OREGON-L Archives

From:
Subject: [OREGON] Death Of Nathan Webb of Tidewater,OR.
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 23:51:07 EDT

This is a repeat of a story that someone was asking about.
I finally found it in my files

To List,
This might be a cautionary tale but it was one that probably happened to
many people before the discovery of antibiotics. Gerald Day, of
Tidewater, tells me that his Grandfather, Nathan Webb, died after
a full extraction of his teeth. I am not certain of the date. Gerald thinks
it was "sometime in the twenties." Evidently it was a situation where
time was of the essence and Nathan traveled to Corvallis where all
his teeth were pulled in one setting. He either went into shock or the
poisons from the decayed teeth entered his bloodstream and inflamed
his heart tissues. Either way his death was sudden. The return of his body to
Tidewater for burial is noteworthy for its circuitousness. The
distance is only about 70 miles but evidently the roads over Mary's
Peak and down the Alsea River were either non existent or virtually
impassable so his body was placed aboard the train that ran from
Corvallis to Newport (The train line that was once advertised as making
it possible to ship from San Francisco to Newport, eliminating the
hazardous "crossing of the bar "at the mouth of the Columbia River
to reach Portland) his body was off-loaded at Newport and shipped
by horse and wagon to Tidewater for burial.
This was in the time period that one of the richest men in America
died from the same operation i.e. having all his teeth extracted at one
time. There is the corollary tale of another of a super rich American
tycoon who upon hearing of this, postponed having the same operation
and existed for the rest of his life, eating only soft foods such as half-
rotten bananas.
After my heart valve replacement in 1993, my dentist places me
on a regimen of antbiotics prior to doing anything to my teeth. I feel
that my doctors are only postponing the inevitable but I will scratch for
every second that I am given. I am not a carrying a Poster for Oregon's
suicide law; HOWEVER I resent anyone from a half as--d state trying
to tell Oregonians how to live their lives or to die their deaths. Senator
Nickels of Oklahoma please note.

Warren Tyndale Faulkner
"One version Of An Oregonian"

This thread:

• [OREGON] Death Of Nathan Webb of Tidewater,OR. by