James Marion Sims

“ You will not understand me to say that his case is by any means hopeless, for you know very well what wonderful recoveries take place from this disease and that too after much and long suffering.
It is bad to be sick even at home. How awful then is it to be prostrated on the bed of affliction in a land of strangers far from those we love and those who love us. Knowing what solicitude his friends and family must feel, you'll allow me to repeat what I have before said, that he shall have every attention that it is possible for any man to get out of the hands of his own family. ”

“ Jarvis is wonderfully better. After the hemorrhage from the bowels was controlled last night, he began to improve and to day there is every prospect for a speedy convalescence. His pulse has varied to day from 86 to 92. Skin cool. Countenance almost natural, tenderness of the bowels has disappeared. Sleeps quietly without muttering or subsutius tendinem. Yesterday none of the physicians or visitors thought it possible for him to recover. To day we are all of opinion that he is obliged to get well unless some untoward accident should occur. You need not fear our physicking too much. ”

“ He told me that he had been exposed a good deal in the Charity Hospital in New Orleans to Ship-fever about a week before he was attacked in Mobile and that he thought he had the disease. I tried to persuade myself that it was not so: but now I am forced to believe that he has Typhus fever which, you know, is always a serious if not a dangerous disease. I now have no hesitation in saying that I consider Dr. Jarvis dangerously ill. ”