Don Carlos Smith and George A. Smith Heal Approximately Sixty Bedridden Saints (July 22–23, 1839, Commerce/Nauvoo)

On July 22–23, 1839, in the Mississippi River bottoms near Commerce (later Nauvoo), Joseph Smith recorded that he “called on a number of men to bless the sick.” According to Joseph’s journal and contemporary accounts, on July 22 Joseph Smith personally administered to and healed several individuals (named in accounts as Wilford Woodruff, Elijah Fordham, Brigham Young, Joseph B. Noble, and others). The following day, July 23, Joseph charged his brother Don Carlos Smith and his cousin George A. Smith to visit and administer to approximately sixty people who were bedridden with malaria and other illnesses in the river bottoms. Contemporary tellings report that the two visited those sick Saints, administered in the name of Jesus Christ, and that all of the roughly sixty recovered. Later biographical summaries of Don Carlos (then a young Church leader and newspaper editor) and histories of the Church repeat this episode and emphasize the delegation of healing authority by Joseph Smith to family members. The accounts place the event in July 1839 at Commerce/Nauvoo and identify the principal participants and those healed as listed below.