by Gloria Baker

      Dr. Theophilus Degen exemplified all that is best in a physician: compassion, empathy, devotion and great intelligence.

      He was born in Germany in 1809 and came to the Oregon Territory in 1844.  He has a special place in history because of his aid to the seven orphaned Sager children who were part of the same wagon train

      Henry Sager was infected with Oregon fever.  In 1844 just when his pregnant wife, Naomi, hoped their moving days were over, she and the children found themselves traveling into an unknown, unkind wilderness upon a deeply rutted track named the Oregon Trail.

      Daughter Catherine summed up family feelings in her diary: “Not being accustomed to riding in a covered wagon, the motion made us all sick…rain, which made it impossible to roll back the cover and let in the fresh air…caused a damp and musty smell that was very nauseating.”

      On May 22, Mrs. Sager delivered a baby girl in a damp, bouncing, smelly, swaying wagon.

      During their journey the tragic events plaguing the family were chronicled by Catherine: Her mothers’ head injury when the wagon turned over; how her own left leg was crushed when she caught the hem of her dress on an ax handle while jumping off the wagon.

      Before her father stopped the oxen, heavy wagon wheels rolled over her leg.”…in a broken voice he exclaimed, ‘my dear child, your leg is broken all to pieces!’”

      Near Fort Laramie, Sager’s Oregon fever ended.  He was mortally wounded during a buffalo stampede.

      Mrs. Sager’s distaste for moving from place to place soon came to an end, also.  She had not fully recovered from childbirth or her wagon injuries.  Before she died, leaving behind a large family and a baby she was nursing, she secured a death bed promise from Dr. Degen.

      He swore he would see to the care of her children.

      Dr. Degen talked other families into temporarily accepting an extra child.  The baby was the most difficult to place.  A few women, saddened by the plight of the orphaned children, found a wet nurse.

      Dr. Degen drove the Sager wagon and tended the children until he reached the Willamette Valley.  At the farm of the minister, Dr. Marcus Whitman and his wife, Narcissa, he handed the orphans over to the kindness of that couple.

      Dr. Degen decided to homestead near Oakland, Oregon.  He built a cabin, and it became his headquarters for responding to calls.  His practice covered a radius of 40 miles.

      He traveled to the sick in a crude two-wheeled cart made for him by the grateful husband of one of his patients.  The doctor himself supplied it with a top, using tar to make it waterproof.

      After coming to America he changed his methods of practice, believing that mineral medicines were too strong.  He was well trained in botany and turned to the botanic school of medicine.

      As part of his medical equipment, Dr. Degen designed an inhalation apparatus.  He punched out the pith from an elderberry limb, and using the hollow limb as tubing he inserted it into an earthen churn.

      Hot vinegar and herbs were inhalants.  He made his own medicines.  A red pepper (capsicum) and mustard mixture was a favorite poultice, and local herbs were used as teas.  His favorite adhesive plaster consisted of thick tar, gum turpentine, Burgundy pitch and beeswax.  When it was boiled and cooled, he added fine pulverized poke root, mandrake, blood root and Indian turnip.

      He spread it on a piece of soft leather, placing it over the affected part, where it remained as long as the patient could bear it, then removed it and replaced it in a day or two.

      When other doctors reached his region of Oregon, he confined his practice to childbirth, the great killer of women, and a problem he is said to have paid special attention in Germany. “If you are going to have a baby, send for me, but if you have a fever call the other doctor,” he reportedly said.

      Dr. Degen was highly regarded in the community.  He was kept busy, living with the families of his patients much of the time.

      Dr. Degen lived from 1809 to 1882.  His commitment and devotion to the people he served was remembered by the Douglas County Pioneers who dedicated a marker at his grave in 1940.  His grave site is 6 1/2 miles south of Yoncalla, Oregon.