17 February 1871 • Buffalo, N.Y. (MS: NPV, UCCL 00577)
By means of opiates we have given Livy 2 nights rest & sleep, & she seems better, but is still is very low & very weak. She is in her right mind this morning, & has made hardly a single flighty remark.1explanatory note
She is greatly concerned about Sammy’s eyes, & urges me to write at once & tell you not to try any but the oculist of the highest reputation in the land, whoever he may be. She Ⓐemendationdon’t like the idea of going to the country village of Rochester—thinks the best oculists must of necessity gravitate to New York & Boston—which is good reasoning, but they have to come from the country villages originally & maybe you have found such an one in Rochester. I do hope so, if the trade is made.2explanatory note But Ⓐemendationif not, suppose you take him to Hartford & stop with Mollie while Orion tak Ⓐemendation(after inquiring of Twichell, Dr. Taft3explanatory note etc.,) goes with him to Boston or New York.
I owe ma $300 since Jan 1. Let her take the enclosed order to Mr. Clement’s bank, & let them place $300 to her credit in lieu of it.4explanatory note
Since Olivia first had symptoms of typhoid fever on 1 or 2 February, she was now in the third week of her infection. Typhoid was understood to be linked somehow to “insanitary conditions in house drainage, water supply, &c.” and, more specifically, to be transmitted by contaminated drinking water or milk. Symptoms typically lasted for a month, although sometimes as long as three months, often with prolonged relapses. First symptoms were known to begin “somewhat insidiously. Indeed, it is no uncommon thing for patients with this fever to go about for a considerable time after its action has begun. The most marked of the early symptoms are headache, lassitude, and discomfort, together with sleeplessness and feverishness, particularly at night.” By the second week, patients had high fever, spots, diarrhea, vomiting, severe abdominal pains, intestinal hemorrhages, and enlarged spleen and liver. By the third week, “nervous disturbance is exhibited in delirium, in tremors and jerkings of the muscles.” The diet recommended was milk, barley water, and broths, and during convalescence
largely milk and soft matters, such as custards, light puddings, meat jellies, boiled bread and milk. . . . Such drugs as quinine, salicin, salicylic acid, and salicylate of soda, kairin, antipyrin, antifebrin, &c. . . . may frequently break in upon the continuity of the fever, and by markedly lowering the temperature relieve for a time the body from a source of waste, and aid in tranquillizing the excited nervous system. (Affleck, 23:678–80)
When drugs failed to lower temperature, cold baths and massage were sometimes recommended. By the early 1880s, a bacterium, Salmonella typhi, was identified as the cause of the disease (Ziporyn, 72–73). By 1890, the death rate from typhoid fever was estimated at about twelve percent of cases.
The Rochester physician has not been identified. Samuel E. Moffett’s infirmity probably was related to a nervous disorder that he evidently suffered at least through late 1872 (11 June 71 to JLCclick to open link; 21 June 71 to OC and MECclick to open link; 26 Nov 72 to JLC and PAM, NPV). Clemens later recalled:
As child and lad his health was delicate, capricious, insecure, and his eyesight affected by a malady which debarred him from book-study and from reading. This was a bitter hardship for him, for he had a wonderful memory, a sharp hunger for knowledge. School was not for him, yet while still a little boy he acquired an education, and a good one. He managed it after a method of his own devising: he got permission to listen while the classes of the normal school recited their abstruse lessons and blackboarded their mathematics. By questioning the little chap it was found that he was keeping up with the star scholars of the school. (AD, 16 Aug 1908, CU-MARK, in SLC 1923, 352)
Cincinnatus A. Taft (1822–84), Hartford’s leading doctor, was an 1846 graduate of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York. He practiced homeopathy, “although he exercised a certain eclectic independence, which looked rather to cure than to creed, and was not entirely within the limitations of any one ‘school’” (“The Death of Dr. Taft,” Hartford Courant, 27 June 84, 1). He became the Clemens family physician after they moved to Hartford (4 Dec 71 to OLCclick to open link).
Clemens had sent a draft for $300 directly to the Fredonia bank in June 1870. Presumably he had met Clement in Fredonia in early October 1870 (25 June 70 to JLC and PAMclick to open link; 4 Oct 70 to Redpath, n. 1click to open link).
MS, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Vassar College Library (NPV).
L4 , 332–333.
see McKinney Family Papers in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.