Miraculous Healing of Alma Smith

Following a lecture by Sarah L. Eddington on the history of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Esther Phillips gave a sketch of the life of Sister Amanda Smith. Her son, Willard Smith, followed this by bearing his testimony of the miraculous way in which his brother Alma Smith was healed from a severe injury.

In her 1858 autobiographical narrative, Amanda Smith provides specific details regarding the medical treatment of Alma's wound. Following the massacre, while searching for divine guidance, she was instructed to use ashes from their fire (which had been burning shag-bark hickory) to create a lye. She saturated a cloth with this lye and applied it into the wound, causing dead flesh and bone splinters to come away. Subsequently, she was instructed to make a poultice from the roots of a nearby slippery-elm tree, which was used to dress the large, gaping wound that required a quarter-yard of linen to cover. She also records that the mob later returned to their home, and she confronted them by showing them the wounded boy, which led to infighting among the attackers and eventually a 'meat offering' of a butchered hog left at her door as an act of atonement.