James S. Brown: Healed by the Laying on of Hands After a Near-Fatal Laudanum Dose on the Mormon Battalion March (1847)

James Stephens Brown (1828–1902) was eighteen years old when he enlisted in the Mormon Battalion in July 1846, having been baptized into the Church just days before. He would go on to be one of the most remarkable witnesses of early Latter-day Saint history — present at the march of the Mormon Battalion, the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill (where he was reportedly the first man to confirm the yellow flakes were precious metal), and numerous subsequent missions across the Pacific. He recorded his experiences in his autobiography, *Life of a Pioneer* (1900).

The most harrowing episode of the Battalion march came during the brutal crossing of the Sonoran Desert in the winter of 1846–47. The men had been on reduced rations for weeks. There was little water. Many were eating mule hides, intestines, and the soft edges of hooves — boiled into a soup they called 'bird's eye soup.' The hardest day of the journey left men lying along the trail 'as if stricken with death.'

Brown himself collapsed, too ill to walk. He recorded in his autobiography that his uncle Alexander Stephens found him and brought him water — reviving him enough to stagger into camp. He reported sick the next morning.

The Battalion's army surgeon, Dr. G. B. Sanderson, was notorious among the Mormon soldiers. He had bullied the sick throughout the march, forcing medicine on them whether they wanted it or not, using a single unwashed iron spoon regardless of the patient's illness. The soldiers believed — with good reason — that his treatments were making men sicker. They had been explicitly counseled by Brigham Young and Church leaders to refuse the doctor's medicine and trust in the priesthood for healing. Many did, at the cost of being labeled insubordinate.

When Brown was brought to Sanderson, the doctor gave him a dose of laudanum — a powerful and dangerous tincture of opium. Brown's body reacted violently. He wrote that the dose made him 'fearfully sick,' and that he vomited it up — which, though agonizing, likely saved his life.

He remained in terrible distress for days. Then:

He was healed by the laying on of hands of the Elders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Brown recorded the event as a straightforward fulfillment of the priesthood promise Brigham Young had given to the Battalion before they departed: obey God's laws, and you will be preserved. The healing was witnessed by fellow soldiers and became part of Brown's lifelong testimony of the power of the priesthood and the protecting hand of God over the Battalion's march.

Brown recovered fully, continued the march to California, and went on to serve multiple missions — including to Hawaii and the Pacific Islands — and to become one of the most prolific and faithful witnesses of the Restoration era.