition as other causes" and "the weather in that country being yet excessively hot and the exercise of traveling too severe for him; in three or four days he was again affected with the same mental disease"; Neelly, "in Very bad health"; Jefferson's draft, "in extremely ill health"; the *Virginia Argus* of 6 Feb 1810 on "a fever that went to Lewis's brain" (Turnbow n. 38); Mrs Grinder's "his face to flush as if it had come on him ina [in a] fit".
- The relapsing course. Chuinard: "Under Russell's supervision, Lewis gradually recovered" and, after quoting Russell's "on the sixth or seventh day all symptoms of derangement disappeared", "This is the usual time required for patients with estivo-malaria attacks to recover." and "This statement by Russell could very well describe a periodical elevation of temperature and delirium due to malaria; but Russell attributes it to having no one in the party to control Lewis's 'propensities,' apparently meaning the use of liquor." (WPO 17:4, Nov 1991, p. 8 [PDF p. 8]; MED `wpo_1991-11_vol17no4_chuinard_it_was_murder_part2.txt`). Chuinard's summary: "Lewis was a sick man because of malaria; which gave rise to the symptoms of 'mental derangement' with a fluctuating course of fever and delirium that explains the periods of alternating 'mental depression' and 'in six or seven days he was completely restored to his senses.'" (WPO 17:4 pp. 7-8).
- Danisi's thesis and his historical medical testimony (WPO 28:1 pp. 10-15, MED `wpo_2002-02_vol28no1_death_of_lewis_section.txt`): "I accept the view that Lewis shot himself and was not the victim of either robbery or political conspiracy (two theories beyond the scope of this article). I reject, however, the notion that his death was a suicide, at least in the conventional sense of that term. I believe that Meriwether Lewis suffered from untreated malaria, a condition that can lead to the kind of erratic behavior he exhibited in the weeks before his death. Malaria has been known, literally, to drive its victims crazy, causing them to mutilate and even shoot themselves in a desperate attempt to rid their bodies of pain." He quotes Pringle (1752/1764) on soldiers with ague who "ran about in a wild manner, and were believed to be mad" and "would have thrown themselves out of the window, or into the water, if not prevented"; Alibert on paroxysms "marked by a derangement of intellectual functions"; Senac on pain above the eye leaving a patient "so dreadfully tormented ... as to be rendered almost insane"; and Macculloch (1828) on the ague sufferer who "feels a species of antipathy against some peculiar part of his body [and] longs to commit the act [of self-infliction] by wounding that particular point" and for whom "while a pistol would be the only acceptable mode, there would ... be no satisfaction unless that were directed to this actual and only point." Conclusion: "'I have done the business,' said Lewis, and indeed he had. But that 'business' was a strange and tragic form of self-surgery, not suicide." (p. 15).
- Danisi 2010 letters (MED `wpo_2010-05_vol36no2_...txt`, `wpo_2010-08_vol36no3_...txt`): "It is my belief that the ague and hypochondriasis were intimately linked - both diseases enlarged the liver and spleen"; "I am claiming that Lewis did not mean to kill himself during his malarial attack - rather he meant only to treat his absolute pain"; the historical patients "were not trying tO [to] harm them­selves, but chat [that] they were trying to kill or exterminate the Living disease within their bodies." (OCR as saved) Danisi & Jackson 2009 pp. 307-9 (as quoted by Rogers, WPO 36:1, Feb 2010): "Hypochondriac affections actually referred to the disease known as hypochondriasis, a complex, physical sickness" and "the hypochondriasis that afflicted Meriwether was a debilitating complication of chronic untreated malaria." Danisi 2012 (as quoted by Bartley, WPO 39:3, Aug 2013, n. 1): "In sum, the ague made him do it".
- Bakeless 1947 (SRC/scholarship `bakeless_1947_partners_in_discovery_death_chapter.txt`): "This may have been merely the result of too much liquor combined with worry; but it certainly adds strength to the view that Lewis committed suicide. On the other hand, Lewis's notebook entries at this very time are eminently clear and sensible. The best explanation of his odd conduct is probably malaria, as it is well known that fever of any kind invariably made him light-headed." Jenkinson 2011 (SRC/scholarship `jenkinson_2011_ch6_last_journey.txt`): "It seems quite likely that Lewis's derangement was partly the result of a severe bout of malaria. Gilbert Russell explicitly considered that possibility."

**Best counter.**
- Loge (physician), WPO 28:2 (May 2002) pp. 33-35, MED `wpo_2002-05_vol28no2_loge_meriwether_lewis_and_malaria.txt`: "Lewis did not describe this typical malarial fever pattern when writing about his chills and fever of November 13, 1803. His isolated febrile episode argues strongly against malaria." On the June 1805 illness: "contrary to Danisi's assertion, Lewis did not have any indication of a malaria-like syndrome". On delirium: "febrile delirium is not unique to malaria. A normal mental status between febrile episodes is characteristic of malarial delirium. The fever-related delirium of malaria does not lead to mental illness or dementia during the intervening periods." On cerebral malaria: "a devastating form of malaria caused by Plasmodium falciparum found only in the tropics"; and of the temperate forms, "the effects of the chill and fever ... are typically so acutely disabling that most every sufferer is strictly bed bound. This, of course, would preclude travel, especially alone and by horseback, the way Lewis arrived at Grinder's Stand". On Macculloch: "we cannot know retrospectively with any certainty what illnesses these particular patients truly had"; "a survey of modern medical and infectious disease texts and an on-line search of the world's medical literature do not come up with any descriptions of such self-destructive idiosyncrasies in modern-day patients with proven malaria." Conclusion: "The cardinal clinical features of malaria are recurring, physically disabling chills and fevers with a periodicity of 48 or 72 hours. Scrutiny of the Lewis and Clark journals fails to uncover any such pattern of illness in any member of the expedition. It is time to put Chuinard's unfounded assertion of malaria and Danisi's concurrence to rest."
- Peck (physician), WPO 35:4 (Nov 2009) pp. 16-25, MED `wpo_2009-11_vol35no4_peck_death_of_lewis_medical.txt`: falciparum "is the only type of malaria that can result in 'cerebral malaria'"; its victims die "within days. A victim would have been unable to travel rough trails by horseback for 10 days as Lewis" did; "Based on his activity level at the time of his death, Lewis clearly did not have cerebral malaria." Peck, WPO 36:2 (May 2010) p. 4: Dr Lee Rickman, "then the chief of infectious diseases at the University of California at San Diego ... offered his opinion that it was not possible for Lewis to have suffered from cerebral malaria."
- Crosby, WPO 39:3 (Aug 2013), MED `wpo_2013-08_vol39no3_...txt`: "none of the existing eyewitness accounts of Lewis's final weeks mention malaria: neither Neelly, nor Russell, nor Mrs. Grinder, nor William Clark, nor Lewis himself. What does that suggest?" Crosby also documents that Danisi & Jackson's Pringle quotation (their p. 318) omits words, and quotes their own concession: the authors "acknowledge that Lewis 'could have been imbibing enough alcohol to make him drunk,' but then proclaim, 'But inebriation does not explain the reported suicide attempts.' (Meriwether Lewis, 318)".
- On "hypochondriac affections" as a physical (malarial) disease: Rogers, WPO 36:1 (Feb 2010) pp. 6-7, MED `wpo_2010-02_vol36no1_rogers_hypocondriac_affections.txt`, shows Jefferson's own usage. To his daughter (1787): "Idleness begets ennui, ennui the hypochondria, and that a diseased body."; to Mme de Tessé (1787): the silk-spinners "consider me as an hypochondriac Englishman, about to write with a pistol the last chapter of his history." Rogers: Danisi and Jackson's argument "links Jefferson's phrase to an etymologically-related medical term without giving attention to the way Jefferson used the words 'hypochondriac' and 'hypochondria' in his own writing." Flick, WPO 47:2 (May 2021): "'Hypochondria' at this time referred to the condition that we know today as depression." Crosby: the malaria reading "requires Jefferson to believe in the absurd idea that Lewis had somehow managed to inherit malaria from his father."

**Evidence vs inference.** Evidence: Lewis had a four-hour ague in Nov 1803 and a one-day fever in June 1805; there was fever and "indisposition" in Sept 1809 in a hot season on the lower Mississippi; the course at Fort Pickering was relapsing-remitting; contemporaries in Nashville and Richmond spoke of "a deranging malady" and "a fever" going to the brain. Inference: that any of these fevers was malaria (nobody in 1809 says "ague"); that malaria explains a "derangement" that persisted between fevers for weeks (Loge's objection); that the pain-directed "self-surgery" of Macculloch's English patients describes what happened at Grinder's (no witness reports localized pain, and the head wound is "a furrow", the chest wound is not at any site anyone named as painful); that "hypochondriac affections" meant hypochondriasis (contradicted by Jefferson's usage).

### 2b. Neurosyphilis (general paresis): Ravenholt, *Epidemiology* 5 (1994) 366-79

**The claim** (Ravenholt, PMID 8038257; author's copy MED `ravenholt_1994_triumph_then_despair_author_copy.txt`; restated in his 1999 and 2005 essays in MED): "I became convinced that a strong fabric of evidence supports the diagnosis of neurosyphilis paresis as the underlying (etiological) cause of the tragic death of Meriwether Lewis." He quotes 1920s descriptions of paresis, including "The depressed or introspective type: In this type of paresis the symptoms are apt to come on quite suddenly. The patient becomes melancholy and often has ideas of self-destruction. In distinction to the other types, he often realizes what his trouble is, and he can see his vitality becoming less day by day."

**Best evidence, in Ravenholt's own enumeration (verbatim):** "The fabric of evidence that syphilis acquired during the explorative trip to the Pacific Coast was the underlying cause of Lewis's death includes these threads: (1) Lewis was in excellent health when he set forth up the Missouri River; (2) several Indian tribes suffering from syphilis were encountered; (3) sexual intercourse with women of these tribes by Corps members was frequently urged by the Indians and was commonplace; (4) several Corps members (probably at least eight) did develop syphilis; (5) when encountering the Shoshoni tribe on the Continental Divide, Lewis had both a propitious opportunity and a compelling need for sexual intercourse; (6) a few weeks later, he developed illness which became severe and disabling for several months, but the nature of which was not described; (7) for some months in 1807, following his return from the expedition, he was incapacitated by illness, the nature of which was not divulged; (8) during 1808-1809, he developed progressive illness afflicting his central nervous system and diminishing his judgment faculties; (9) his terminal months in 1809 were characterized by progressive, episodic, febrile illness, with severe mental and behavioral disorders highly characteristic of paresis; (10) Lewis himself recognized that he was suffering from a progressive disease likely to be fatal; (11) Thomas Jefferson and William Clark readily understood why his death was a probable act of self destruction." The journal support he cites is in table 1a: 19 Aug 1805 ("I was anxious to learn whether these people had the venerial"), 19 Sept 1805 ("brakings out, or irruptions of the Skin, have also been common with us for some time" -- his candidate for secondary syphilis), Clark's "Capt Lewis verry Sick" entries of 23-27 Sept 1805, the mercury cures of Goodrich and Gibson (27 Jan 1806) and "Goodrich and McNeal are both unwell with the pox" (2 July 1806). For thread 10 he quotes a letter to Theodosia Burr Alston: "I am going to die, Theodosia, I cannot tell you how I know it, but I do ... For me I know the trail is nearly ended .... I want to see you once again first .... I shall be with you in October." (his n. 29; I could not resolve the reference in the author's copy and have not seen the letter in any edition of Lewis's papers -- treat as unverified).

**Best counter.**
- Guice, WPO 24:2 (May 1998) p. 9, MED `wpo_1998-05_vol24no2_guice_fatal_rendezvous.txt`: "Many of Ravenholt's assertions are highly speculative and not sustained by available evidence. Many causes other than syphilis could account for the symptoms catalogued by Ravenholt from the journals. And even if one concedes infection of Lewis with syphilis, it is unlikely-though possible-that the disease would have advanced as quickly as Ravenholt contends in this case. Often victims of the disease live for years and even decades before the tertiary stage is symptomatic."
- Peck, WPO 35:4 p. 23: "Did Lewis have neurosyphilis? Perhaps, but it is not likely. This theory is an example of constructing a desired conclusion and then finding the data to support the theory. Medical evidence may suggest this as plausible, but the journal evidence used by supporters of this theory is threadbare at best." On the related mercury-poisoning idea: "Did Lewis have syphilis and poison himself with mercury? Perhaps, but it is not likely. He probably would have died sooner from other effects of mercury poisoning prior to exhibiting the neuropsychiatric behaviors associated with chronic mercury poisoning." Bartsch, WPO 51:3 (Aug 2025) p. 31: calomel's "inorganic form of mercury ... is generally nephrotoxic, not neural."
- The Sept 1805 illness, Ravenholt's thread 6, was party-wide ("nearly all the men Sick", Clark 27 Sept) and Clark attributed his own to diet (6 Oct 1805); the 19 Sept "brakings out" sentence is about "us", the party. No document names a 1807 illness (thread 7).
- Published replies: MacCorquodale, *Epidemiology* 6 (1995) 97-8 (PMID 7888462) and Pollard, ibid. 97 with author reply 98 (PMID 7888461) -- not read, no abstracts. Press: Dietrich, *Seattle Times*/*Washington Post* 30 May 1994, reprinted WPO 20:3 (Aug 1994) pp. 22-23, MED `wpo_1994-08_...txt`. Skeletal evidence: Lowry & Willey, "The Mystery of the Bones", WPO Feb 2007, reported "no evidence of syphilis in Arikara bones" (as summarised in a letter in WPO 35:2, May 2009; SRC/scholarship `wpo_gale_2009_debate_letter_WPO35-2.txt`; article not read).

**Evidence vs inference.** Evidence: venereal disease was present among the men and treated by Lewis with mercury; Lewis asked about it among the Shoshone; the party had skin eruptions and a gastro-intestinal illness in Sept 1805; Lewis was "deranged" at intervals in Sept-Oct 1809. Inference: every link that makes it Lewis's syphilis (no text records his contact or his eruption), the 1807 illness, the Theodosia letter, and a three-to-four-year progression to paresis.

### 2c. Alcohol, and opium/laudanum

**Drinking: the evidence.**
- The one first-hand statement is Russell's, 31 Jan 1810 (table 1b): "his untimely death may be attributed Solely to the free use he made of liquor, which he acknowledged verry candidly to me after he recovered & expressed a firm determination never to drink any more Spirits or use Snuff again both of which I deprived him of for Several days & confined him to Claret & a little white wine". Note what it is: a letter written to blame Neelly ("this Ag t being extremely fond of liquor ... advised him to it") and Pernier ("Aiding & abeting in the murder"), three and a half months after the death, by a man whose 4 Jan 1810 letter had not mentioned liquor and whose 1811 statement speaks only of "his propensities".
- Jefferson accepted it, 18 Apr 1810: "this was probably increased by the habit into which he had fallen". Jefferson's 1813 sketch omits it.
- Mrs Grinder (Wilson): "He called for some spirits, and drank a very little."; Russell 1811: "refreshed himself with a little Meal & drink".
- Brahan reports a drinking "propensity" in Pernier, not Lewis (table 1b).
- Later judgements: Bakeless 1947, "This may have been merely the result of too much liquor combined with worry"; Kushner 1981 lists "his addiction to alcohol" among Lewis's self-destructive tendencies (as quoted by Cutright, WPO 12:1 p. 15 n. 71); Ambrose 1996 on the 1807 Philadelphia months, "he [Lewis] was doing a lot of heavy drinking" (as quoted by Bartsch); Guice at the 1996 inquest, "We know from letters to his buddies, we know he'd been drinking a little bit." (Peck & Peck, WPO 48:1, Feb 2022, p. 34 n. 17); Jenkinson 2011, "exacerbated by excessive use of alcohol" and, of Fort Pickering, "his toxicity (no doubt a combination of alcohol and medicines, including laudanum) diminished"; Peck 2009, "A man with a history of alcohol abuse likely would drink even more in a state of extreme unhappiness ... This addiction scenario is consistent with the historical record, and the probability that Lewis suffered from alcoholism is very high." and "At the end of his life he was depressed, discouraged and drinking heavily."

**Drinking: the counter.** Starrs & Gale 2009: "Lewis had absolutely no history of alcohol abuse", citing that Bates "never once said that Lewis had any kind of drinking or drug problem" (as quoted by Peck & Peck, WPO 48:1 p. 34 n. 16). Bartsch, WPO 51:3 (Aug 2025) pp. 30-38, MED `wpo_2025-08_vol51no3_bartsch_not_manic_not_an_alcoholic.txt`: against Ambrose's "heavy drinking", Lewis's 1807 account book records "a dozen of Ale" (20 April), "1 dozes of ale" (5 May) and "sent sum for a doz of ale, went pd for 2 doz, $3" (21 May): "If these were the total of his alcohol purchases, and we can't be sure, it does not seem to be excessive, considering that he spent roughly four months in Philadelphia that year." Streed (criminal psychologist) at the 1996 inquest "criticized the medical treatment Russell provided to the deranged Lewis, implying that Russell's report lacked credibility and therefore the entire view that Lewis had an alcohol problem was weak" (Peck & Peck p. 35). Gale holds Russell's letters and statement to be forgeries (section 5). Clark's letters, as printed by Holmberg, say nothing about drink.

**Opium/laudanum: the evidence.**
- Lewis, 16 Sept 1809: "having taken medicine feel much better this morning." The medicine is not named by him or anyone else.
- What Lewis carried and used for fever: laudanum (4 oz bought in 1803), opium, Peruvian bark, Rush's pills (Lentz, table 1a). Loge, WPO 23:1 (Feb 1997), MED `wpo_1997-02_vol23no1_loge_two_dozes_of_barks_and_opium.txt`, quotes Jefferson's therapeutic creed ("intermittents, by the Peruvian bark; syphilis, by mercury; watchfulness, by opium") and Lewis's own treatment of Sacagawea in June 1805 with "two dozes of barks and opium".
- Peck 2009 (pp. 20-21): "Lewis took opium pills toward the end of his life for self-diagnosed malarial 'fevers,' which would have been an appropriate treatment given the medical theory of the day." "Although Lewis reported taking opium pills weighing one gram, it is highly doubtful that those pills actually contained a gram of opium, which would have been a potent dose. Lewis took three opium pills at night when suffering a fever and if they did not 'operate' him, he took two more in the morning." Peck's source (his nn. 26 and 29) is Ambrose, *Undaunted Courage*, p. 450; the primary document behind Ambrose is not identified in anything I read, and I have not seen it. Peck's conclusion: "It is certain that opium significantly affected his mental state."
- Rush's own list of the means of "despair" (Crosby, WPO 39:3, quoting *Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind*, 1812): "A pistol, a razor, a river, a mill-dam, a halter, or laudanum, are the means usually resorted to for this purpose."
- Pernier died of laudanum on 29 April 1810 (Süverman, table 1b) -- relevant only as showing the drug's availability in Lewis's household.
- **Druggist's account / Fort Pickering supplies:** nothing in the sources read establishes what Russell "administered". Russell 1811 says only "the most proper and efficatious means that could be devised to restore him was administered" and "By much severe depletion during his illness he had been considerably reduced and debilitated" ("depletion" in 1809 means bleeding and purging). I did not find, in Danisi's WPO pieces or in the reviews of his 2009 and 2012 books, any druggist's account for 1809; Danisi 2012 itself was not available (section 6).

**Evidence vs inference.** Evidence: Russell's statement that Lewis admitted "the free use he made of liquor" and was weaned to claret; Jefferson's acceptance of "the habit"; Lewis "having taken medicine"; laudanum and opium in Lewis's pharmacopoeia and Pernier's death by laudanum. Inference: chronic alcoholism (Peck) or its absence (Bartsch, Starrs & Gale); that the 1809 "medicine" was opium; the dose regimen (Ambrose); any pharmacological explanation (intoxication, withdrawal, delirium) of the derangement -- no writer in the saved sources works this through clinically.

### 2d. Depression, bipolar disorder, suicidality

- Kushner, "The Suicide of Meriwether Lewis: A Psychoanalytic Inquiry", *WMQ* 3d ser. 38 (1981) 464-81 (PMID 11636274; not read). As quoted by Guice (WPO 24:2 p. 8): "Lewis's suicide, then, was not merely a means of dying but a grisly final self-punishment, even a self-execution." As quoted by Cutright (WPO 12:1 p. 15, n. 72): "Suicide emerges as an alternative of last resort for the incomplete mourner when other ritualized alternatives prove either insufficient or unavailable. The life of Meriwether Lewis is suggestive of incomplete mourning and a psychoanalytic approach to his death can lead us to a fuller understanding of his life." Cutright 1986 himself (p. 16): "as a result of the continued, intrusive problems haunting Lewis during the final months of his life, he became increasingly unstable. This to such extent that in time there was, for him, only one escape, a fatal rendezvous."
- Ambrose 1996 (not read): cited by Peck for the opium regimen (p. 450) and by Merritt's chronology (pp. 461-65); Bartsch (2025) treats Ambrose's "speculations" as "a tipping point" after which "Lewis became a hothead, mercurial or erratic, volatile, impulsive, self-absorbed, and reckless, a split personality, manic depressive and/or alcoholic."
- Jenkinson 2011 (SRC/scholarship `jenkinson_2011_ch6_last_journey.txt`; quoted by Bartley, WPO 39:3): "the proximate cause of Lewis's suicide was the affair of honor forced upon his sensitive soul by William Eustis, James Madison, and the War Department; coupled with a toxic mix of physical, mental, and spiritual illness; exacerbated by excessive use of alcohol; and deepened by a sense that he had failed to meet the expectations that Jefferson and his own ambition had set for himself."
- Westefeld & Less, *Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior* 34 (2004) 220-7 (PMID 15385176, DOI 10.1521/suli.34.3.220.42777; abstract only): "A risk factor model for suicide assessment (Sanchez, 2001) is employed to evaluate the nature of Lewis' historical, personal, psychosocial environmental, and clinical risk factors as well as protective factors. The authors conclude that though there is some evidence to support a theory of murder, Lewis was at a high suicide risk at the time of his death, and that the preponderance of the evidence indicates that he died by his own hand."
- Psychiatric opinion at second hand: Fred Griffin MD, psychiatrist, via Peck (WPO 39:3, Aug 2013, p. 15): the picture "looks impressively like some form of (likely rapid-cycling variety) bipolar illness—perhaps more likely Type II (depression being more prominent) than Type I". Lillian Range, psychologist, via Guice (WPO 24:2 n. 46): "speculated that the odds against suicide were 60-40."
- Period meaning of Jefferson's words (Crosby, WPO 39:3 pp. 12-13): Heberden 1802 defined "hypochondriac affection" as "a languor and dispiritedness, without any manifest cause, which has cast a cloud over all [the patients'] pursuits, and has afforded only gloomy prospects, wherever they turned their thoughts"; Crosby's summary: "It was a 'nervous disease' characterized by depression, anxiety, and/or unreasonable fears." Flick (WPO 47:2): "'Hypochondria' at this time referred to the condition that we know today as depression."
- Against: Chuinard (WPO 17:3 p. 10) on the Stoddard letter: "This does not sound like a 'mentally depressed' person. A return to his duties in St. Louis was clearly in his mind- not suicide."; Bartsch 2025, "Not Manic, Not an Alcoholic"; Danisi (2a).

**Evidence vs inference.** Evidence, first-hand: Jefferson observed "sensible depressions of mind" in 1801-03; Clark saw Lewis "distressed ... much" and feared "the weight of his mind"; Lewis's own 1805 birthday self-reproach and 1807 "I never felt less like a heroe"; Bates's account of Lewis "evidently in passion"; Neelly's "at times deranged in mind". Evidence, hearsay: two attempts on the boat (crew to Russell; a traveller to House); Pernier's report that Lewis imagined Clark coming to his relief; Russell's "enemies which had no existance but in his wild immagination"; Mrs Grinder's account of the evening. Inference: every diagnostic label (depression, bipolar II, "incomplete mourning", paranoia), and the numerical odds.

### 2e. The family history Jefferson alludes to

- Jefferson 1813: "it was a constitutional disposition in all the nearer branches of the family of his name, and was more immediately inherited by him from his father. they had not however been so strong as to give uneasiness to his family." Jefferson was the Lewises' Albemarle neighbour and this is his first-hand knowledge, but it is the only statement of it.
- Flick, "The Gilmer Daybook" (WPO 47:2, May 2021, MED `wpo_2021-05_vol47no2_flick_gilmer_daybook_william_lewis.txt`), on Dr George Gilmer's treatment of William Lewis (d. Nov 1779): "references to his having prescribed 'emet.' or 'cath.,' in multiple cases to William Lewis. We can't be sure what symptoms he was trying to treat, since purgatives were employed to treat just about every illness. But they had been a common treatment for depression for nearly two hundred years ... Furthermore, on several occasions, for example June 7, 1774, William Lewis was also prescribed something that looks like 'Asaf,' probably Asafoetida, an herb commonly used in Colonial America to treat hysteria – and melancholia." Gilmer also gave camphene (2 Dec 1771, March 1772) and pennyroyal for what Flick takes to be a respiratory complaint. Flick's inference: "William's life of civic and military duty might well have been curtailed by a condition characterized by periods of major depression or persistent depressive disorder. Jefferson's assessment is that this was a family trait that William passed on to his son, who almost certainly died by suicide."
- Period medicine took hypochondriac affections to be heritable (Crosby, WPO 39:3 p. 13): Heberden 1802, "Some derive it from their parents; and the seeds of it, brought with them into the world, are sure to make their appearance at the proper time"; Arnold 1806 on "a predisposition to insanity"; the 1808 *New and Complete American Encyclopedia* listing "heredity disposition". Peck (WPO 39:3 p. 15): genes "'loads the gun,' and environmental factors when present often 'pull the trigger'".
- Danisi's contrary reading of the same sentence (WPO 38:4, Nov 2012, p. 22): "In Jefferson's opinion, Lewis was prey to hypochondriac affections, a disease that did not have a mental source, but, in Jefferson's words, a 'constitutional source.' Not only was it an organic or bodily source, passed on to Lewis by his family in the form of a diseased body". Crosby's reply is quoted in 2a.

**Evidence vs inference.** Evidence: Jefferson's sentence; Gilmer's prescriptions to William Lewis. Inference: what William Lewis was treated for, and heritability.

---

## 3. The wounds, the pistols, and the forensic literature

### 3a. The wounds as described, in order of the date of the description

None of these is by an eyewitness of the shots; the first five derive from Neelly, who arrived after the death, and from Mrs Grinder; no one with medical training saw the body.

| Date of description | Source | Words (verbatim) | Check |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1809-10-18 | Neelly to Jefferson (RC in Brahan's hand, signed by Neelly) | "the woman reports that about three OClock She heard two pistols fire off in the Governors Room: the Servants being awakined by her, came in but too late to save him. he had shot himself in the head with one pistol & a little below the Breast with the other—when his Servant came in he Says; I have done the business my good Servant give me Some water. he gave him water, he Survived but a short time, I came up Some time after, & had him as decently Buried as I could in that place" | MED `neelly_to_jefferson_1809-10-18.txt` |
| 1809-10-18 | Brahan to Jefferson (from Neelly's account) | "about three oClock the woman heard two pistols fire off. being alarmed She went & waked the servants when they came in they found him weltering in his blood. he had shot himself first it was thought in the head. the ball did not take effect. the other Shot was a little below his breast, which proved Mortal: he lived until Sun rise & expired— the Maj r had him decently buried." Brahan to Eustis, same day: Lewis "shot himself with two pistols: the first ball it is said wounded him in the head the other entered a little below his breast". Brahan to Stoddard, same day: Lewis "had shot himself in the head and just below his breast." | MED `brahan_to_jefferson_1809-10-18.txt`; Rogers, WPO 31:4 (Nov 2005) pp. 40-41, MED `wpo_2005-11_vol31no4_rogers_gunshots_at_grinders_stand.txt`; SRC `1809-10-18_brahan_to_stoddard_thwaites.md` (Thwaites 7:389) |
| 1809-10-20 | *Democratic Clarion* (Nashville), p. 3 -- the first printed report (Giesecke's transcription; facsimile also in the file) | "[Lewis] had shot a ball that grazed the top of his head, and another through his intestines, and cut his neck, arm and ham with a razor. When in his best senses he spoke about a trunk of papers that he said would be of great value to our government. He had been under the influence of a deranging malady for about six weeks-the cause of which is unknown, unless it was from a protest to a draft which he drew on the secretary at war, which he considered tantamount to a disgrace by government." The facsimile column (PDF p. 46; OCR garbled by the long-s type, so what follows is my reading of it, to be checked against the image) has the servants coming "at the appearance of day light ... when the governor said he had now done for himself-they asked what, and he said he had shot himself and would die, and requested them to bring him water, he then laying on the floor where he expired about 7 o'clock in the morning of the 11th". | Giesecke, WPO 35:3 (Aug 2009) pp. 44-45; MED `wpo_2009-08_vol35no3_giesecke_1809_newspapers_clarion_norfolk_enquirer.txt`. Turnbow (WPO 38:2 p. 25) notes the same issue carried an advertisement by Neelly. |
| c. 1809-10-25 | *Argus of Western America* (Frankfort, Ky.), as read by Clark on 28 Oct | reported "that Lewis had killed himself by cutting his throat" (Holmberg's paraphrase) | Holmberg, WPO 18:4 p. 10; MED `wpo_1992-11_...txt` |
| 1809-11-17 | *Enquirer* (Richmond), letter from Staunton dated 3 Nov | "he was seized with a delirium, and in the fit, discharged a pistol at his forehead—the ball glanced; he discharged a second pistol at his breast." | Giesecke, WPO 35:3 p. 45 |
| 1809-11-20 | *Norfolk Gazette and Publick Ledger*, letter from Lexington, Ky., from "a gentleman from Nash ville [Nashville]" | "gov. Lewis, in addition to shooting himself twice in the body, and cutting his throat, shot himself in the head, and cut the arteries in his thighs and arms." | Giesecke, WPO 35:3 p. 44 |
| 1809-11-23 | Freeman's inventory of effects (Nashville) | "included an old razor box but the razor was apparently missing" (Turnbow) | Turnbow, WPO 38:2 n. 38 (Jackson 2:470-72; not seen) |
| 1810-05 (letter printed 1812) | Mrs Grinder to Alexander Wilson | "She then heard the report of a pistol, and something fall heavily on the floor, and the words “ O Lord!” Immediately afterwards she heard another pistol, and in a few minutes she heard him at her door calling out “ O madam! give me some water, and healmy [heal my] wounds.” The logs being open, and unplastered, she saw him stagger back and fall against a stump that stands between the kitchen and room. He crawled for some distance, raised himself by the side of a tree, where he sat about a minute. He once more got to the room; afterwards he came to the kitchen door, but did not speak; she then heard him scraping the bucket with a gourd for water; but it appears that this cooling eiement [element] was denied the dying man! As soonas [soon as] day broke and not before, the terror of the woman having permitted him to remain for two hours in this most deplorable situation, she sent two of her chiidren [children] to the barn, her husband not being at home, to bring the servants; and on going in they found him lying on the bed; he uncovered his side and shewed them where the bullet had entered; a piece of the foreiiead [forehead] was blown off, and had exposed the brains, without having bled much. He begged they would take his rifle and blow out his brains, and he would give them all the money he had in his trunk. He often said, “I am no coward; but I am so strong, so hard to die.” He begg'd the servant not to be afraid of him, for that he would not hurt him. He expired in about two hours, or just as the sun rose above the trees." | *Port Folio* Jan 1812 pp. 37-38; MED `wilson_1811_portfolio_1812.txt` |
| 1811-11-26 | Russell's statement (Jackson 2:573-74; authenticity disputed by Gale/Richards, section 5) | "Some time in the night he got his pistols which he loaded, after every body had retired in a seperate Building and discharged one against his forehead without much effect—the ball not penetrating the skull but only making a furrow over it. He then discharged the other against his breast where the ball entered and passing downward thro' his body came out low down near his back bone. After some time he got up and went to the house where Mrs. Grinder and her children were lying and asked for water, but her husband being absent and having heard the report of the pistols she was greatly allarmed and made him no answer. He then in returning got his razors from a port folio which happened to contain them and siting up in his bed was found about day light, by one of the servants, busily engaged in cuting himself from head to foot." Chuinard (WPO 17:4) adds from the same statement that he "lay down and died with the declaration to the Boy that he had killed himself to deprive his enemies of the pleasure and honor of doing it." | WPO 28:1 p. 14; MED `wpo_2002-02_...txt`; MED `wpo_1991-11_...txt` |
| 1813-08-18 | Jefferson | "about three aclock in the night, he did the deed" (no wound described) | MED `jefferson_to_allen_1813-08-18_biography.txt` |
| 1838-45 | Mrs Grinder's third version, told to "an Arkansas schoolteacher" (1838/39), printed *New York Dispatch* 1 Feb 1845 (Draper MSS 29CC33) | Not seen. Chalkley: "The morning of Lewis's death, Mrs. Grinder recalled, she saw Pernier dressed in Lewis's clothes." Gale (2016) calls it the third of "Mrs. Grinder's three stories" (riders arriving at dark, three shots, Pernier in Lewis's clothes); Cutright (WPO 12:1 p. 12, n. 42, from Fisher 1962 p. 189) quotes a version: "Three shots [were] fired. Piece of skull blown off forehead at first fire ... 2nd and 3d shots just over the heart two inches apart." | Chalkley, WPO 30:4 (Nov 2004) p. 12, MED `wpo_2004-11_...txt`; Gale, WPO 42:4 n. 25, MED `wpo_2016-11_...txt`; MED `wpo_1986-03_...txt` |
| 1849-50 | Lewis Monument Committee (Tennessee) report | "The impression has long prevailed that under the influence of disease of body and mind—of hopes based upon long and valuable services—not merely deferred but wholly disappointed—Governor Lewis perished by his own hands, It seems to be more Probable that he died by the hands of an assassin." (Coues's 1893 transcription; Cutright's quotation reads "perish by his own hand") | SRC `1849_lewis_monument_committee_report.md` (Coues 1893 I:lvii-lxii); Cutright, WPO 12:1 p. 12 |

**Constants and variables.** Constant across the earliest accounts: two pistol shots at about three in the morning; one wound to the head and one "a little below the Breast"; survival until about sunrise; a request for water; words acknowledging the act ("I have done the business"; "he had now done for himself"). Variable: the order of the shots (Brahan "first it was thought in the head"; the Enquirer and Russell, forehead first); the head wound ("grazed the top of his head"; "the ball did not take effect"; "the ball glanced"; "a furrow"; "a piece of the forehead was blown off, and had exposed the brains, without having bled much"); razor wounds (Clarion, Norfolk Gazette, Russell 1811 -- absent from Neelly, Brahan, Wilson and Jefferson); the number of shots (two; "twice in the body" plus head; "Three shots"); the trajectory (only Russell: "passing downward thro' his body came out low down near his back bone"); "through his intestines" (Clarion) against "breast"; whether Mrs Grinder saw him after the shots (Neelly: the servants came "too late"; Wilson: she watched him through the logs for two hours; Russell: she "made him no answer"). No account records powder marks, singeing, the position or condition of the pistols, or blood distribution.

### 3b. The pistols

- What Lewis had: Neelly, "his Rifle, Silver watch, Brace of Pistols, dirk & tomahawk"; Brahan, "his Brace of pistols, his Rifle & Dirk"; Russell (4 Jan 1810), "a Rifle gun pistols Pipe Tommy hawk & dirk, all ellegent"; Russell (31 Jan), Neelly "has detain'd his pistols"; Guice: Lewis "was armed with two pistols, a dirk, and a tomahawk" (WPO 24:2 p. 6). Neelly kept them: his wife told John Marks in 1811 that her husband "carries the dirk and pistols constantly with him" (Fisher, via Carrick, WPO 35:4 p. 40 n. 10); Turnbow: "Neelly was also know to have stolen Lewis's tomahawk, pistols, and dirk rather than surrender them to the U.S. Army or give them to John Pearney to take to Lewis's family." (WPO 38:2 p. 26). They were never recovered, so their calibre cannot be known.
- Carrick (firearms historian), "Lewis carried a pair of 'gentleman's' flintlock pistols on his final journey", WPO 35:4 (Nov 2009) pp. 38-40, MED `wpo_2009-11_vol35no4_carrick_lewis_pistols.txt`: the covers of Guice 2006 and Starrs & Gale 2009 show "U.S. Model 1799 North & Cheney flintlock pistols ... These North & Cheney regulation military pistols are of a large caliber, and fire a .69" round ball; the same size used in standard infantry muskets of the period." But: "I am certain, however, that Lewis did not have the North & Cheney pistols, nor any U.S. military" pistols, on the last journey; the likeliest weapons are the pair in his account book, 20 May 1807: "Puchased one pair of pistols of Mr. Booth near the Merchants Coffeehouse, $87." -- Booth "produced very fine pistols, including a cased pair in the possession of Aaron Burr when he was arrested for treason." Conclusion: "There is no way to know the exact caliber or size of Lewis's pistols." Carrick's letter of Feb 2006 (WPO 32:1 pp. 2-3, MED `wpo_2006-02_...txt`): "On his last journey Lewis probably carried a pair of 'traveler's pistols,' also known as gentlemen's pistols and great-coat pistols, among other names. Such pistols, which were usually sold in pairs, were bigger than pocket pistols, with large bores and barrel lengths of four to seven inches. They normally were carried loaded for use in an emergency." and, on the shots: since flintlock pistols "were single-shot weapons, whoever fired the shots must have used two pistols."
- Gale (WPO 42:4, Nov 2016, MED `wpo_2016-11_...txt`) nevertheless asserts: "His pistols were North & Cheney horseman's pistols, fourteen inches long. The .69 calibre bullets were more than half an inch in diameter." (her n. 24: Guice 2006 pp. 92-93). Carrick notes that Starrs argued from "the federal archives" that the horseman's pistols issued in 1803 were never returned.
- Loading: Wilson has Lewis, on arrival, "inquired for his powder, saying he was sure he had some powder in acanister [a canister]"; Russell 1811 has him get "his pistols which he loaded" in the night. A flintlock pistol had to be primed and loaded with loose powder and a ball; two shots "Immediately afterwards" one another (Wilson) require two loaded pistols, not a reload.
- Ball energy and black-powder wounding: no measurement for period pistols exists in the sources read. Modern muzzle-loading data (abstracts, MED `pubmed_abstracts_forensic_batch2.txt`): Große Perdekamp et al. 2013 (PMID 23250385; DOI 10.1007/s00414-012-0808-1), for an 11.6 mm miniature cannon firing spherical lead balls with 1 g and 2 g of black powder, "mean bullet velocity measured 1 m away from the weapon was 87.11 and 146.85 m/s, respectively, corresponding to a kinetic energy of 32.49 and 92.95 J" (illustrative only; not a pistol); and: "In contact and close-range shots, the intensity of GSR deposition (soot, powder particles) is much greater than that in shots with smokeless powder ammunition. The same applies to any burning effects from the combustion gases. Besides, a wad of felt interposed between the propellant and the lead bullet may enter the wound channel. Apart from these findings seen in close-range shots, another characteristic feature results from the mostly spherical shape of the missiles causing maximum tissue damage at the entrance site." Große Perdekamp et al. 2015 (PMID 25119685; DOI 10.1007/s00414-014-1064-3): a contact shot from a cal. .45 percussion pistol loaded with black powder and **no bullet** produced "an unusually large stellate entrance wound ... multiple fractures of the anterior thoracic wall as well as ruptures of the heart, the aorta, the left hepatic lobe and the diaphragm" from the gas jet alone. Smędra & Berent 2021 (PMID 33156537; DOI 10.1111/1556-4029.14618): black-powder handgun wounds "could be identified easily-the entrance wounds were larger than usual, there was a lot of gunpowder around them and in the wound canal, the bone fractures were extensive." Ondruschka et al. 2016 (PMID 29465869): "Contact shots from muzzle loaders cause an unusual wound morphology with extensive soot soiling." Smędra-Kaźmirska et al. 2015 (PMID 25864492; DOI 10.1111/1556-4029.12749): "solid spherical projectiles fired from black powder weapons cause extensive injuries, especially in the initial segment of the wound canal. Additionally, based on the presence and location of the wad in the wound canal, the distance from which the shot was fired can be determined." Implication: a contact or near-contact black-powder pistol shot to the forehead would be expected to leave heavy soot and singeing that even lay witnesses could see; nobody recorded looking.

### 3c. The modern forensic literature (abstracts only; PMIDs and DOIs as in the saved files)

**(i) How often suicides shoot themselves more than once**
- Hudson 1981, *Am J Forensic Med Pathol* 2:239-42 (PMID 7325134; DOI 10.1097/00000433-198109000-00009): North Carolina 1972-78, 3,522 firearm suicides; "The 58 multishot firearm suicides represent 0.7% of all firearm deaths (one in 136) and 1.6% of forearm [sic] suicides (one in 61). Characteristics of the individual entrance wounds such as body regions involved and muzzle distance were the same as those of single shot cases. Long gun use was not rare, but 0.22 caliber handguns predominated."
- Karger & Brinkmann 1997, *Int J Legal Med* 110:188-92 (PMID 9274942; DOI 10.1007/s004140050065): "Out of 138 clearly defined gunshot suicides which were autopsied, 11 persons (8%) fired two or more gunshots to the body. From these 11, 5 cases involved 2 gunshots to the head where the bullets fired first had missed the brain. The trajectories were restricted to the chest in three cases and a combination of gunshots to the head and chest including two perforating heart wounds without immediate incapacitation occurred in three more cases." Also: "Typical features of single gunshot suicides such as contact shots, classical entrance wound sites and soot/backspatter on a hand also occur in multiple gunshot suicides."
- Karger, Billeb, Koops & Brinkmann 2002, *Int J Legal Med* 116:273-8 (PMID 12376836; DOI 10.1007/s00414-002-0325-8): 284 suicides, 293 homicides: "More than 1 gunshot injury was found in 5.6% of the suicides (maximum 5 gunshots) and in 53.9% of the homicides (maximum 23 gunshots). The suicidal gunshots were fired from contact or near contact range in 89% while this was the case in only 7.5% of the homicides. The typical entrance wound sites in suicides were the temple (36%), mouth (20%), forehead (11%) and left chest (15%)".
- Druid 1997, *Forensic Sci Int* 88:147-62 (PMID 9251234; DOI 10.1016/s0379-0738(97)00104-7): 213 suicides, 54 homicides: "Fifty-seven percent of the homicide victims, but only three percent of the suicide victims had sustained more than one gunshot wound. One-third of the homicide victims were shot at close range. Alcohol was present in one-third of both homicide and suicide victims."
- Betz, Peschel & Eisenmenger 1994, *Arch Kriminol* 193:65-71 (PMID 8198431; German): of 117 gunshot suicides "7 cases showed more than one gunshot wounds and in two of these suicides the second shot was placed directly in the first wound ... In one case a gun powder muzzle-loader was loaded with two projectiles".
- Eisele, Reay & Cook 1981, *J Forensic Sci* 26:480-5 (PMID 7252463): 226 firearm suicides; "the head was the most favored site, accounting for 75% of the wounds; specifically, the right temple accounted for 39%"; with handguns the temple accounted for "nearly two thirds"; "three cases of suicide by multiple gunshots are presented."
- Kohlmeier, McMahan & DiMaio 2001, *Am J Forensic Med Pathol* 22:337-40 (PMID 11764898; DOI 10.1097/00000433-200112000-00001): 1,704 firearm suicides; "In 4.0% of head wound cases, the site of the entrance wound was the back of the head ... In 1.9% of the cases, the wounds were inflicted at intermediate range."
- Jensen, Perkins & Webb 2025, *Am J Forensic Med Pathol* 46:275-81 (PMID 40476853; DOI 10.1097/PAF.0000000000001052): 19 multiple-gunshot suicides, 2015-23: "The multi-GSW cases, compared to the single-GSW cases, had a significantly increased proportion of revolvers (57.9% vs. 29.8%, P =0.008), lower muzzle energy handguns (86.7% vs. 39.6%, P <0.001), and shots to the torso (70.6% vs. 9.0%, P <0.001)." Multi-GSW decedents were older.
- Baldino et al. 2024, *Clin Ter* 175 Suppl 1(4):1-4 (PMID 39054970; DOI 10.7417/CT.2024.5073): "The presence of more than one gunshot wound is suggestive of homi-cide [sic], especially when they involve the head. A review of the literature ... showing, although considered infrequent, cases documenting SMGWs are not rare."

**(ii) Capability to act and survival time after gunshot and sharp-force wounds**
- Karger 1995 (I), *Int J Legal Med* 108:53-61 (PMID 8547159; DOI 10.1007/BF01369905): "Incapacitation is the physiologically based inability to perform complex and longer lasting movements independent of consciousness or intention. Immediate incapacitation is possible following cranio-cerebral gunshot wounds or wounds that disrupt the upper cervical spinal cord only. Rapid incapacitation can be produced by massive bleeding from major vessels or the heart."
- Karger & Brinkmann 1997 (above): "Reliable incapacitation is based on physiological effects (tissue disruption) and can only be achieved by decreasing the functioning capability of the CNS. This can be accomplished by direct disruption of brain tissue or indirectly by cerebral hypoxemia from massive bleeding. Targets of immediate incapacitation are restricted to certain CNS areas and targets of rapid incapacitation include the heart, the (thoracic) aorta and the pulmonary artery. Other major blood vessels and major organs (lungs, kidneys, liver, spleen) constitute targets of delayed incapacitation."
- Karger 1995 (II), *Int J Legal Med* 108:117-26 (PMID 8664147; DOI 10.1007/BF01844822): 53 documented cases of "sustained capability to act following penetrating gunshot wounds of the head"; "more than 70% of the guns used fired slow and lightweight bullets: 6.35 mm Browning, .22 rimfire or extremely ineffective projectiles (ancient, inappropriate or selfmade)"; "Of the trajectories, 28% were outside the neurocranium. At least 70% of the craniocerebral tracts passed above the anterior fossa of the skull, wounding the frontal parts of the brain."
- Jacob et al. 1989, *Am J Forensic Med Pathol* 10:289-94 (PMID 2589288; DOI 10.1097/00000433-198912000-00003): after a first shot into the mouth damaging the left optic nerve and frontal lobe, "The man still was able to drive his car home, where he shot himself in his right temple. He died 2 days later."
- Hejna, Safr & Zátopková 2012, *J Forensic Leg Med* 19:1-6 (PMID 22152440; DOI 10.1016/j.jflm.2011.06.017): "Determining a person's capability to act following a gunshot wound can be of major importance in crime scene reconstruction and in differentiation between homicide and suicide ... three unusual cases of suicide involving multiple gunshot wounds; all the victims suffered gunshot wounds of the head without immediate incapacitation."
- Hejna 2010, *Int J Legal Med* 124:79-82 (PMID 19214550; DOI 10.1007/s00414-009-0325-z): shotgun slugs: "The first two shots were fired into the heart region, but did not hit the vital organs of the victim's thorax and did not cause immediate incapacitation. The man was able to reload and refire."
- Raniero et al. 2022, *Int J Legal Med* 136:179-87 (PMID 34698912; DOI 10.1007/s00414-021-02728-3 per CrossRef -- the DOI in the PubMed record is a copy of Karger 2002's and is corrected by a note in the saved file): a 90-year-old shot himself in the chest (left lung) and then the head; a 97-year-old twice in the chest (left lung and heart); a 41-year-old "with three self-inflicted gunshots, all-penetrating the left lung and the heart"; "This paper illustrates that immediate incapacitation can lack even in case of multiple fatal gunshot wounds on instantaneously lethal targets."
- Levy & Rao 1988, *Am J Forensic Med Pathol* 9:215-7 (PMID 3177349; DOI 10.1097/00000433-198809000-00007): Dade County survival-time study; the abstract gives the design ("postinjury survival time and ... the probable extent of physical activity following fatal injury") but no figures.
- Thoresen & Rognum 1986, *Forensic Sci Int* 31:181-7 (PMID 3744212; DOI 10.1016/0379-0738(86)90186-6), sharp force: "Twenty-four victims were able to make physical efforts after the injury and the movements varied from a few steps to the running of several hundred meters. Decisive factors for decrease in survival time and acting capability are penetrating lesions to the heart and the great vessels, and multiplicity of injuries."
- Clinical opinion assembled by Peck & Peck (WPO 48:1, Feb 2022, pp. 32-33, MED `wpo_2022-02_vol48no1_peck_and_peck_search_for_truth.txt`): Glenn Wagner DO, forensic pathologist (14,000+ autopsies): "some folks felt that a two-hour survival time would suggest that it was not a suicide. I'd have to disagree with that position. What the bullet hits will determine how quickly one bleeds. Loss of thirty percent [of blood volume] will put you into shock. Loss of forty percent will likely kill you if you are not treated medically."; Dale Carrison DO (emergency medicine) and two vascular surgeons, Anthony Leo MD and Dale Mortenson MD, "agreed with all the conclusions"; and "Jerry Francisco M.D., a forensic pathologist who also testified at the 1996 coroner's jury, reported the same conclusion as my four experts" (Starrs & Gale 2009 transcript p. 106). Peck 2009 (p. 22): "If Lewis held a pistol to his chest, with the muzzle aimed at a slightly downward angle as is suggested by the description of the resulting wound, the bullet probably entered his chest, passed through his lung, penetrated the thin muscular diaphragm, and wounded either his spleen or his liver, depending on whether the bullet entered his left or right chest ... The wound probably caused slow bleeding into his chest and abdominal cavities. This could have continued for two hours until the loss of blood volume and thus, blood pressure, ultimately would have caused his death." Danisi (WPO 36:2, May 2010) consulted trauma surgeons who "agreed that it was possible for Lewis to have survived for two hours after he was shot."

**(iii) Tangential and non-fatal head wounds**
- Hotz et al. 2000, *Brain Inj* 14:649-57 (PMID 10914646; DOI 10.1080/02699050050044006): 11 tangential vs 29 penetrating head gunshot patients; mean admission GCS 13.4 (tangential) vs 10.5; "T-GSW possess significant deficits and, if the patient survives past the acute phase of recovery, the two groups have similar functional outcomes."
- Wolf et al. 2024, *Leg Med (Tokyo)* 69:102337 (PMID 37926655; DOI 10.1016/j.legalmed.2023.102337), case 3: an 81-year-old shot himself with a small-calibre rifle -- "a tangential shot through the skull with superficial injury to the frontal brain" -- and then hanged himself; "hanging was identified as cause of death" (capacity to act after a tangential frontal wound).
- Karger 1995 (II): 28% of trajectories in capability-to-act cases lay outside the neurocranium; Betz et al. 1997, *Forensic Sci Int* 86:155-61 (PMID 9180024; DOI 10.1016/s0379-0738(97)02121-x): patterns of skull-base fracture as an index of projectile energy (what a skull could still show).
- Williams, Kores & Currier 2011, *Psychosomatics* 52:34-40 (PMID 21300193; DOI 10.1016/j.psym.2010.11.019): 497 survivors of self-inflicted gunshot wounds; "male survivors shot themselves in the face/head/neck whereas the women shot themselves in the abdomen with more frequency".

**(iv) Range, site and direction as discriminators**
- Karger et al. 2002 (above): contact/near-contact in 89% of suicides vs 7.5% of homicides; in right-temple suicides "only 6% of the bullet paths were directed downwards and only 4% were directed from back-to-front"; in left-chest shots "bullet paths running right-to-left or parallel occurred frequently in suicides (75%) and infrequently in homicide victims (19%)"; "The isolated autopsy findings can only be indicative of suicide or homicide but the combined analysis of several findings can be associated with a high probability."
- Druid 1997 (above): "an entrance wound in the right temple indicated suicide, but in combination with a direction back-to-front, the wound was more likely to be homicidal."
- Betz et al. 1995, *Forensic Sci Int* 76:47-53 (PMID 8591835; DOI 10.1016/0379-0738(95)01793-3): "In 42% of the suicides, characteristic findings like blood spatters and/or powder soilings, could be found on the shooting hand by naked-eye inspection". Stone 1992, *Am J Forensic Med Pathol* 13:275-80 (PMID 1288253; DOI 10.1097/00000433-199212000-00001): blood inside the muzzle; primer residue on hands positive in "approximately 50% of the revolvers".
- Sirago, Dell'Erba & Ferorelli 2026, *Leg Med (Tokyo)* 85:102942 (PMID 42520571; DOI 10.1016/j.legalmed.2026.102942), systematic review of 58 studies (c. 218 cases) of staged homicides and homicide-mimicking suicides: "The central finding was a group of five directionally unstable (Opposing) indicators: multiple gunshot wounds, multiple sharp-force wounds, atypical firearm entry location, range-of-fire/arm-reach compatibility and suspension-geometry plausibility. These findings are not merely non-specific; they may support opposite default interpretations across the two diagnostic directions." Each "should be tested against its opposite-direction meaning and interpreted only through convergence with companion scene, autopsy, toxicological, imaging, ballistic and contextual evidence."

**(v) Complex suicide (gunshot plus sharp force), hesitation wounds**
- Töro & Pollak 2009, *Forensic Sci Int* 184:6-9 (PMID 19111411; DOI 10.1016/j.forsciint.2008.10.020): "In complex suicides, two or more methods are applied either simultaneously or one after the other." Of 1,217 Budapest suicides 2004-06, "4.43% (n=54) accounted for planned or unplanned complex suicides".
- Bohnert & Pollak 2004, *Arch Kriminol* 213:138-53 (PMID 15328923; German): "In planned complex suicides 2 or more methods are applied simultaneously in order to make sure that death will occur even if one method fails. In unplanned complex suicides the mode of performance is changed after the first method chosen failed or was working too slow or proved to be too painful ... In unplanned complex suicides self-inflicted injuries by sharp force, especially cuts of the wrists, are often found as the primary act of suicide."
- Kučerová et al. 2019, *J Forensic Sci* 64:616-21 (PMID 30044891; DOI 10.1111/1556-4029.13881): "a rare case of secondary (unplanned) complex suicide committed with a knife and blank cartridge pistol. A 59-year-old man was found dead with three superficial incisions in his neck and a gunshot wound to the chest."
- Hejna et al. 2012, *Forensic Sci Med Pathol* 8:296-300 (PMID 22227791; DOI 10.1007/s12024-011-9304-z): planned complex suicide with "a black powder muzzle loading handgun and hanging"; "a huge atypical gunshot entrance in the right temporal region of his head with extensive backspatter. The skin defects, as well as soft tissues in the subcutaneous pocket undermining, were heavily burnt."
- Karakasi et al. 2016, *J Forensic Sci* 61:1515-23 (PMID 27351587; DOI 10.1111/1556-4029.13146): hesitation wounds -- "the low dispersion of hesitation wounds contrasts with the high dispersion of defense wounds."
- Sartori, Del Balzo & Raniero 2026, *Leg Med (Tokyo)* 80:102770 (PMID 41453342; DOI 10.1016/j.legalmed.2025.102770): three suicides by multiple sharp-force injuries (12, 12 and 25 wounds): "Despite the high number of wounds, several factors (anatomical accessibility, presence of hesitation marks, lack of defence injuries, and psychiatric histories) supported a suicidal manner of death."
- Dettling, Althaus & Haffner 2003, *Forensic Sci Int* 134:142-6 (PMID 12850409; DOI 10.1016/s0379-0738(03)00139-7): victims of extended suicide by sharp force can show "tentative and hesitation injuries" -- a caution that hesitation-like wounds are not proof of self-infliction.
- Betz & Eisenmenger 1997, *Med Sci Law* 37:19-22 (PMID 9029914; DOI 10.1177/002580249703700105): in 195 homicides 71% showed one type of trauma, 23% two, 6% three: multiplicity of method "cannot provide reliable information useful for a differentiation between homicide and extended suicide."

### 3d. What the literature does and does not let one conclude

It **does** allow these statements:
1. Two self-inflicted pistol shots are rare but well documented: 1.6% (Hudson), 3% (Druid), 5.6% (Karger 2002), 6% (Betz 1994), 8% (Karger & Brinkmann) of firearm suicides. Within that rare group, Lewis's reported pattern -- a first shot to the head that fails to enter the brain, followed by a shot to the trunk -- is the modal pattern (5 of Karger & Brinkmann's 11 first shots "had missed the brain"; head-plus-chest combinations in 3 more).
2. A tangential frontal wound ("grazed", "the ball glanced", "a furrow", "a piece of the forehead was blown off, and had exposed the brains") is survivable with capacity to act preserved (Karger II; Hotz; Wolf case 3; Jacob).
3. Two hours of survival with walking, crawling, speech and purposeful acts after a trunk wound that "passing downward thro' his body came out low down near his back bone" is ordinary if the wound involved lung, liver, spleen or bowel and not the heart or great vessels (Karger & Brinkmann's "targets of delayed incapacitation"; Raniero; Hejna 2010; Wagner's 30%/40% thresholds; Peck; Francisco). The Clarion's "through his intestines" and Russell's low posterior exit both point away from the heart.
4. Razor cuts after failed gunshots fit the defined pattern of "unplanned complex suicide", in which "the mode of performance is changed after the first method chosen failed or was working too slow or proved to be too painful" (Bohnert & Pollak); such cases are about 4% of suicides (Töro & Pollak). Lewis's reported words -- begging the servants to "take his rifle and blow out his brains" -- are the same impulse.
5. The single most diagnostic physical fact would have been range: contact or near-contact range in 89% of suicides against 7.5% of homicides (Karger 2002), and a black-powder contact shot leaves heavy soot, powder tattooing and singeing (Große Perdekamp; Smędra; Ondruschka). No witness recorded looking; the record is silent, not negative.
6. An exhumation could in principle still answer questions the narratives cannot: a tangential groove versus a penetrating defect in the frontal bone; rib or vertebral damage fixing the trunk trajectory; a retained spherical ball or felt wad (which can give range: Smędra-Kaźmirska); fracture patterns as an index of energy (Betz 1997). The Department of the Interior declined the family's exhumation application in 2010 (SRC/scholarship `interior_strickland_2010-08-25_final_decision_letter.txt`).

It **does not** allow these:
1. Any inference of manner of death from the number or sites of the wounds alone: "multiple gunshot wounds" and "multiple sharp-force wounds" are "directionally unstable" indicators that "may support opposite default interpretations" (Sirago 2026); Baldino: multiple wounds are "suggestive of homicide" yet self-inflicted multiples "are not rare".
2. Any statement that survival for two hours was *probable* rather than *possible*: the case series show what can happen, not how often; Levy & Rao's and Thoresen's survival-time data concern populations with different weapons and wounds.
3. Transfer of modern base rates (revolvers, .22 handguns, smokeless powder, 20th-21st-century populations) to a large-ball flintlock at Grinder's Stand without qualification; Jensen's finding that multiple-shot suicides cluster with "lower muzzle energy handguns" and "shots to the torso" is suggestive for a flintlock pistol and a "breast" shot, no more.
4. Anything about the razor wounds' character (hesitation-type versus defensive), since nobody described their depth, number or distribution beyond "neck, arm and ham" and "from head to foot".

---

## 4. Could a man in Lewis's described condition have done this?

### 4a. His condition on the evening of 10 October 1809, as the sources give it

Febrile or lately febrile ("afflicted with fever", *Missouri Gazette*; "my indisposition", Lewis, 22 Sept; "extremely indisposed", Jefferson), "considerably reduced and debilitated" by bleeding and purging at Fort Pickering (Russell 1811), then on horseback for eleven days in weather "yet excessively hot" (about 100 miles in the first three days, Merritt's chronology), "at times deranged in mind" (Neelly), imagining Clark "Comeing on" to his relief (Pernier via Clark), fearing "enemies which had no existance but in his wild immagination" (Russell 1811). That evening he "drank a very little", paced, "talking to himself", flushed "as if it had come on him in a fit", yet spoke courteously ("Madam this is a very pleasant evening"), asked for his powder, refused the bed and had his bearskins and buffalo robe laid on the floor, and talked aloud for hours "like a lawyer" (Wilson). Three weeks earlier he had written two coherent business letters (16 and 22 Sept) whose composition nevertheless showed "troubled mannerisms" (Madison Papers editors). He was 35, a frontiersman who in 1806 had dressed his own gunshot wounds "introducing tents of patent lint into the ball holes" and had walked eleven days after being shot through both thighs (table 1a). He carried two loaded travelling pistols, a rifle, a dirk, a tomahawk and a razor.

### 4b. The physical sequence against the literature

| Step (as described) | Source | What it required | Literature |
|---|---|---|---|
| Loads two pistols in the night | Russell 1811 ("he got his pistols which he loaded"); Wilson (asked for powder on arrival) | powder, ball, priming; minutes of fine motor work | nothing unusual; flintlocks are single-shot, two pistols needed for two quick shots (Carrick 2006) |
| Shot 1, forehead; "something fall heavily on the floor, and the words 'O Lord!'" | Wilson; Russell ("without much effect—the ball not penetrating the skull but only making a furrow"); Clarion ("grazed the top of his head"); Enquirer ("the ball glanced") | contact or near-contact shot to the forehead; a tangential wound | forehead is the site in 11% of gunshot suicides (Karger 2002); in multiple-shot suicides the first head shot commonly misses the brain (Karger & Brinkmann); 28% of capability-to-act trajectories lie outside the neurocranium (Karger II); tangential wounds are survived with capacity to act (Hotz; Wolf case 3) |
| Shot 2 "Immediately afterwards", "a little below the Breast", "passing downward thro' his body came out low down near his back bone" | Wilson; Neelly; Russell | second loaded pistol held to the lower chest angled down and back -- a geometry that a seated or reclining man produces by holding the muzzle against himself (Peck); Chuinard reads the same angle as a shot fired at a man "in the semi-upright position of coming erect" | left chest is the site in 15% of suicides (Karger 2002); torso shots predominate in multiple-shot suicides (70.6%, Jensen); lung, liver, spleen and bowel are "targets of delayed incapacitation" (Karger & Brinkmann) |
| "in a few minutes" at Mrs Grinder's door asking for water; staggers, falls against a stump, crawls, sits by a tree, returns to the room, comes to the kitchen door, scrapes the bucket with a gourd; two hours | Wilson; Russell ("After some time he got up and went to the house ... and asked for water") | ambulation and speech with a thoraco-abdominal wound and a scalp/skull wound | ordinary where the heart and great vessels are spared (Karger & Brinkmann; Raniero: "immediate incapacitation can lack even in case of multiple fatal gunshot wounds on instantaneously lethal targets"; Hejna 2010; Thoresen: "a few steps to the running of several hundred meters"); Wagner: shock at 30% blood loss, death likely at 40%; Peck: slow bleeding "could have continued for two hours" |
| Cuts himself with a razor, "siting up in his bed"; "cut his neck, arm and ham" | Russell 1811; Clarion; Norfolk Gazette ("cut the arteries in his thighs and arms") | the razor (his own; missing from the inventory) and working hands | the defined pattern of unplanned complex suicide: "the mode of performance is changed after the first method chosen failed or was working too slow or proved to be too painful" (Bohnert & Pollak); gunshot plus cutting documented (Kučerová); 4.4% of suicides are complex (Töro & Pollak) |
| Speaks: "I have done the business my good Servant give me Some water"; "he had now done for himself"; begs them to "take his rifle and blow out his brains"; "I am no coward; but I am so strong, so hard to die" | Neelly; Clarion; Wilson | consciousness and speech | consistent with survivors of failed attempts; no literature quantifies this |
| Dies "just as the sun rose", "about 7 o'clock" -- roughly three to four hours after the shots | Wilson; Clarion; Brahan | exsanguination from a slow internal bleed, or from the cuts | within the ranges the incapacitation literature describes |

### 4c. What is ordinary and what is unusual

Ordinary, by the suicide series: contact range; forehead and chest as sites; the first head shot failing; survival and purposeful movement after a trunk wound; the request for water; some alcohol on board (Druid: present in one third of both suicides and homicides); a change of method after failure. Unusual: more than one shot at all (between 1.6% and 8% of firearm suicides); a trunk rather than head site (9% of single-shot suicides, but 70% of multiple-shot ones); three methods; long survival without anyone rendering aid (a fact about Mrs Grinder, not about the wounds); that the dirk was not used and the razor was.

Read from the homicide side: more than one gunshot wound is the rule in homicides (54-57%), "suggestive of homi-cide [sic], especially when they involve the head" (Baldino); but contact range is rare in homicides (7.5%), and a homicidal sharp-force attack usually leaves defensive wounds on hands and forearms ("high dispersion", Karakasi) rather than cuts to "thighs and arms" where a person seeks his own arteries. Neither reading can be tested, because no one examined the range, the hands or the cuts. The same facts are, in Sirago's terms, "directionally unstable".

### 4d. Answer

Physically and statistically, yes. A debilitated, febrile, intermittently deranged man of Lewis's strength and experience could load two pistols, fire one into his forehead and, when that failed, the other into his chest; could then walk, fall, crawl and ask for water for a period of hours; could sit up and cut himself with his razor; and could die at sunrise. Each element has documented parallels and the sequence as a whole is the recognised shape of a failed-then-completed suicide. The two-hour survival, the point on which the homicide case has rested medically since Chuinard, is the least remarkable part. Nothing in the described wounds is impossible or even extraordinary; equally, nothing in them excludes an assailant. What would decide it -- range (soot, singeing, tattooing on a black-powder wound), trajectory, the state of the hands, the character of the cuts -- was never recorded, and the only person who described the body was a frightened woman speaking seven months later.

---

## 5. The strongest medical argument for homicide, in its strongest form

Assembled from Chuinard (WPO 17:3, 17:4, 18:1, 1991-92), Starrs's 1996 coroner's inquest (as reported in Starrs & Gale 2009, Gale's WPO letters, and Peck & Peck 2022), Guice 2006 (as reported by Merritt 2007 and Peck & Peck 2022) and Gale 2016. Quotations are theirs; the connective argument is the case as an advocate would put it.

1. **The second wound was not survivable for two hours, and the survival narrative is therefore false.** Chuinard, orthopaedic surgeon and founder of WPO: "To me, a surgeon, it is unbelievable that Lewis could survive the second shot for two hours, self-inflicted or otherwise; and move about as related, asking for care of his wounds and contrarily asking for someone to complete the job." "This second shot would be expected to have killed Lewis instantly, or have disabled him so that he could not have gone through all the perambulations described by Mrs. Grinder. What do the supporters of suicide think that this second shot would have done to the heart, lungs, aorta and/or intestines? Certainly Lewis would have been in dire shock and soon have bled to death; or perhaps paralyzed from spinal cord injury. It is ridiculous to think he could have survived such an assault to his body and remained as active as Mrs. Grinder related. The two hours of activity described, after being shot, is totally unbelievable! My opinion is that Lewis died almost instantly and that the unreasonable story was a coverup." (WPO 17:4, Nov 1991, p. 8; MED `wpo_1991-11_...txt`). Summary point 4 (WPO 18:1, Jan 1992): "As a surgeon, I do not believe that Lewis could have sustained the second and fatal shot with the injury to his vital organs, and live for two hours and do all the moving about related by Mrs. Grinder." Guice made this "his chief evidence" that "reports of Lewis' suicide were not possible" at the 1996 inquest (Peck & Peck, WPO 48:1 p. 32).
2. **The ball was a musket-sized .69 round ball.** Gale: "His pistols were North & Cheney horseman's pistols, fourteen inches long. The .69 calibre bullets were more than half an inch in diameter." (WPO 42:4, n. 24 to Guice 2006 pp. 92-93). A contact shot with such a ball through the trunk, the argument runs, is not a wound a man walks about with for two hours. (Carrick's dissent on the pistols is in 3b.)
3. **No powder marks, no blood trail.** Chuinard: "Nothing is said of powder stains on Lewis's face or body or clothes, which certainly would have been present if the gun was held close enough for Lewis to commit suicide. There is no description of blood marking Lewis's trail of moving about following the shooting." Summary points 5-6: "If Lewis had held the gun close enough to himself to have committed suicide, there should have been powder stains on his clothing and body." "The absence of a bloody trail if Lewis had lived two hours and done all the moving about described by Mrs. Grinder, is incredible." A black-powder contact shot soils and burns the skin heavily (3b) -- something a witness describing "a piece of the forehead ... blown off" would have seen.
4. **The only narrator is unreliable, and her story changed.** Chuinard: "I believe Mrs. Grinder was totally dishonest in her stories, and that this accounts for the inconsistencies." "Neither do I think that the theatrics described by Mrs. Grinder after Lewis was shot are believable, and therefore did not happen." Gale: "Grinder's story is inadmissible evidence." Her three versions (Neelly 1809; Wilson 1810; the 1845 account with riders at dark, three shots and Pernier in Lewis's clothes), the Fisher-quoted "Three shots [were] fired. Piece of skull blown off forehead at first fire ... 2nd and 3d shots just over the heart two inches apart", and the newspapers' cut throat and severed arteries, cannot all be true (3a).
5. **The documents that supply the "attempts", the "liquor" and the wound trajectory are forgeries.** Gerald Richards, "a former head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Documents and Photos Division, testified at the 1996 Coroner's Inquest [into Lewis's death] that Captain Russell's statement dated November 26, 1811, was neither written nor signed by Captain Gilbert Russell or Major Jonathan Williams, whose names appear on it." (Gale, WPO 35:4, Nov 2009, p. 5; MED `wpo_2009-11_vol35no4_gale_letter_...txt`). Gale on Russell's two accounts of Fort Pickering ("15 days in a state of mental derangement" against "in about six days he was perfectly restored in every respect & able to travel"): "The same man could not have written both statements." (WPO 42:4). Strip these out and there is no first-hand evidence of suicide attempts, of drinking, or of a downward trunk trajectory.
6. **Lewis was lucid, planning his return and, on the record, no drinker.** Chuinard on the 22 Sept letter to Stoddard: "The entire letter is a lucid, coherent statement written when he was supposed to have had a mental derangement while coming down the Mississippi and during his first days at Fort Pickering." "This does not sound like a 'mentally depressed' person. A return to his duties in St. Louis was clearly in his mind- not suicide." (WPO 17:3 p. 10). Russell himself, 4 Jan 1810: "in about Six days he was perfectly restored in every respect & able to travel." Starrs & Gale: "Lewis had absolutely no history of alcohol abuse"; Bates, his enemy, "never once said that Lewis had any kind of drinking or drug problem". Bartsch 2025: the 1807 account book shows a few dozen ale, "not ... excessive".
7. **The "derangement" was fever, not suicidality.** Chuinard: "Lewis was a sick man because of malaria; which gave rise to the symptoms of 'mental derangement' with a fluctuating course of fever and delirium". A man with a relapsing fever is a man who can be robbed and killed at a lonely stand, not a man who has decided to die; and even Danisi, who accepts self-infliction, denies suicide ("self-surgery, not suicide").
8. **The scene facts a pathologist would weigh point to robbery and cover-up.** Chuinard's summary points 1-2: "Robbery was the obvious motive that led to Lewis being killed when the robber awakened him." "Robbery is established as the motive by Lewis's trunk being opened and some of its contents missing, particularly his money." Russell (31 Jan 1810): Lewis "had more than One hun d $ in Notes & Specia besides a Check I let him have of 99 ⁵⁸⁄₁₀₀ none of which it is said could be found". Neelly, charged with watching him, was absent all night, "to appear conveniently soon after Lewis's death" (Chuinard point 7); Turnbow shows Neelly answering a lawsuit at Franklin on 11 Oct 1809 (WPO 38:2 p. 22) and afterwards keeping the pistols and dirk (3b); the razor was missing from the inventory; Grinder was absent; the servant Pernier died of laudanum within seven months (Gale, WPO 42:4). Chuinard's reconstruction: "Neelly, who had first sought and loaded Lewis's pistols, fired in the dark toward Lewis's raising body, and this shot barely grooved Lewis's scalp, but momentarily stunned him ... The second shot entered the chest and went downward to exit in the low back, a course explained by the fact that Lewis was in the semi-upright position of coming erect."
9. **Those nearest the ground doubted it.** The Tennessee monument committee of 1848-50: "It seems to be more Probable that he died by the hands of an assassin." Chuinard's point 3: "such disbelief was also held by Dr. Coues, Wheeler, Thwaites, Dillon, and Bakeless."
10. **A coroner's jury heard the forensic experts and found for exhumation.** The 1996 Hohenwald inquest heard, among others, Lucien Haag (firearms demonstration), Martin Fackler (wound ballistics), William Bass (forensic anthropology), Jerry Francisco (gunshot wound analysis), Gerald Richards (documents), Duayne Dillon (handwriting), Ravenholt (syphilis) and Thomas Streed (suicide psychology) (WPO 35:3, Aug 2009, p. 7, MED `wpo_2009-08_vol35no3_danisi_letter_and_starrs_gale_book_notice_...txt`); Chalkley's review of the transcript: "a sober legal finding in favor of exhuming the 200-year-old remains of Governor Lewis" (WPO 35:3 pp. 42-43). The only way to settle points 1-3 is the examination the jury asked for and the Department of the Interior refused in 2010.

**What the same sources record against this case** (so that both sides are in one place): the incapacitation claim (point 1) is contradicted by the forensic pathologist who testified at the same inquest (Francisco, per Peck & Peck, Starrs & Gale p. 106), by Wagner, Carrison, Leo and Mortenson (Peck & Peck 2022), by Peck 2009, by Danisi's trauma surgeons (2010), and by the case series in 3c; Peck & Peck: "Only one physician whose perceived authority derived from his career as an orthopedic surgeon denied that Lewis could have survived for two hours." Point 3 is an absence of record, not a recorded absence; Brahan has the servants finding him "weltering in his blood". Point 2 rests on an identification of the pistols that the firearms historian Carrick calls certainly wrong. Points 4-5 remove the evidence for suicide but supply none for murder: Richards's testimony is known to me only through Gale, and Fackler's, Haag's and Bass's testimony not at all (section 6). Cutright: "the murder/robbery theory of Meriwether Lewis's demise lacks legs to stand on"; Merritt: "By that standard [Occam's razor], most of what we know about Lewis's death points to suicide." Jefferson and Clark, who knew him, "seem to have accepted the death as a suicide without hesitation or subsequent doubt" (Papers of TJ editors, MED `neelly_to_jefferson_1809-10-18.txt`).

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## 6. What was not read in full, and what rests on abstracts, reviews or quotation

**Primary documents**
- Lewis to Stoddard, 22 Sept 1809: read in Thwaites's 1905 printing (OCR, sibling file), not in Jackson 2:466-67.
- Russell's statement of 26 Nov 1811: read only in the excerpt WPO 28:1 printed from Jackson 2:573-74 (about two-thirds of the text; an ellipsis marks a cut). Chuinard's Part II supplies one further sentence.
- Clark to Jonathan Clark, 26 Aug, 28 Oct, c. 8 Nov and 26 Nov 1809: only the passages Holmberg printed in WPO 18:4 (1992), not Holmberg's *Dear Brother* (2002) or the Filson manuscripts.
- Bates: only the five letters named in the MED file header, from the 1926 OCR; not Marshall's full volumes.
- Wilson's letter: the *Port Folio* 1812 OCR (and the sibling's Ord 1828 / Grosart 1876 copies); dating discrepancy (28 May 1811 vs 18 May 1810) not resolved.
- James House to Bates, 28 Sept 1809: quotations in Danisi (WPO 38:4) and Gale (WPO 42:4) only; the Missouri History Museum original and the *Argus of Western America* of 4 Nov 1809 not seen.
- The 1809 newspapers (*Democratic Clarion*, *Norfolk Gazette*, *Enquirer*, *Missouri Gazette*, *Argus*, *Virginia Argus*): via Giesecke's transcription and facsimile (WPO 35:3), Danisi's n. 20, Holmberg and Turnbow; not the originals.
- Freeman's inventory of 23 Nov 1809 (Jackson 2:470-72): via Turnbow only. Marks-Neelly correspondence (1811): via Fisher as quoted by Carrick and Gale.
- Mrs Grinder's 1845 account (*New York Dispatch*; Draper MSS 29CC33): via Gale, Chalkley and Cutright/Fisher only.
- The 1849-50 committee report: Coues's 1893 transcription (sibling file), not the Tennessee House Journal appendix.
- Lewis's 1807 account book (pistols; ale): via Carrick and Bartsch. Lewis's memorandum/"pills" record of 1809: not seen; known only as Ambrose p. 450 cited by Peck.
- Jefferson to Allen 1813 and the letters of Neelly, Brahan, Russell, Jefferson to Russell, Lewis to Madison, Süverman, Coles: read in full on Founders Online (Wayback copies).
- Journals: the 36 UNL day pages listed in the MED file were read in full for [Lewis] and [Clark]; other dates (13 Nov 1803, 14 Sept 1803, 2 July 1806, 12 Nov 1804) were not fetched and are quoted from Danisi, Ravenholt or the WPO letters.

**Books not read (used through the WPO articles, letters and reviews saved in MED)**
- Danisi & Jackson, *Meriwether Lewis* (2009): via Rogers 2010, Peck 2010, Crosby/Bartley 2013, Jenkinson 2011, Gale 2009.
- Danisi, *Uncovering the Truth about Meriwether Lewis* (2012): via Bartley 2013 (one sentence), Danisi's own WPO 38:4 article, and the sibling's transcript of his Missouri State Archives talk.
- Peck, *Or Perish in the Attempt* (2002): not read; Peck's 2009 WPO article, 2010 and 2013 letters and 2022 article stand in for it.
- Paton, *Lewis and Clark: Doctors in the Wilderness* (2001): not obtained; nothing from it is used.
- Guice, ed., *By His Own Hand?* (2006): via Merritt's review (WPO 33:1), Peck & Peck 2022 (Guice's inquest testimony), Gale's n. 24, Carrick 2009.
- Starrs & Gale, *The Death of Meriwether Lewis: A Historic Crime Scene Investigation* (2009), including the 1996 inquest transcript: via the WPO book notice (expert list), Chalkley's review, Gale's letters, Peck & Peck 2022 (Francisco, p. 106; Streed; "no history of alcohol abuse", pp. 45, 343), Jenkinson (Russell statement, p. 251). The testimony of Fackler, Haag, Bass, Dillon, Large and Frick is not known to me in any form.
- Jenkinson, *The Character of Meriwether Lewis* (2011): chapter VI only (sibling file, from lewis-clark.org).
- Kushner, "The Suicide of Meriwether Lewis" (WMQ 1981; PMID 11636274, no abstract) and *Self-Destruction in the Promised Land* (1989): via Cutright 1986 and Guice 1998 quotations only.
- Ambrose, *Undaunted Courage* (1996): via Peck (p. 450), Merritt (pp. 461-65), Bartsch.
- Fisher, *Suicide or Murder?* (1962): via Cutright n. 42 and Carrick n. 10. Dillon 1965, Phelps 1956, Bakeless 1947 (death chapter in sibling file, one passage used), Coues 1893 (sibling transcription), Thwaites 1905 (sibling OCR), Stroud 2018 (via Peck & Peck), Peck & Peck, *So Hard to Die* (2021: via Buckley's review and the authors' 2022 article), Chuinard, *Only One Man Died* (1979: via Loge and Danisi), Cantwell's *Alexander Wilson* (1961: via Gale).
- Rush, *Medical Inquiries* (1812), Heberden (1802), Pringle (1752/1764), Macculloch (1828), Alibert, Senac: via Danisi 2002 and Crosby 2013 quotations.

**Journal articles read only as abstracts or at second hand**
- Ravenholt, *Epidemiology* 5 (1994) 366-79 (PMID 8038257): the author's own word-processor copy from ravenholt.com was read in full, but it lacks the journal pagination and may differ from the printed text; his n. 29 (the Theodosia letter) could not be resolved. Ravenholt's 1999 and 2005 essays: read in full from the same site.
- MacCorquodale and Pollard, *Epidemiology* 6 (1995) 97-98 (PMIDs 7888462, 7888461): not read, no abstracts.
- Westefeld & Less, *Suicide Life Threat Behav* 34 (2004) 220-7 (PMID 15385176): abstract only (the comment at pp. 228-32 not seen).
- Lowry & Willey, "The Mystery of the Bones", WPO Feb 2007: via a May 2009 WPO letter only.
- Every forensic paper in 3c: abstract only (MED PubMed files). Not obtained at all: Betz & Eisenmenger 1996 on multiple suicidal gunshots (the 1994 German paper and the 1997 *Med Sci Law* paper by Betz and colleagues were found instead), Karger's 2004-08 reviews of capability to act, Fackler's wound-ballistics writings, and any measured muzzle energy for a c. 1807 flintlock travelling pistol.
- Rickman (infectious diseases), Griffin (psychiatry), Range (psychology), Wagner, Carrison, Leo, Mortenson (pathology, emergency medicine, surgery): opinions known only as quoted by Peck, Danisi and Guice in WPO.

**Saved by this brief (MED, 55 files; each with citation, URL, fetch date and extent at the top):** the twelve Founders Online texts (`neelly_`, `brahan_`, `russell_` x3, `jefferson_to_russell_`, `lewis_to_madison_`, `coles_`, `jefferson_to_allen_` x3, `jefferson_life_of_lewis_1814_printing`); `bates_letters_1809_marshall_1926_v2`; `wilson_1811_portfolio_1812`; `unl_journals_health_entries_1803-1806`; five Ravenholt texts; two PubMed abstract files; and 33 WPO excerpts (`wpo_1986-03_...` to `wpo_2025-08_...`) covering Cutright 1986, Chuinard 1991-92, Holmberg 1992, Dietrich 1994, Loge 1997 and 2002, Guice 1998, Lentz 2000, the Feb 2002 death-of-Lewis section (Danisi, Merritt, Russell 1811, Frick, Guice), Chalkley 2004 and 2009, Rogers 2005 and 2010, Carrick/Orr 2006, Merritt 2007, Gale 2009 (x2) and 2016, Giesecke 2009, the Starrs & Gale book notice, Carrick 2009, Peck 2009, Peck/Danisi letters 2010 (x2), Danisi 2012, Turnbow 2012, the Aug 2013 letters (Guice, Bartley, Crosby, Peck), Flick 2021, Peck & Peck 2022, Buckley 2023, Bartsch 2025.