Did Syphilis Lead To Darkening Despair That Caused Explorer Lewis To End His Life?

The death of explorer Meriwether Lewis from gunshot wounds at the height of his fame has always been a historical mystery: Was he murdered, or did he commit suicide?

Now a Seattle epidemiologist has come up with an intriguing new explanation: Lewis killed himself in despair because he was dying of syphilis contracted from a Shoshone Indian woman on the night of Aug. 13, 1805, shortly after crossing the Continental Divide.

"Lewis's celebration that night triggered several years of darkening despair," writes Reimert Ravenholt in this month's Epidemiology journal.

A suicide has long puzzled historians. After serving as Thomas Jefferson's personal secretary and then making his epic journey with William Clark to the mouth of the Columbia River, Lewis came back to national acclaim and was appointed governor of Louisiana.

"He could likely have gained the presidency like Andrew Jackson did after winning the battle of New Orleans," speculates Ravenholt.

Instead, Lewis died on Oct. 11, 1809, in a lonely log cabin on the Natchez Trace road in Tennessee. Lewis' biographer, Richard Dillon, concluded that Lewis had such strength of character and bright prospects that he must have been murdered, possibly as a result of political intrigues and bad business debts in St. Louis.

Other historians such as Howard Kushner, author of a book on suicide in the West, contend that Lewis was chronically depressed, and as a result finally committed suicide, a conclusion accepted by Clark and Jefferson.

Ravenholt has used his skill as a disease detective and his interest in western history to argue the progression of syphilis can best explain Lewis' puzzling decline, depression and periods of insanity.

This is not the first time the retired Ravenholt, former epidemiologist for the Seattle-King County Health Department and a veteran of key government jobs in Washington, D.C., and Paris, has waded into controversy.

He called attention to the death rate from tobacco before the Surgeon General's famed 1964 warning, headed federal birth-control campaigns in the 1970s, and is working on a paper arguing that the greatest current American health threat is the rapid upsurge in births in single-parent households, particularly among the poor and minorities.

"How could it be that nobody has put this (the syphilis theory) together?" asked Ravenholt. Sanitized accounts of the Lewis and Clark expedition, efforts to protect Lewis' reputation and unfamiliarity by historians with the symptoms of syphilis have led scholars to overlook obvious clues, he said. "Clearly Thomas Jefferson and William Clark did their best to put this under the rug."

"The biggest (health) trouble Lewis and Clark experienced was venereal disease," Ravenholt noted, a point backed up by the explorers' own journals. These mention treating the illness in their men at Fort Clatsop on the coast with doses of mercury, but do not explain the source of Lewis' illness in late 1805.

Venereal disease is a possible cause of Lewis' problems, said John Findlay, a professor of Pacific Northwest history at the University of Washington. Sexual relations between Indians and fur trappers were common before Lewis and Clark arrived.

Sexual relations between the "Corps of Discovery" and Native Americans were routine. Indians regarded it as a gesture of hospitality and a way to acquire some of the visitors' power, while Lewis and Clark knew it helped cement relations with tribes and kept up the morale of their men, historians have written.

The leaders apparently largely abstained, however: Clark had fallen in love shortly before leaving St. Louis, and Lewis also tried to set a celibate example to keep venereal disease under control.

In August 1805, however, Lewis struggled on ahead of Clark over the Continental Divide, encountered friendly Shoshone in Idaho, and on Aug. 13, found himself with just three men at an all-night celebration with the Indians.

The expedition leader was offered his own private teepee. For four months the men had not seen women except for Sacajawea, a married woman who accompanied the expedition for part of their journey. They were anxious to confirm friendships in order to trade for food and horses, and were in a good mood from having crossed the Divide.

Lewis carefully recorded that he went to bed at midnight that evening while the others partied, "the only such description of all-night activities included in his trip diaries," Ravenholt notes. What followed caught the physician's eye:

-- Five days later on his 31st birthday, Lewis wrote he "viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence."

-- The next day he noted that he could not prevent sexual relations between the Indian women and his "young men whom some months (of) abstinence have made very polite to these tawny damsels." Lewis inquired whether the Shoshone had venereal disease, and was told they did. By that time syphilis sores could have appeared.

-- By Sept. 19, many expedition members were suffering from skin lesions, a secondary symptom of syphilis. During the last week in September, Lewis was seriously ill, either from venereal disease, an upset stomach from eating bad food, or both. He could barely ride a horse.

-- Lewis subsequently appears to have recovered that winter, but was seriously ill again in 1807 after his return East, defeating the efforts of the nation's best doctors. He quarreled with his mentor, Jefferson.

-- In 1809 he suffered bouts of mental illness consistent with progressing syphilis. He wrote his former girlfriend, Theodosia Burr Alston that, "I am going to die, Theodosia, I cannot tell you how I know it but I do. . . ."

-- He made his will on Sept. 11.

-- He was ill and mentally deranged for five days in mid-September 1809 and for briefer periods on his journey through Tennessee. Stopping at the cabin of Robert Grinder to eat and sleep on his journey East, he talked to himself, paced incessantly, frightened Mrs. Grinder, and finally retired to his cabin.

Shots rang out, and Lewis called for help, but a farm woman who heard was too frightened to respond. Servants found him that morning with a pistol wound to his forehead and side, and Lewis reportedly saying, "I have done the business, my good servant. Give me some water." The explorer's last words were, "I am no coward, but I am so strong. It is so hard to die."

If Ravenholt's theory about Lewis is true, it would be just the latest example of the impact of disease on human history that has destroyed armies, incapacitated kings, and produced social upheaval.

Syphilis appeared in Europe shortly after Columbus' first voyage and killed millions until the discovery of penicillin. European diseases similarly ravaged Native Americans.

Ravenholt said his historical detective work comes naturally. In the 1950s he made a systematic search of Seattle's death records dating to 1881 with his then-student William Foege, who went on to direct the federal Centers for Disease Control. One of their findings was that encephalitis lethargica peaked shortly after flu epidemics, linking the disease to the neurotoxic effects of a flu.

As early as 1959, Ravenholt was trying to get $30,000 from the Seattle City Council to start an anti-smoking campaign in the city's schools, an idea the council rejected. He coined the word "tobaccosis" to describe what he saw as an epidemic of related disease, but, "For many years it was like butting my head against a brick wall."

His interest carried over to general history, and biographies of Lewis' problems caused a flash of recognition. "When I read the description of what happened to him, I realized the poor fellow suffered from paresis," or an advanced stage of syphilis, Ravenholt said.