1813, 200 years ago this year.

The Smiths are afflicted with typhoid fever in Lebanon (NH) . Lucy says that the fever struck in 1813 for one year. During this time, Joseph Jr. underwent a grueling leg operation in which several pieces of tibia were removed without anesthetic. Soon after, he went to live with his uncle Jesse Smith in Boston. Richard L. Anderson has pointed out that Nathan Smith, the attending physician, moved from Dartmouth College to Yale University in the fall of 1813 and wrote in his 1831 memoirs that he and professor Perkins began treating cases of "typhus" in the fall of 1812. Anderson concludes that it is "highly probable" that Smith's operation took place in the winter of 1812-13.

[Source: Vogel, Dan, Early Mormon Documents, Appendix B: Chronology, 1771-1831, http://amzn.to/T5nY8w]

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