NEW YORK TIMES
July 1, 1885
A DAY OF REST AND QUIET. GENERAL GRANT MAKES A STATEMENT AS TO HIS CONDITION.
It was a dreary day and enabled General Grant to stay indoors most of the day. He was unable to sleep until 3 o'clock in the morning and it was a difficult night. "I wish you could see him this morning," said Dr. Douglas. "His skin is as fresh as a boy's. The color of his skin is good and the eyes are clear." The General toward noon wrote for nearly an hour and was quite rejoiced over that accomplishment, as were the family, from whom the cloud of recent depression has been lifted. The General told those who asked that he was having an easy day. Some of the family were very concerning over the publication of depressing statements about the General's condition.
Toward evening, Dr. Douglas said, regarding the statements, "I have asked the General about his condition. In reply he said that he felt improved over one week ago. Then he wrote me a statement about his condition which expressed what I feel. Here is what he wrote: "The atmosphere here enables me to live in comparative comfort while I am being treated, or while nature is taking its course in my disease. I have no idea that I should have been able to come here now if I had remained in the city. It is doubtful indeed whether I would have been alive. Now I would be much better able to move back than when I was to come at the time I did." Dr. Douglas said:"When he gave me that, I realized the General understands his condition. He came here to be helped and the change has benefited him. I attribute his freshened color to the air here. He knows as well as anyone the nature of his disease and what it is doing."
The General has recently cared to move about less and to work than formerly. He has suffering little from the darting, twinging pains that occurred earlier in his disease. He has kept closely to his rooms lately instead of moving about. The evening was a fitting close to the day. The General joined the family in the parlor for an hour of longer, sitting there until 8:30, when he retired to the sick room. He had been fully dressed since the middle of the afternoon, when he awoke from the nap that followed his writing. Cocaine has been discontinued for a day, to see if it had an effect on his voice. Its disuse has seemed to lessen the thickness of attempts at utterance. At midnight, the General had apparently settled in for a long rest.
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