After a trip to Kentucky to see her folks we returned to Versailles in Brown County, Illinois, where our home was. We found considerable sickness among the people. One a widow woman who had dyspepsia, was so bad she was given up to die by the doctor who had attended her for near a year and said she could not be cured. She sent for me to come to see her which I did. She told me to try to cure her if possible; to do my best anyway, and if I killed her it would only be death anyhow for she knew she could not live long if she did not get help. So I went home to prepare for doctoring her and Dr. Vandeventer, who had given her out, hearing I was going to undertake her case came to see me. “Mr. Meeks,” says he, “you had better not undertake that woman’s case; that complaint cannot be cured and you will fail and you will lose practice by it; the remedy for that complaint is not known; search had been made for it as far as ships have sailed on the ocean, and human feet have trod the soil and the remedy is not found yet.”
I paid the woman five visits and made a sound woman of her; and what did I do, nothing more or less than gave her a thorough course of Thomsonian medicine each time. I knew no way to doctor at that time but to follow the letter of directions. I had nothing but cayenne pepper and ginger for my composition powder, and lobelia; and as I went along I gathered green sumac leaves off the bush, which answered well for canker medicine; and to make a tea to put the medicine in for her to drink. I mention this to show that we can get along without so many kinds of medicines as some would suppose. This circumstance being noised abroad brought me as much business with the sick as I could attend to.
There were several young ladies in the vicinity that the doctor had given out, which were now ready for me, and with thorough Thomsonian courses of medicine they were cured. One case I will mention for the novelty of it: A Mrs. Perry had a daughter with the green sickness who the doctor had spent nine months on without benefit. Her mother being very anxious about her daughter’s situation, having heard of Dr. Meeks living at Versailles who cured everything he tried, she thought he must be one of the greatest men in the world. He was so far ahead of Dr. Vandeventer, she did not know whether she would know how to talk to him or not but resolved to try.
So she rode up one day to my gate and inquired if Dr. Meeks lived there. I said, “yes ma’am; light and come in.” I had been at work in the garden but it being hot weather I was sitting between the two doors where I might be cool being in my shirt sleeves, bare headed and bare footed. She finally came in and took a chair. She says, “Is Dr. Meeks at home?”—“Yes, ma’am,” I replied; she says, “Where is he, I would like to see him; he is not far off I presume.” I replied “What would you have Doctor Meeks?” She then gave the history of her daughter’s case. By this time I thought I ought to let her know that I was the man that she was after. I said to her, “I am Dr. Meeks”. It struck her dumb for awhile. She came very nearly jumping out of the chair into the fire; she turned red in the face and it was quite a time before she could speak. I was truly sorry for her but when she recovered so she could speak she said, “Well I do not care how a man looks so he can only cure the sick.”
And with five regular courses of Thomsonian Medicine she was made a sound woman much to the joy of all of her friends. This shows what courses of medicine can do without anything else.
From the time I became conspicuous among the sick something like half of the sickness fell to my charge and I was so successful to what Dr. Vandeventer was that if I had stopped there the next year I should have had probably more than I could attend to; but the time came for me to gather with the Saints to Nauvoo, so I left.
But before I left, Lyman Wight, one of the committee for building the Nauvoo House called me, and I bought four shares in the Nauvoo House. I have the papers yet and I expect in the future days me or my children will possess it. In April 1842 I moved to Nauvoo, and lived there till 1846, and then moved across the plains in 1847 in the great exodus of the Saints to the Rocky Mountains. While living at Nauvoo I suffered many inconveniences and persecutions and deprivations of life.
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