FARGO (AP) - A doctor says members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition were likely a haggard and sickly bunch when they paddled into what now is North Dakota.

"They had lots of dysentery, scurvy, boils," Monica Mayer told a gathering of health professionals Friday in Fargo. "They were in a sad state of health when they came here."

After a winter as guests of the Mandan and Hidatsa tribes, however, the group left Fort Mandan in 1805 in better shape than when they arrived, she said.

Mayer, a New Town doctor of Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara descent, is an avid student of the Corps of Discovery. She said the explorers' experience with their American Indian hosts shows how different cultures can benefit from each other.

"These two different cultures could work in a spirit of cooperation and do something they couldn't do separately," she said.

Mayer said grueling 17-hour days that involved long hours of rowing and paddling upstream on the muddy Missouri River were partly to blame for the explorers' poor health. But so was the medicine of the day, an era before bacteriology or even proper hygiene.

The explorers embarked on their famed expedition with a list of medical supplies totaling $90.96. A prominent item in their portable pharmacy included 50 dozen of Dr. Rush's pills - powerful laxatives laced with mercury and chlorine not-so-affectionately called Dr. Rush's Thunderbolts.

The purgatives were prescribed for intestinal ailments, and patients were bled to treat infections or inflammations.

One of the amazing feats of the expedition, Mayer said, is that only one of its members died on their quest for a water route to the Pacific Ocean. Sgt. Charles Floyd died of "bilious colic," probably a ruptured appendix, near present-day Sioux City, Iowa.

The explorers coped with a long list of maladies and injuries, including fleas, venereal disease, burns and gunshot wounds.

Capt. Meriwether Lewis was shot in the posterior in a hunting accident near the mouth of the Yellowstone River. His gaping, .54-caliber wound was dressed with lint.

The expedition wintered at Fort Mandan, near present-day Washburn, and traded food and medical techniques with their American Indian hosts.

Three old Indian women fixed a soldier's dislocated shoulder. The explorers, in turn, with help from a blacksmith, used scalpels to amputate toes of a severely frostbitten boy and lance another boy's boil, Mayer said.

Later, during a difficult labor, Indian guide Sakakawea gave birth after being administered a traditional cure, part of a rattlesnake's ground rattler, which has a chemical composition much like a modern drug still in use, Mayer said.

The Mandan and Hidatsa also used Echinacea to treat a wide array of illnesses and injuries. Samples were shipped back to President Thomas Jefferson, who later sold remnants to French and German buyers.

Echinacea, especially popular in Europe, now is part of a major industry, Mayer noted. "I always tell everybody we could have been rich, too," she said.