I have visited him [Sumner] at least once every day. During all this time Mr. Sumner has been confined to his room, and the greater part of the day confined to his bed. Neither at the present moment, nor at any time since Mr. Sumner's case came under my charge, has he been in a condition to resume his duties in the Senate. My present advice to him is to go into the country, where he can enjoy fresh air; and I think it will not be prudent for him to enter upon his public duties for some time to come.3About the middle of June he became the guest of Francis P. Blair, Sr., Silver Springs, Md., near Washington. Here he suffered a relapse; the unhealed wound continued obstinate, and singular sensations in the bead gave him forebodings of paralysis and insanity. He wrote, June 23, to Dr. Howe: ‘For nearly four weeks I lay twenty-two hours out of the twenty-four on my back; and I am still very feeble, but able to totter a mile round the garden, and hoping daily for strength, which comes slowly.’ He came in from Silver Springs on Wednesday, the 25th, in answer to a summons to appear before the grand jury.
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administered.
For three days he remained, according to Dr. Perry, in a critical condition from the severe shock to his nervous system, and the added danger of erysipelas.1
Sumner's brother George, who had arrived in the mean time, discontinued, on Wednesday the 28th, Dr. Boyle's services,2— Dr. Perry attending during that day and the next; and on Thursday Dr. Harvey Lindsly, of Washington, was called in. On Friday, the wound on the right side having again suppurated, Dr. Lindsly, with Dr. Thomas Miller in consultation, opened it. This gave needed relief, and the fever which had come again subsided; but the patient was still pale and reduced in flesh.
For a week visitors were excluded, and every effort was made to keep him quiet.
Dr. Lindsly certified, June 12,—
1 Dr. Perry's statement in Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Works, vol. IV. p. 338; his testimony, Congressional Globe, p. 1364.
2 George Sumner, by letter June 20, read in the Senate June 23 (Congressional Globe, p. 1438), in reply to Dr. Boyle's, read by Butler June 16 (p. 1414), disclaimed that the doctor's services were dispensed with on account of his testimony or his offer to become Brooks's bail. Boyle, though no question was made as to his professional fidelity, was in sympathy with the Southern party and with Brooks, whose bail he had offered to be. It was also stated that he was Edmundson's landlord. (New York Times, June 25.) Pennington charged him with being evasive, indirect, and wanting in frankness and impartiality as a witness. (Globe App. p. 889; see Buffinton's testimony, Globe, p. 1363.) His selection of Butler as a medium for his letter, which he sent to be read in the Senate, shows his relations with that senator. Globe, p. 1414.
3 June 4 he was keeping his bed, but beginning to see friends. (J. S. Pike in the New York Tribune, June 6.) At Mr. Blair's he read Leopardi. Longfellow's ‘Journal and Letters,’ vol. II. p. 281. Among his callers while he was there were Mr.Fish and Mrs. Fish.
Cambridge, MA. Press of John Wilson and Son. 1877.
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