Among the American Indians of western Washington State and northwest Oregon, stories have served as educational tools by presenting lessons concerning the traditional culture. Several types of instruction have been noted in the oral literature of these Indians of the Southern Northwest Coast. Today these stories present another type of insight and allow access into the cosmology of the Southern Northwest Coast populations. Through these stories, the authors are able to judge the validity of claims that the indigenous understanding of contagious disease very often parallels Western concepts of germ theory. In this treatment of oral literature they examined its use in health education. The sample stories discussed in this article were used to give basic health training to the general population. The stories included address only a portion of the wide range of illnesses. In this article the authors have established that a subgroup of those folktales was used as a medium for the dissemination of health care information to the general populace. Stories from the region are seen to present a wide array of illness prevention and cure teachings. They cover afflictions of various levels of seriousness, from boils to smallpox. The stories define health broadly, and thus deal with both physical and mental well-being. (Contains 94 notes.)