Letter on Mother's last illness, pages 2–3 (continuation)
Book 1, Page 143 ·1874
Transcription
Two handwritten leaves of letter paper mounted side by side on the album page. Both continue the long letter on Mother’s last illness from the prior page. Brown ink in cursive. No top page numbers are visible.
Left leaf
letter is unsatisfactory, be sure you will hear all another time — I am not sure what the Drs think was Mother’s disease — but I believe they are sure her liver was congested. And in vomiting from nausea once or twice, she threw up little clots of phlegm — She was sick from dinner time, Monday, but so little unwell, that though she was in bed, I did not, nor did the Dr, think she was much sick, she suffered from violent, or rather, what she called “a constant teasing pain” in her chest & shoulder. The medicine she took on Monday night & Tuesday morning, did not act, so the Dr gave her a little medicine on Tuesday night, & Wednesday morning — She had no more pain on Wednesday morning, & expected to feel much
Right leaf
better as soon as the medicine acted, & Dr Huger told her he would see her next morning — She got so worried with Nervous anxiety about the action, that she used poultices, & any other little remedy she thought would help her, & at dinner ^(3 o’clock) time the action relieved her — She had taken no food from ^(Monday night) Tuesday morning, on account of the nausea, which she said came from the medicine not having acted — but she seemed very weak after the action, & I gave her a little toddy — At five o’clock, Tody came & she told me to go down to dinner, & I thought I would just to pacify her, go & take some soup — And had put the bell by her, & just lingered a
AI Notes
Two facing handwritten leaves of letter paper mounted on the album page. Both continue the long letter from the 1874 Barker family death cluster recounting Mother’s (Ellen Milliken Barker, 1807-1874) last illness. The writer — most likely Susan Milliken Barker — is explaining symptoms to her sister ‘Sis’ (Ellen Milliken Barker Porcher, who was away): she reports that the doctors believed Mother’s liver was congested, summarises the day-by-day course of medication from Monday through Wednesday, and reaches the moment at five o’clock when Tody (Theodore Gaillard Barker) came in and told her to go down to dinner. Two interlinear caret insertions appear: ‘^Monday night’ written above ‘Tuesday morning’ (the writer correcting herself), and ‘^3 o’clock’ written above ‘dinner’ (the writer clarifying that ‘dinner time’ was three o’clock). Letter continues onto the next page.
Letter continues on next page.