Disease and Medicine Disease was a major part of the Westward Expansion experience. Dysentery was spread through poor sewage methods (water sources were contaminated with waste), and frostbite, pneumonia and malaria were also significant problems. If someone had smallpox, whooping cough, chickenpox, cholera or any other contagious disease, they would need to stay in quarantine until they were cured or in most cases, died. For disease, the pioneers used plants collected in the wilderness such as Ginseng and a Native American root called Jack-in-the-pulpit. They tended be superstitious about illness. They would wear dead spiders around their necks and use a rattlesnakes' heart to cure epilepsy. Many doctors and emigrants developed elixirs to help cure these diseases, but they were not effective and thousands of emigrants (mostly children) died on the trails.

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