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Narrative of Dr. Tumblety
Francis Tumblety Cincinnatti, 1866
DR. TUMBLETY:
H O W H E W A S K I D N A P P E D
DURING THE AMERICAN WAR,
HIS INCARCERATION AND DISCHARGE.
A VERITABLE REIGN OF TERROR.
AN EXCITING LIFE SKETCH,
WITH IMPORTANT LETTERS AND DOCUMENTS FROM
GENERALS LEE AND SHERMAN, EARL DE GREY, LORDS STANLEY,
HEADLEY AND TENTERDEN, SIR EDWARD THORNTON,
HORACE GREELEY, ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
AND OTHER NOTABLE CELEBRTIES,
INCLUDING PRIVATE PASSAGES CONCERNING THE
EX-EMPEROR NAPOLEON,
WHO ENDOWED THE AUTHOR WITH THE CROSS OF THE LEGION OF HONOR; PRESENTATION AND FRIENDLY RELATIONS WITH
KAISER WILLIAM, OF PRUSSIA,
INTRODUCTION AND FRIENDLY CONVERSE WITH THE LATE
AND OTHER INCIDENTS CONNECTED WITH THE CELEBRITIES UPON BOTH SIDES OF THE
ATLANTIC, CONSTITUTING THIS WORK AS THE GREAT SENSATIONAL
BOOK OF THE DAY.
RUSSELLS' AMERICAN STEAM PRINTING HOUSE,
28, 30, 32 CENTRE STREET.
T O T H E O R I G I N A L N A R R A T I V E,
Supplementary Notes and Incidents in the Life of
F. TUMBLETY, M. D.
SINCE the first issue of the brief sketch of my early professional career, and the outrage which, in my person, was committed against constitutional right and the sacred liberty of the citizen, five years have elapsed—years which have gone far to heal the ravages of internal strife, and the bitter feud consequent upon a fraternal war. Time, which mellows all things, has exerted its soothing influence upon the passions of the once rival sections, happily rivals no longer in aught but those peaceful pursuits which, in their development, will enhance the greatness and prosperity of our common country, and prove to the world, by the fiery ordeal by which it has been tested, the everlasting life and vigor of the Republic.
The cruel wrongs which, in the dark days of irresponsible and despotic rule, were inflicted upon me, are yet unatoned, but the rankling feeling of bitter and wholly unmerited injuries, under which I formerly wrote, is now softened by the soothing influence of time, and although ineffaceably pictured upon memory's mystic glass in sad and sombre hues, I realize, through the intervening years, the divine precept of forgiveness, although it is not in the nature of man to forget. In the pursuit of my profession I have constantly and assiduously endeavored to perfect those studies in the peculiar branch of materia medica which I have so successfully practiced, and which nature and common sense proclaim to be the most reasonable and consistent. My research has extended to other countries and climes, and although perfection is not attainable by our imperfect nature, I have nevertheless the pride of knowledge that my studies have not been in vain, nor my efforts in the cause of mankind fruitless. Botanical nature presents a field so broad and comprehensive that the longest period of allotted life is too brief to comprehend her invaluable secrets; but, by transmission from the pioneers in this philanthropic and health saving science, the philosophic student will eventually grasp and realize the breadth and depth of her beneficent laws. With me her study has been, and will continue until the sunset of life, a labor of love—nor has my career been unmixed with associations of a pleasurable and cherished character. In the present edition the principal points of my original career, with the narrative of my unjust and tyrannical incarceration, and subsequent personal and pecuniary injuries, are reproduced, but there are supplemented incidents of an intervening five years, in which it will be seen that I have added valuable testimony to the efficacy of my labors, and to the standing which it has ever been my pride to maintain as a professional man and honorable member of society. The time-honored proverb that " Truth is mighty and will prevail," has become more and more apparent, at least in my experience, since I first entered upon what I have realized as a by no means uneventful career. Prejudice, that blind and bigoted monster of retrograde principle, is fading before the progress of truth and science, and the exemplification is in nothing more apparent than the experience of the past few years in the profession of medicine. Nature, as represented by her true physician, is asserting her superiority over the ignorant usage and superstition of a by-gone age. Her life giving remedies, though simple, are infallible, and to her student the expanse of her beneficence is boundless as the horizon fringed ocean. In the faithful observance of her laws, so far as my professional practice has been at stake, I have been unswervingly consistent, and that my efforts have been commensurately successful the following pages will sufficiently prove. With such documentary evidence, I have the honor to subscribe myself the public's obedient servant,
FRANCIS TUMBLETY.
KIDNAPPING OF DR. TUMBLETY.
IN the following sketch, which I have deemed it my duty, after mature consideration, to lay before the public, I have endeavored, as concisely as possible, to present a little episode in the dark pages of our late history in which I unhappily figured—a victim to a tyrannical disregard of the rights and liberty of the citizen, and an example of individual outrage and persecution which would at one time have been deemed impossible of perpetration in free arid enlightened America.
In the course of my narrative it will be necessary to take a retrospective glance at my professional career, and herein I can produce such evidence of a life of ministering devotion in the cause of science and humanity as should, even in the gangrened perversion of the most bigoted mind, have acquitted me of the slightest suspicion of those crimes of which I was, with such reckless disregard to truth and justice, accused, and for which I have been the recipient of such unlawful punishment.
Not only was my liberty ruthlessly assailed, my life jeopardized, and my property plundered, but a character, previously unblemished, was assailed with all the venom that infuriate malice could supply, by that portion of the press who have, during the late unhappy epoch, been but too ready to applaud and justify the persecution of defenceless individuals, no matter upon how baseless a foundation the charges against them may have been preferred.
There is an old Spanish proverb, to the effect that he who has injured will never forgive you, and, so far as my experience has been of late, it is perfectly correct; for, even after the cruel blunder in my case was known and I was set at liberty, I sought in vain an exoneration through the same channels in which I had been so maligned and abused. They repudiated the old manly system of fair play; they had wantonly assailed me, and even when convinced that not the slightest taint attached to my character or fair fame, they remained silent. They had propagated and prejudged a slander which was proved to be false as the father of evil, but they persevered in their dastardly meanness by refusing the amende; and only to that portion of the press who had never assailed me am I indebted for sympathizing with and placing me in my true position before the public.
In the course of my narrative it will be necessary for me to refer to scenes and events beyond the period of my unjustifiable arrest, and this I deem essential, in order to produce such evidence of my antecedents as must satisfy the most prejudiced of my previous blameless character and pursuits, as well as to elucidate a clue to the persecution and wrong of which I had been the victim.
I had been practicing my profession in Canada with distinguished success, and in the course of a prosperous career I accumulated an equal amount of profit and of fame. So far as the latter went, I trust the reader will not deem me an egotist when I state that in the British Provinces I had acquired the respect and consideration of the first citizens, in proof of which I was importuned by an influential body to represent them in the Colonial Parliament, in opposition to the late celebrated Thomas D'Arcy McGee, a gentleman whose literary and political reputation was well known in this country.
In order to substantiate this position—for I do not wish the public to take my word upon credit—I will here introduce some documentary evidence which must speak for itself.
In the year 1857, after being waited upon by a delegation representing a large body of Canadian citizens, urging me to enter the political arena—a course which my habits and my inclination strongly repudiated, and which I declined—it was rumored that I was nevertheless about to become a parliamentary candidate, and paragraphs to that effect found their way in the Canadian press. One of many I have before me; it was in the Union, Ottawa City and reads as follows:
It is hinted that Dr. Tumblety will offer himself as a candidate on Grittish principles, in case of a vacancy in this constituency, and that he is now feeling the pulse of the people. The Doctor having amassed a fortune in the treatment of' 'all the ills that flesh is heir to'—in which treatment he has ever been successful—now philanthropically proposes to devote his brilliant abilities to the cure of the dangerous diseases affecting the body politic, and is proudly conscious of the success that awaits him in the effort.
The report was circulated so universally that I deemed it incumbent to put forth a public disclaimer, which appeared in the Montreal Commercial Advertiser of Dec. 7, 1857, of which the following is an extract:
Sir: I noticed in your valuable journal of the 3d instant a short paragraph, in which it is intimated that it is my intention to offer myself at the ensuing election as a candidate to represent the suffrages of the people of Montreal in opposition to D'Arcy McGee, and that I am about to receive a most numerously signed address (and; I may add, have received) to come forward for the representation of the Irish interest. In allusion to the above statements I may say that it is not my intention at this present time to contest an election, but I have every hope, were I to do so, of ultimate success.
I have merely recalled the above in evidence that my position at that time in the City of Montreal was such as to induce what I conscientiously believe to have been a majority of the voters to offer me their suffrages in a "parliamentary contest."
But without the circle of politics I am enabled to invite attention to certificates in that country from the highest and most influential people—ladies and gentlemen of the first standing in society, whose names are a guarantee of genuine and unsolicited evidence. In this connection it will only be necessary to enumerate a comparative few in the long catalogue who voluntarily came forward as endorsers of my high professional standing, and the efficacy and success of my treatment:
SIR E. HEAD, Governor of Canada.
HON. HY. STERNES, Mayor of Montreal.
HON. GEORGE HALL, Mayor of Quebec.
HON. JOHN HUTCHINSON, Mayor of Toronto, C. W.
HON. J. B. ROBINSON.
HON. JAMES CUMMINGS, Mayor of Hamilton, C. W.
HON. W. MATTHEWS, Mayor of Brantford, C. W.
HON. W. BARKER, Mayor of London, C. W.
W. SAVAGE, Colonel of Artillery.
H. P. DWIGHT, Supt. Montreal Telegraph.
J. TAYLOR, Justice of Peace, Toronto, C. W.
R. H. COOK, Alderman, Toronto, C. W.
J. URQUHART, Surgeon, Toronto, C. W.
To these it will not be out of place to add the subjoined from HAMILTON HUNTER, Esq., the editor of the London Atlas, a man of much literary culture, and whose reputation as a high toned honorable gentleman is recognized throughout the Canadas:
DR. F. TUMBLETY—Dear Sir: As you are about to leave this city for some time, permit me to offer my testimony as to the very great measure of success which has attended your labors here, as a medical practitioner, during the few months you have resided among us. It has come under my knowledge that many persons laboring under diseases of longer or shorter standing have been relieved by you, while your urbanity and gentlemanly character have won for you the good opinion of those who have made your acquaintance, and fully sustained the high reputation which you brought with you from Rochester, as embodied in the splendid testimonial which you carry with you from such a large number of the most influential and intelligent of your fellow citizens. Wishing you every success, I have the honor to subscribe myself yours, very truly,
HAMILTON HUNTER,
Editor of the London Atlas.
I will not weary the reader with additional testimony of my Canadian antecedents, professional and social; that which I have adduced will, I presume, satisfy the most skeptical of my position and respectability.
Selfishness is unfortunately the governing principle of human nature, and it has been truly said that the generality of mankind are more desirous for their own personal aggrandizement than for the happiness of those around them; hence the secret of the opposition of those who, adhering to the old beaten track, simply because they have not the intellect or the spirit of research to explore the new and voluminous regions unfolded by nature, turn persecutors, and hurl invective and anathema against their more adventurous and successful brethren.
My Canadian reminiscences are of the most pleasant character. Personally I was respected, while my professional career was marked with such success as to render my name famous from one end of the Province to the other. The efficacy of my treatment was subscribed to by even the greater portion of the medical faculty, whose prejudice against what they deem an innovation upon the old established routine is remarkable throughout the world.
I left Canada a short time prior to the breaking out of the war and visited New York, where I speedily became known in my professional capacity, as the following communication from the Board of Commissioners of Health, transmitted with the document mentioned from the Mayor's office, will show:
BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS OF HEALTH,
MAYOR'S OFFICE, NEW YORK, March 18, 1861.
FRANCIS TUMBLETY, M. D., Fifth Avenue Hotel.
Dear Sir: Herewith do I transmit a copy of Health Laws and Ordinances published under the auspices of our commission. Inasmuch as you are a member of the medical fraternity I have no doubt that it will prove valuable to you. I have the honor to remain, respectfully,
Your most obedient servant,
LOUIS E. HOPKINS.
I have testimonials, at this period, without number, of my successful treatment, and my name therewith frequently appeared in the public journals. About this time an old friend, of Buffalo—A. McDonald, an eminent lawyer—wrote me, and from his letter I make the following extract:
My Dear Friend: I perceive by the papers that you continue to astonish the natives. God and your own indomitable will furnished you with a marvellous healing art, perhaps unequalled by any other man of your age now walking this earth. You can never want, so long as you have your reason, with such advantages.
One of my first introductions in Washington was to General E. C. Carrington, from the Hon. Judge Wm. F. Purcell, as follows:
Allow me to introduce to you Doctor Tumblety, of this city, a gentleman of great science, etc. * * *
And, again, it was but a short time before I began an extensive practice, and my services were required by the most distinguished people of Washington. Among my patients were the following:
J. Gideon, one of the most wealthy men in Washington; Colonel Grandin; Mrs. Captain Balch, wife of the distinguished officer of the United States Navy; E. B. Kenley, one of the members of General Casey's staff; Mrs. Traphagen, one of the elite of the society of Washington, and associated in the proprietary of the celebrated Arlington property, the late residence of General Robert E. Lee; Edward Fry, Engineer of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and Mr. Boman, one of the most prominent bankers of the city.
From Judge Joseph Bryan, of Alabama, who was sojourning in Washington, I received the following:
Dear Doctor: I want to see you very much, for I want you to prescribe for me, as I feel that I must die unless you can help me. I do hope to see you to-day.
Yours, very truly,
JOSEPH BRYAN.
The result of this was a series of successful visits to t he Judge, and an after continuation of respect and friendship.
I think that I may safely affirm that no person was better known in and around Washington than myself; and thus the absurdity of confounding me with the notorious individual for whom I afterwards was arrested will be strongly apparent. Nay, not only in Washington, but in every city throughout the United States as well as the British Provinces, I am recognized, for there are few places in which I cannot be identified by some of my former patients, who, I am proud to say, I am always gratified to meet, for the feeling has ever been reciprocal. I am not like the physician who figured in the following humorous fable, conceived by some imaginative genius, who evidently was not favorably impressed with the healing ability of the profession. It runs thus, as near as I remember:
An individual, whose wife fell sick, was gifted with a supernatural vision, of second sight—that is, he could see the spirits of the departed as they revisited this sublunary sphere.
Anxious for his wife's recovery, he hastened to the most renowned doctor in the city, but, at the threshold, was appalled by the crowd of disembodied spirits flitting around, and he retired in dismay, for he discovered that they were the departed patients of the physician. He next visited the houses of the other practitioners, but was deterred from entering by the appearance of like spectral visitants, although less in number. At length he chanced upon a modest looking domicile, at the door of which there was but one spirit, and thus reassured he summoned the doctor to the aid of his wife.
She died, however, when the unfortunate medical man began to bewail his bad luck; "for," said he, "I never had but one patient before, and he, too, I was so unfortunate as to lose."
But to return to my narrative. And here I will, in the style of Hamlet, request the reader to "look upon that picture and then on this," and then ask himself how it was possible for Stanton's myrmidons to mistake me for the notorious Dr. Blackburn, whose person is the antipodes of the following description, which was embodied in a military pass I obtained during the memorable period of martial law, in 1865:
Age, thirty-two; height, six feet; eyes, blue; complexion, fair; hair dark; occupation, physician.
I will venture to assert that the only point of resemblance between myself and the individual on whose account I was so fearfully victimized is in the last item; otherwise, I am rejoiced to state, we have no nearer likeness than "I to Hercules."
Time passed, and in my quiet but arduous professional career I had no cause for regret, when commenced that gigantic struggle which for four years drained the lifeblood of the Republic, while Europe looked on aghast, amazed at the sudden transition of a vast, flourishing, and peaceful country to a huge camp and battle ground, where armies were raised and disciplined with a celerity that perfectly confounded the European tactician, and battles were fought upon a scale compared to which many of historical magnitude in the old world were mere skirmishes.
When General McClellan was appointed commander of the Army of the Potomac I partially made up my mind to tender my professional services as surgeon in one of the regiments, and I had the assurance from headquarters that they would be cheerfully received; and here it may not be out of place to state that, although I have strictly avoided mixing in the political maelstrom which had proved so disastrous to the universal country, my feeling and sympathy has ever been with the Union and the Constitution, under which Young America progressed in strength, power and wealth, with almost miraculous growth.
Entertaining these sentiments, it will be seen how ill deserved was the treatment I have since received from the representatives of a Government for the perpetuity of which I contemplated the sacrifice of a lucrative professional practice, and, if necessary, my life.
At this period I was furnished by General McClellan with passes to go and come where and when I pleased. I mixed with the officers of his staff, was cordially received—trusted—and I can conscientiously lay my hand upon my heart and affirm, before my Creator, that I never betrayed any trust, or proved false to any friendship that I have professed.
Through a distinguished officer, with whom I became acquainted in Boston, Massachusetts, I was introduced to the lamented President Lincoln, with whose gentle and genial manners I was charmed, and for whom, until the day of his ruthless assassination, I entertained feelings of the warmest respect and admiration, even as I now and ever shall reverence his memory.
Under these circumstances it was inflicting insult as well as injury upon me to suspect for one moment that I could be privy to any conspiracy against the Government, or that I was familiarly associated with the miscreants who plotted the assassination of that great and good man; and yet I have been accused and suffered. But I have placed the account of my persecution where it belongs, and Heaven, in its good time, will enable me to turn the tables upon my enemies.
A reminiscence of a pleasing character lays before me, in the shape of a testimonial from one of the most eminent and skilful physicians in America, Dr. Thomas N. Gray, of the Carver Hospital, Washington. It reads thus:
I have much pleasure in bearing testimony to the successful manner in which Dr. Tumblety has treated some cases with which I am acquainted, and I may add that I have always found him to be a gentleman, honorable and upright in all his transactions.
THOS. N. GRAY, M. D.
WASHIINGTON, D. C., Dec. 15, 1862.
The commendation of such men as Dr. Gray is priceless; for it cannot be purchased with gold. My sojourn in the City of Washington, which embraced a period of over two years, is replete with many delightful reminiscences, and my circle of acquaintances embraced the most distinguished men of the day.
General Wordsworth, who was well acquainted with my family in Rochester, invited me repeatedly to his headquarters to dine with him. He was then the Provost Marshal, or Military Governor of Washington, and his quarters were at the house of General Robert E. Lee, on Arlington Heights. There were many pleasant reunions, at which I became acquainted with several United States officers of high rank, who have since recognized the old social time with their continued friendship. I very often remained there until it was quite late, and at such times the General invariably sent some of his staff officers with me for my protection to Willard's Hotel.
With one of these, Captain Backus, who, I think, is a near relative of the General, I had the honor of an intimate acquaintance and personal friendship. He had been previously well acquainted with my brother in Rochester. As to my professional reputation, there are few practitioners who can produce such gratifying evidence of successful treatment as myself. I have the certificates of Judge Purcell, of Washington, one of the oldest and most accomplished members of the Bench, whose son was treated by me with the most salutary effect; also of G. B. Clark, Esq., a prominent gentleman of the Post-office Department. Mr. Rogers, Clerk in the Senate, who is reputed to have been a great pet and favorite of Daniel Webster and Henry Clay, and whose talent and gentlemanly bearing constituted him an ever welcome visitor at the houses of the elite of Washington, was so successfully treated by me that he gave me letters, commending my professional ability, to several Congressmen of his acquaintance. I have, too, a flattering testimonial from the Rev. Father Eagan, a distinguished Catholic priest in Washington. From the Hon. Judge Smith, of Frederick City, Md., I was furnished with the following:
I have been under the treatment of Dr. Tumblety for some time. When I first applied to him he described precisely my complaint and feelings without asking any questions whatever, and I am mending in health under his treatment, and recommend him to the public.
But I have no space for further enumeration. It will suffice that my treatment extended to the families of the very first people of Washington, which, in two years, realized upward of $30,000, clear of all expenses.
I was a constant attendant at the President's levees, and often at such times I have made valuable and cherished acquaintances—among others that of General Blenker, whose many invitations to dine with him I have still in my possession, cherished mementoes of the past.
I remember an anecdote, told me upon one of these occasions by the General, which will be found characteristic of Secretary Stanton, who really, as far as my experience goes, does not possess a friend in the intelligent or unselfish of any political party.[*] General Blenker had an interview one day with the President at which Stanton was present, and in the course of conversation he (the General) had occasion to speak of McClellan in somewhat favorable terms, when Stanton, whose countenance darkened with the expression of a fiend, turned upon him and remarked, with a bitter sneer, that if he heard any more such commendations of a man he hated, he would procure his (Blenker's) discharge.
About this period I experienced a decline of health of an alarming character, which induced me to abandon my project of entering the army and seriously contemplate a trip to Europe. In the meantime my relations with the President were of the most gratifying character, and, as I informed him of my projected trip, he kindly furnished me with letters, one of which was an introduction to that distinguished English nobleman, Lord John Russell:
PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S LETTER.
WASHINGTON, June 12th, 1863.
Dear Sir: The bearer of this, Francis Tumblety, M. D., an esteemed friend of mine, is about to visit London for the first time, and will consequently be a stranger in your metropolis. Any attention which you may extend to him will be gratefully appreciated by
Your friend and humble servant,
LORD JOHN RUSSELL.
Circumstances, however, caused me to abandon the idea, and, some time after, my professional duties called me to St. Louis, where I speedily established a reputation which, I regret, for the credit of the majority of the medical practitioners of that city, excited in them a feeling of jealousy that subsequently lent itself to the persecution of an innocent and unoffending man.
I have been charged with eccentricity in dress—but I presumed, as this is a free country, that, so long as a person does not outrage decency or propriety, he has a perfect right to suit his own taste in the color and fashion of his garments. It seems, however, that I was mistaken, and even my partiality for a fine horse and a handsome dog—a weakness which must be constitutional in my case, as I am happy to know it is in many of the most amiable individuals in this and every other country—has, in connection with the cut of my apparel, furnished sufficient foundation, in the estimation of the might-is-right party, to annoy and persecute me.
I was informed of some eligible landed property for sale near Carondelet, in Missouri, and one day I visited it with the intention, if it suited me, of making a purchase. While there I was unceremoniously arrested and incarcerated for two days, for no other offence, that I could learn, than that I was "putting on foreign airs," riding fine horses, dressing in a semi-military style, with a handsome robe, high patent leather boots and spurs; that I kept a large greyhound, sported a black moustache—and, in short, as one of my gallant captors affirmed, "You're thinking yourself another God Almighty, and we won't stand it!"
However, as there was neither treason, murder, arson, or any other hanging or penitentiary crime in all this, and as I fortunately had an influential friend at hand, I was, after (as I have said) an imprisonment of a couple of days, set free, once again to resume my professional labors, much to the chagrin of my medical rivals—to whom, as I was informed by the chief of police, I, in a great measure, was indebted for my arrest.
But I was soon destined to fall a victim to another and more serious annoyance—or, to call it by its proper name, tyrannical and monstrous persecution. The news of the assassination of President Lincoln was flashed along the telegraph wires and spread an universal gloom over the length and breadth of the land. I, who had known and esteemed him for his many amiable and social qualities, felt, I am sure, the great national loss as keenly as any; and, from an innate respect for the man, and in sacred reverence to his memory, I attended his obsequies at Springfield, Illinois, although I could illy afford the time—for at no former period of my life was I so professionally pressed—my practice at that time netting me some $300 per day.
Almost the first person I met on my arrival at Springfield was the steward of the late President's household, who knew me at once, for he had frequently seen me at the White House, and bursting into tears he caught my hand, exclaiming, "O, Doctor, this is a sad time for us to meet!"
The last sad, solemn ceremony performed, I returned, Heaven knows in how melancholy a mood, to St. Louis, and the day after I was once again arrested, thrown into prison, and this time my office and apartments were searched, ransacked and plundered of every article of portable value, including a considerable amount of money. I remained incarcerated in St. Louis two days, during which period I was visited by several military officers, who, to my anxious demand for the cause of my arrest, laughingly replied: "Oh, they have such an immense amount of excitement in Washington that Colonel Baker—under whose order the arrest was made—thinks that we ought to have a little sensation here."
The then Colonel is now a General, but if his tyrannical proceeding toward me, and the reckless disregard he evinced for the rights and liberty of a citizen are samples of his integrity and capacity, he is as prominent a specimen of misplaced promotion as any in the service.
At the time my arrest was thus noticed in the columns of the Missouri Republican, St. Louis:
ARREST OF DR. TUMBLETY.
A sensation was produced in police circles yesterday by the arrest of the famous Dr. Tumblety. He was arrested at his office on Third street, opposite the Post-office, by an United States policeman, and is charged, as it is stated, with some knowledge or complicity in the late assassination of President Lincoln.
We are not informed of the grounds of the suspicion under which he has fallen. He is said to have been a former partner of Harold's, in Brooklyn, New York. A few facts in relation to the Doctor's history may be interesting in this connection.
Several years ago, at the time the practice was fashionable of giving flour and bread to the poor, Dr. Tumblety visited Buffalo, New York, and announced to the public, through the columns of the Buffalo Express, that he would on the day following meet any merchant of that city on the steps of the Merchants' Exchange, and there distribute fifty sacks of flour to the poor. The proprietors of the Express, desiring to know more about the Doctor, telegraphed to Toronto, Canada, from which city the Doctor hailed, inquiring who he was. The answer came from the Bank of Toronto; "His check is good for $60,000 in this bank."
At the appointed hour the Doctor was present with the fifty bags of flour, which he distributed to the poor.
When he first came to this city he affected a half military dress, but upon being arrested by the provost guard for wearing military clothing, the Doctor concluded to change his style of dress.
The last portion of the above paragraph applied to the arrest first mentioned, and for which, I was assured by the chief of police, I was principally indebted to my professional rivals, whose practice was not improved by such notices, as will be seen by the following, which some time previous appeared in the same paper.
We can but urge invalids, and all suffering from any form of disease, to hasten and consult Dr. Tumblety, 52 Third street, whose name has now become familiar as household words, and who will always be remembered as one of the greatest philanthropist and benefactors of the present age. The Doctor has, by his indomitable perseverance in combating and effectually curing thousands of cases of obstinate chronic complaints, established for himself a reputation which no competition can efface nor opposition tarnish.
And again, in the Democrat of the same city, and about the same date, there appeared the following:
SUCCESSFUL PRACTICE.—Of the numerous patients who have consulted Dr. Tumblety since his arrival here, several cases have come under our notice in which his treatment is proving eminently successful. Our readers have read the testimonial of Mr. McBride, the pilot; also the testimonial of Captain McClure; also W. P. Emery, Esq., of the Lindell House; also W. P. Turner, of Center Township, who had been suffering from cancer, and many others too numerous to mention. We recommend all who are suffering to call immediately and consult the Doctor.
But I am digressing from what I intended should be a plain narration of facts. The foregoing complimentary notices are but as a drop in the bucket to the many I have in my possession, and I only produce them here as evidence corroborative of the remark of the Chief of Police that the faculty of St. Louis were jealous of my increasing fame and practice.
After a confinement of two days, during which I succeeded in discovering that, beside being charged as the identical Dr. Blackburn, of yellow-fever-plot notoriety, I was also accused of complicity in the assassination of the President. I was carried to Washington, where I was thrust into the Old Capitol Prison, and without the formality of an examination, or any effort on the part of Stanton or his underlings to establish my identity with the notorious person for whom I was arrested, I was detained there three weeks, after which I was turned loose in the same reckless manner that distinguished my arrest—no examination whatever having been made of the case—nor was I afforded the opportunity, the right of every free-born man, to meet face to face my accusers, if there were such.
It was a persecution worthy the dark epoch of the middle ages, or the bloody era of the French Revolution; but time, that corrects all things, will, I feel sure, enable me to obtain justice and redress.
During my incarceration I made some new acquaintances, among others Governors Vance and Brown, of North Carolina and Georgia, and the Hon. Mr. Lamar, to whose quarters I was assigned, and by whom I was treated with respect and consideration.
While there I was witness to much that was strange to me, and would have been deemed incredible some years previous. One anecdote will suffice. Myself and fellow inmates of this delectable institution were prohibited looking from our bars upon the outer world. One day we were startled by the clash of martial music, the measured tread of a host and the cheers of a multitude. It was the grand entrée of Sherman's army. A lady, who was imprisoned for some political offence—or at least she was charged with such, for I had the melancholy proof in my own case that being a resident of a bastile did not necessarily imply guilt—indulging the natural curiosity of her sex, looked from the casement, when one of the lynx eyed guards witnessing the breach of the Old Capitol Prison discipline, raised his piece and fired, the bullet taking effect upon a brick a few inches from the fair one's head.
The courage and blood of the Southern heroine was fired as well as the rifle of the unmanly fellow; for, shaking her fist at him, and stamping her delicate little foot, she exclaimed defiantly, "Fire again, I won't stir!"
At the expiration of three weeks I was, as I have stated, turned loose—for I cannot dignify my liberation with the name of being discharged—and the event was thus noticed by the Washington Intelligencer:
An article from the New York World having been copied into the Intelligencer, stating that Dr. Tumblety was the Dr. Blackburn who undertook to create a pestilence in Washington, we feel it our duty to state that the former has been discharged from arrest, and it is not believed that there is a shadow of suspicion upon him in connection with the above object, or with the assassination of President Lincoln.
The following communication and explanatory statement, written by me afterward, appeared in the Washington Star, New York Herald, and other papers:
KIRKWOOD HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D. C., June 9.
To the Editor of the Star.
After three weeks of imprisonment in the Old Capitol Prison in this city I have been unconditionally and honorably released from confinement by the direction of the Secretary of War, there being no evidence whatever to connect me with the yellow fever or assassination plot, with which some of the Northern journals have charged me of having some knowledge. My arrest appears to have grown out of a statement made in a low, licentious sheet, published in New York, to the effect that Dr. Blackburn, who had figured so unenviously in the hellish yellow fever plot, was no other person than myself. In reply to that, statement I would most respectfully say to an ever generous public that I do not know this fiend in human form, named Dr. Blackburn, nor have I ever seen him in my life. For the truth of this assertion I can bring hundreds of distinguished persons throughout the United States to vouch for my veracity, and, if necessary, can produce certificates from a number of gentlemen in high official positions.
While in imprisonment I noticed in some of the New York and other Northern papers a paragraph setting forth that the villain Harold, who now stands charged with being one of the conspirators in the atrocious assassination plot, was at one time in my employment. This, too, is false in every particular, and I am at a loss to see how it originated, or to trace it to its origin. For the past five years I have had but one man in my employment and he is with me yet, his character being beyond reproach. I never saw Harold, to my knowledge, and I have no desire to see him.
Another paper has gone so far as to inform the public that I was an intimate acquaintance of Booth, but this, too, is news to me, as I never spoke to him in my life, or any of his family.
I do hope the persons who so industriously circulated these reports, connecting me with these damnable deeds, to the very great injury of my name and reputation, will do me the justice to publish my release, and the fact of my having been entirely exonerated by the authorities here, who, after a diligent investigation, could obtain no evidence that would in the least tarnish my fair reputation.
With these few remarks in justice to myself, I will close by submitting them to the public.
DR. F. TUMBLETY.
Dickens must have had much experience in prison life, which he describes with the fidelity of one who has tested the bitter ordeal of involuntary incarceration. But the experience of the great novelist has been limited to the old barbarous system of imprisonment for debt; he never realized the horror of being a State prisoner, and, worse than all, the State prisoner of such a man as Stanton, under whose iron despotism the unfortunate victim could not even speculate upon the fate in store for him.
For three or four years persons innocent like myself have been summarily arrested and made away with, Heaven knows where, and the remembrance of many cases I had from time to time read of, now that I was another added to the number, crowded thick and fast around me. Under such circumstances to look philosophically upon the situation is an impossibility. The chronicles of the past were conjured up, nor could I glean one ray of consolation in comparing the tyranny of a past age with the despotism of the present. The legends of the Tower of London, the horrors of St. Marc, the dark record of the Bastile, even the chronicles of the Spanish Inquisition crowded upon my excited fancy-compared to which the Marshalsea, the King's Bench, the Fleet, and the various receptacles for the unfortunate debtor described by "Boz," were agreeable retreats. I remembered how men had disappeared in the bloom of manhood to reappear years after, decrepit, furrowed, and their heads and beards prematurely whitened by the ordeal of their cruel dungeon life. In the dismal present I could derive no hope, for it seemed as if the history of the dark past was repeating itself. To the inexperienced all this may appear the effect of a morbid and over strained imagination, but place the strongest minded person in the situation, with an Edwin M. Stanton the controller of his destiny, and the incertitude of the future would unstring his nerves, were they originally of iron strength.
I left Washington, and spent some time in New York. My appearance there was thus humorously noted by the editor of the Sunday Mercury:
We were honored with a visit from the celebrated Dr. Tumblety last evening, who has escaped the toils of the War Department, and is once more going about curing diseases with the most magical success, and threatening to send all the undertakers, sextons and grave diggers to the almshouse. He carried in his hand a bunch of fragrant herbs, which, if introduced into the catacombs of Egypt, would set all the old mummies on their legs, as lively as before they were wrapped in their cerements. Of course he came off with flying colors, his loyalty being as genuine as his medicine. Stanton being such a malicious misanthropist, could not bear to see a benefactor at large, who robbed disease of its terrors, and is fast bringing about a millennial state of affairs, when sickness will be unknown, and health and longevity be the common lot. He is again decocting his herbs, and producing lotions that make cripples throw their crutches away, and features twisted into puckers by aches and pains spread out into broad grins of delight. His "Pimple Banisher" will take the crimson tubercles from the nose of the most inveterate toper, and bleach it to the hue of Father Matthew or John B. Gough. He has no doubt of being able to cure the President, if that functionary will place himself on the proper regime, and substitute the juice of the Indian herbs for that which he is in the habit of imbibing. He believes Stanton was instigated to arrest him by the proprietors of Greenwood Cemetery, who found that, after he located himself in Brooklyn, the sight of a hearse in that city was as rare as the approach of a comet, and if he is not put out of the way they will have to convert their grounds into gardens or city lots.
The intelligence of my arrest had been widely disseminated; but, thank Heaven, my reputation had been pretty well established throughout the length and breadth of the land, and the news of my release brought with it scores of kind letters, which I received from all parts of the country, as well from my former patients as my more intimate friends. Their congratulations upon my escape were mingled with honest indignation at my groundless arrest, and the tyranny of the individual who was at its head and front. I still preserve this correspondence as pleasant mementos of enduring friendship and regard.
I left the East for St. Louis, and a day or two after my arrival in the latter city the following appeared in the St. Louis Dispatch, which was reproduced in the Democrat:
We mentioned on Saturday the arrival of the celebrated Doctor Tumblety in our city, and had the pleasure of a call from him this morning. The Doctor informs us that he was taken from his place of business in this city last spring and escorted to Washington. There he was told that the Secretary of War desired to see him. As that gentleman was not in the city, Dr. Tumblety was confined in the Old Capitol Prison for three weeks, and then turned out in the street without any trial or investigation. He brings with him recommendations from the Mayors of Rochester, New York, and others, in regard to his standing in those cities. As the Doctor is about to start business again in St. Louis, we mention this as an act of justice to a persecuted man.
All this was but cold comfort and poor consolation to one who had been arrested for no crime, hurried away from a lucrative business, over one thousand miles, upon a miserable accusation that he had contemplated and been accessory to crimes of the deepest and blackest character; had suffered incarceration for weeks; had been robbed and plundered by unprincipled and mercenary officials, and then finally turned loose with the cold intimation that it was all a mistake. I have been made the victim of a practical piece of despotism, that would have been deemed an overstretch of tyranny in the most autocratic Government in the world, and for which I should have received compensation, at least so far as my immediate pecuniary losses were concerned. But no; from the time that I have regained my liberty there has been no recognition from the proper quarter of the shame and injury that was heaped upon me, and I have even been compelled to pay at the rate of twenty cents a line, in a Government organ that had previously abused me, for the privilege of justifying myself after my release.
Among my personal friends of the medical profession my experience has been the most genial and agreeable, and upon my release from the miserable bastile in which I had been confined. I received many letters of condolence and sympathy, of which the following may be taken as a sample:
PHILADELPHIA, July 2, 1865.
DR. FRANCIS TUMBLETY—Dear Sir: This moment I perused your epistle addressed to the Sunday Mercury, of this city. Being a friend, I was delighted to know your whereabouts; but I have been extremely sorry to learn that you have been imprisoned by that imbecile, Stanton. Yet it is pleasure to know that you have escaped the machinations of those debased sheets which have from time to time defamed your enviable reputation. I hope your returning liberty will give you the power to bring on them their just condemnation.
It is now two years since I have seen you, but I still remember the refined and honorable gentleman, Dr. Francis Tumblety, with whom I have enjoyed many a pleasant hour; and, as a proof that your enemies have not and cannot tarnish the bright lustre that clings to your fair name, I write this letter, to say that your friends are unchanged.
I trust your health has not been impaired by your recent confinement, and that you are able to continue your professional duties in an extensive practice. If you visit this city I would be most happy to see you.
I will leave here in September for Chicago, to resume my medical tuition at the Rush College.
I will be happy to hear from you at you pleasure.
With respect, I am your friend,
JAS. WALTER MURPHY.
In my career I have made the acquaintance of a really distinguished circle of people, who have acquired not only a national but a world-wide reputation. A noble hearted man, who, while possessing more amiability and genius than the commonality of his fellow creatures, was also afflicted with too much of the weakness that is unfortunately often found in the gifted, the intelligent and the generous, is conjured up in my mind's eye. In the course of my professional life I became acquainted with Captain George W. Cutter, a man upon whose brow the wreath of poet laureate of America should have been justly placed. He was not only a poet but he was a hero, and upon the field of Buena Vista received the pistols and the dying message, to his honored parents, of the son of the illustrious statesman, Henry Clay. Both were transmitted by Captain Cutter; the first were placed into the hands of the bereaved father by their faithful custodian, and the last words of the departed hero were sorrowfully repeated. From that time Henry Clay was the steadfast friend of the man who had consoled, in his last moments, his favorite son; and I feel that the death of the great statesman was a sad drawback to the career of poor Cutter, of whom it might be said that he had no enemy but himself.
It was the old tale—a tale too often recorded—of the child of genius. Cutter's was a genial spirit, and his vices and misfortunes the offsprings of congeniality. He fell a victim to drink, and in the embrace of the demon of intoxication he fell from the lofty pinnacle that was within his reach to the depth of inebriate degradation. Many of the brightest and the best of all nations have so fallen, intellectual monuments of ruin and decay.
My prescription for a bronchial affection, which interfered with his success as a lecturer—for Captain Cutter, in the days of his popularity, was frequently invited to deliver addresses and orations—also introduced me to the celebrated John B. Gough, who was suffering under a similar affection of the throat, and who gave me flattering testimony of the healing and efficacious character of my medicines.
Poor Cutter! He was not destined to realize the harvest of his great literary genius, but posterity will do justice to the best and most original of American poets. The reader will, I am sure, pardon me for introducing here one of those brilliant gems, which, emanating from his pen, is destined to live so long as poetry exists:
SONG OF LIGHTNING.
Away! away! through the sightless air
Stretch forth your iron thread,
For I would not dim my sandals fair
With the dust ye tamely tread!
Aye, rear it up on its million piers—
Let it circle the world around—
And the journey ye make in a hundred years
I'll clear at a single bound!
Though I cannot toil like the groaning slave
Ye have fettered with iron skill,
To ferry you over the boundless way
Or grind in the noisy mill,
Let him sing his giant strength and speed!
Why, a single shaft of mine
Would give that monster a flight, indeed,
To the depth of the ocean's brine.
No! no! I I'm the spirit of light and love,
To my unseen hand 'tis given
To pencil the ambient clouds above
And polish the stars of heaven!
I scatter the golden rays of fire
On the horizon far below,
And deck the sky, where storms expire,
With my red and dazzling glow.
The deepest recesses of earth are mine—
I traverse its silent core—
Around me the starry diamonds shine
And the sparkling fields of ore;
And oft I leap from my throne on high
To the depths of the ocean caves,
Where the fadeless forests of coral lie
Far under the world of waves.
My being is like a lovely thought,
That dwells in a sinless breast—
A tone of music that ne'er was caught—
A word that was ne'er expressed!
I dwell in the bright and burnished halls
Where the fountains of sunlight play—
Where the curtain of gold and opal falls
O'er the scenes of the dying day.
With a glance I cleave the sky in twain;
I light it with a glare
When fall the boding drops of rain
Through the darkly curtained air!
The rock-built towers, the turrets gray,
The piles of a thousand years
Have not the strength of potter's clay
Beneath my glittering spears.
From the Alps or the Andes' highest crag,
From the peaks of eternal snow
The blazing folds of my fiery flag
Illume the world below.
The earthquake heralds my coming power,
The avalanche bounds away,
And howling storms at midnight's hour
Proclaim my kingly sway.
Ye tremble when my legions come—
When my quivering sword leaps out
O'er the hills that echo my thunder-drum
And rend with my joyous shout.
Ye quail on the land or upon the seas,
Ye stand in your fear aghast
To see me burn the stalwart trees
Or shiver the stately mast.
The hieroglyphs on the Persian wall—
The letters of high command—
Where the prophet read the tyrant's fall
Were traced by my burning hand;
And oft in fire have I wrote since then
What angry heaven decreed,
But the sealed eyes of sinful men
Were all too blind to read.
At length the hour of light is here,
And kings no more shall bind,
Nor bigots crush with craven fear
The forward march of mind.
The words of truth and freedom's rays
Are from my pinions hurl'd,
And soon the light of better days
Shall rise upon the world.
But away! away! through the sightless air
Aye I rear it up on its thousand piers—
I'll clear at a single bound.
To return to a personal matter: I regret to state that, throughout my career, I have nearly always encountered the hostility of the resident physicians and medical practitioners who, in my case at least, have not evinced any of the generous spirit that is said to distinguish the enlightened and liberal professions.
The old faculty have ever entertained a deep rooted prejudice against a purely botanical system; indeed, this prejudice is extended to everything that does not suit their taste or fancy.
I am, in a great measure, the disciple of Abernethy, especially in his horror of cutting, unless as a last recourse. That great physician was the cotemporary of Sir Astley Cooper, but there was no sympathy in their mode of practice, and he at all times expressed abhorrence at the sanguinary practice of Sir Astley. An anecdote connected with royalty will serve as an apt illustration:
Sir Astley Cooper was the confidential physician of George the Fourth, and upon one occasion, when that monarch was afflicted with a serious malady, that appeared to baffle the skill of Sir Astley and his co-physicians, the Duke of York, brother of the king, drove to the residence of Abernethy, in whose skill he had unlimited confidence, The doctor's carriage was at the door, and the doctor himself was about entering it as the illustrious visitor arrived. Old Abernethy was no courtier, and he was as bluff as honesty itself. When informed of the object of the duke's visit he shook his head gruffly. "No, no," said he, "let him send for his butcher; I can't come, for I have my poor hospital patients to attend to, and I won't neglect them for all the kings in Christendom."
Here was a sample of democracy one would hardly expect to meet in monarchical England.
There is no disputing the fact that the knife is a source of immense mischief to the human family. Every day brings us tidings of some unfortunate man or woman being ushered into eternity through the means of a surgical operation. I could name twenty cases which have occurred within a year, when the persons were in a common degree of health at the time the operations for different purposes were commenced, and all of whom died in less than a week after undergoing such operation. How melancholy would the reflection be if, from an absolute necessity, physicians were compelled to operate in this manner, and when the fact was known that such operations were generally followed by death. But what different feelings inspire us when we reflect that most of those operations are undertaken and performed without any necessity, and only to exhibit to the world the manual surgical tact of a vaporing, iron-hearted M. D. That in nine cases out of ten, when operations are performed and death ensues, the patient might have been cured or sensibly benefited, we have not the shadow of a doubt; for, as Professor Abernethy says, "It is owing to our ignorance that the knife is used in any case."
It is asked, what will we substitute for mercury and the knife? We answer that for mineral poisons we substitute the vegetables that grow in Nature's garden; we have tried them, and we find them abundantly successful. Moreover, we find them of such variety in strength and medicinal qualities as to answer every indication disease presents, and to accomplish all, and much more than the conjoined use of calomel and the lancet. Diseases which have been given up by mineral practitioners have been cured by vegetable prescriptions, both here and elsewhere. A vast number of cases, denominated surgical, in which deathly operations have been recommended, have been completely cured by the Reformed Practice. Indeed, in no department of God's vast scheme of goodness to man is that goodness so strikingly exhibited as in the arrangement of medicinal plants to restore health and remove obstinate diseases. All that is required of us is to know the medicinal quality of each plant, and the disease it is designed to cure; then, when we are sick, we may put forth our hand and take it as the boon of heaven.
It becomes our duty to investigate the quality of each plant, from the forest tree down to the humble ivy; and in the performance of this duty I trust that we have the prayers of the philanthropist and the patronage of every good man. It is a work of vast importance to the human family; and if we have found substitutes for minerals, the lancet and the knife, surely the world will not withhold from us that respect or patronage which so great a discovery demands. Some physicians of the old school will jeer, and mock, and lie, and slander, but their efforts to put down our system will be in vain. The mass of the people are on our side; they are our defence, our judges and rewarders. Besides, the object of our pursuit is, above all others, calculated to cheer us in our researches and comfort us in our privations—having no less an object in view than the redemption of the rising generation from the evils of mineral poison and blood-letting, and our army, navy, and other unfortunate fellow beings from the horrors of the scalpel and amputating knife.
A system should consist of just, logical deductions, drawn from familiar, known, indubitable and undoubted facts. Instead of this, all our systems are either false conclusions from mere imaginary whims, begged principles or mere suppositions—or even false conclusions from erroneous principles. All systematizers pretend to build upon facts, but their facts are pressed and whipped into their service. The doctor first spins his system out of the cobweb of his fancy, and afterward squeezes some facts into forms resembling proofs of it, and very honestly shuts his eves against all such facts as are at variance with his beloved air castle. He creates distinctions, when in nature all is whole and forges classifications, when in nature all swim together. Thus Boerhaave, Cullen, Brown, Darwin, Staehl are all blind leaders of the blind; and the young physician who thinks he has in his notes and books a remedy for every disease, when he comes to the sick bed finds all a chaos; no rule will apply. He looks in vain for the vaunted effects of his cure-all nostrums, forsakes in disgust a practice which may lead him to manslaughter, or from experience chalks himself out some dictionary: this is good for that, or that is good for this, and becomes a quack—for practice without system is the very definition of quackery. Another, and not less efficient cause of the falsity of our medical system, is the prejudiced respect for ancient and modern celebrated names. The most important data presented to us by modern improvements in physiology and anatomy (the marrow of medical science) are bartered away for the dicta of Hippocrates, Galen, Boerhaave, Cullen and Rush; and thus the lancet, or calomel, or cold bath, or opium, or salts of tartar, all in their turn, become panaceas (cure-alls) with the accession of every new popular profession, and
"For the king's offence the people die."
I offer to the public a new system of medical science which I have formed, conscientiously clear of all those impediments, and which is confirmed in its salutary effects by the experience of a lifetime's practice.
Subjoined are some pertinent views of Mr. Thomas Jefferson, who did not belong to the profession, but who, by-the-by, possessed an extraordinary mind, and who was fully competent to judge correctly upon this subject:
We know, from what we see and feel, that the animal body is, in its organs and functions, subject to derangement, inducing pain and tending to its destruction. In this disordered state we observe nature providing for the reestablishment of order by exciting some salutary evacuation of the morbific matter, or by some other operation which escapes our imperfect senses and researches. She brings on a crisis by stools, vomiting, sweat, urine, expectoration, etc., which for the most part ends in the restoration of healthy action. Experience has taught us, also, that there are certain substances by which, applied to the living body internally or externally, we can at will produce the same evacuations, and thus do in a short time what nature would do but slowly, and do effectually what perhaps she would not have strength to accomplish. Where, then, we have seen a disease characterized by specific signs or phenomena, and relieved by a certain natural evacuation or process, whenever that disease occurs under the same appearances, we may reasonably count on producing a solution of it by the use of such substances as we have found by experience produce the same evacuation or movement. Thus, fulness of the stomach we can relieve by emetics; diseases of the bowels by purgatives, etc., etc. Here, then, the judicious, the moral, the humane physician should stop. * * * But the adventurous physician goes on and substitutes presumption for knowledge. From the scanty field of what is known he launches into the boundless regions of what is unknown. He establishes for his guide some fanci'7ul theory of corpuscular attraction, of chemical agency, of mechanical powers, of stimuli, of irritability, accumulated or exhausted, of depletion by the lancet and repletion by mercury, or some other ingenious dream which lets him into all nature's secrets at short hand. On the principle which he thus assumes he forms his table of nosology, arrays his diseases into families, and extends his curative treatment (says he) by analogy to all he has thus arbitrarily marshalled together.
I have lived myself to see the disciples of Hoffman, Boerhaave, Staehl, Cullen and Brown succeed one another like the shifting figures of the magic lantern, and their fancies, like the dresses of the annual doll babies from Paris, becoming from their novelty the vogue of the day, and yielding to the next novelty their ephemeral favors. The patient, treated on the fashionable theory, sometimes gets well in spite of the medicine. The medicine, therefore, restored him, and the young doctor receives new courage to proceed in his bold experiments on the lives of his fellow creatures.
I believe we may safely affirm that the inexperienced and presumptuous band of medical tyros let loose upon the world destroys more human life in one year than all the Robin Hoods, Cartouches, and Macheaths do in a century.
It is in this part of medicine I wish to see a reform—an abandonment of hypothesis for sober facts—the first degree of value set on clinical observation, and the lowest on visionary theories. I would wish the young practitioner especially to have deeply impressed on his mind the real limits of his art. * *
The only sure foundations of medicine are an intimate knowledge of the human body and observation of the effects of medicinal substances on that. The anatomical and clinical schools, therefore, are those in which the young physician should be formed. If he enters with innocence that of the theory of medicine, it is scarcely possible that he should come out untainted with error. His mind must be strong indeed, if, rising above juvenile credulity, he can maintain a wise infidelity against the authority of his instructors and the bewitching delusion of their theories. * * * * I hope and believe that it is from this side of the Atlantic that Europe, which has taught us so many other things, will be led into sound principles in this branch of science, the most important of all others being that to which we commit the care of health and life.—Letter to Dr. Wister, vol. iv, page 91.
There is no science that has so much needed reform as the science of medicine, for it is a science in which the happiness of mankind is more closely woven than any other. All reformers have to struggle with prejudice and superstition, but none so much as the hardy individual who dares attack the quackery and humbug of the old time medical practitioner. In some sensible and well timed remarks of Dr. A. R. Porter, addressed to the Botanic Medical Reformer, I find the following:
The world needs to go through a process of purification, in order to make it what it ought to be, and I shall always feel proud to lend a helping hand to carry on the noble enterprise. But, as it is impossible to do everything at once, those which stand out most prominently deserve our immediate attention, and upon such should be unhesitatingly directed the weapons of reform.
Among these conspicuous evils there is one on which I have bestowed no little consideration; it is the present practice of medicine. Medical Reform—that is the question. It is in the common or regular system of practice, so called, that I desire to see a thorough radical reform. If I could be fully persuaded in my own mind that the use of poisonous mineral ingredients, such as mercury, antimony, arsenic and the like, are safe, sure and efficacious remedies, and did not produce effects deleterious to the human constitution; if I were assured that there were no substitutes to be found in nature's extensive vegetable dispensary more admirably adapted to the nature of disease, and which could not cure without making the last state worse than the first, I certainly would abandon my idea of a reform, and cheerfully submit to the present system, and risk my life and health altogether upon its own merits.
But while I am fully convinced, from observation and experience, that the regular practice of medicine is absolutely imperfect and highly dangerous, and while I am satisfied that the vegetable system of practice, which is now extending itself rapidly over the Western portion of our country, is eminently superior to every other with which our land is superabundantly stocked, I cannot too anxiously desire a reform. It is on this subject that I wish the people to be aroused to proper and honorable action.
It is time that this apathy and indifference which has existed in the minds of the mass of the people on the subject of medicine, and which is so at variance with its great importance, should be totally removed—for there is surely no art or science of so much consequence to their well being as that which has for its object the preservation of health and the cure of disease.
As there are but few tried, faithful, sterling advocates (comparatively speaking) of the vegetable system of practice in this country, it may seem presumptuous to undertake so great an enterprise while a powerful monopoly, propped up by public opinion, hemmed in by constitutional barriers, combining genius and wit, learning and talent, are bending all their mighty energies against us. But I hope that an intelligent people will not be daunted by this, for the more the reformed practice becomes known the more the people will appreciate and support it.
The practice of medicine should be divested of all those technicalities which the most limited intellect cannot clearly understand. It should be based upon true, scientific, philosophical principles, employing such remedies as will act in perfect harmony with the laws of nature and animal life.
The grand mystery to be understood in the practice of medicine is not to create disease but to remove it; and as disease is obstruction, such medicines as will assist nature in removing obstruction are the only remedial agents that can be safely and successfully employed.
Where, then, the question is asked, are these remedial agents to be obtained? Not in the submarine depths of the Atlantic or the Pacific, nor in the impenetrable regions of the terraqueous globe, but in the vegetable kingdom—in the little plant that shoots heavenward its spiral boughs, and spreads out its tinsel leaves to receive the drops of the silver dew or the warm beams of the noonday sun.
In the vegetable kingdom there may be found the elixir of health—there may be found the healing balm. Would to Heaven that the study of this extensive division of natural objects was more generally pursued and appreciated; because, if it were, and the medicinal properties of plants better understood, disease might be more easily and successfully treated.
In the vegetable kingdom an All-wise Being has deposited such plants and herbs as are congenial to our constitutions, and adapted to the cure of all curable diseases to which human nature is incident. We have no need, then, to resort to the application of poisonous mineral ingredients (such as mercury and the like) in the cure of disease, because they do not answer the purpose of their application; they clog up the system and poison the fountains of life, and make the patient a sickly, wretched being throughout the remainder of his days. I appeal to the lame, to the sick and the blind; to the toothless and deformed; to the dyspeptic, the hypochondriac; to the individual of scrofulous habits and ulcerated gums; to the rheumatic invalid and broken down constitution, who are the unhappy victims of mercurial empiricism. It is a lamentable fact that the most active and potent articles used by the faculty as medicines, and upon which they place their principal reliance, are destructive to life and injurious to health—the latter of which they are intended to promote.
But many there are, I know, who will not believe it. Intelligent and well meaning as they may be, their prejudices have become so deep rooted in favor of the mineral practice, that it is almost impossible to turn their attention to the work of reform.
There are many, too, who are capable of discriminating between a true and false system of medicine, who are almost prepared to go for a thorough reform, but cannot abandon altogether the use of minerals, because they think that calomel blue pill, or some other preparation of mercury is indispensably necessary to the cure of a diseased liver. But however strongly inclined they may be to this opinion, it is, nevertheless, erroneous. Calomel may exert a potent, powerful action on the liver, and give it mere temporary relief. By its acrid and irritating nature it arouses it to action; the secretion of bile is increased, the bowels are moved, and the patient feels relieved. But this relief is of short duration; in a few weeks he finds his liver has become torpid, and even more inactive than before, and he again has recourse to another dose, with the same results as before, and thus he continues to take dose after dose, until the healthy tone of his stomach and bowels is irrecoverably gone, and by and by he falls a victim to the combined agency of his original disease and the deadly remedy which he took for the purpose of removing it. In confirmation of what I have said I will give the opinion of Dr. Barnwell. He says, "Mercury will produce the liver complaint." Dr. Hamilton and Dr. Fies state " that it will, in some constitutions, lie inert for years, and then burst forth with tremendous violence; and that it destroys the digestive organs." Dr. Hamilton also declares "that every physician of competent knowledge does know these deadly effects of mercury on the constitution."
I am acquainted with an individual who has been afflicted with liver complaint for a number of years, who has been in the habit of taking a dose of calomel every time he felt the alarming symptoms, but without any positive cure. And I know another individual who had the same disease a much longer time than the former, and equally as formidable, who has entirely cured himself by the use of vegetable medicines.
Of the superiority of vegetable over mineral medicines I can fully testify from my own individual experience and observation, having witnessed some of the most astonishing cures performed by their application. Of the effects of the latter I speak with pain, living to see a near friend dragging out a miserable life, produced by the administration of poisonous mineral drugs.
In view of the evils of the present system of medicine a reformation is loudly called for; something more safe and effectual must be had; and I trust that it will go on until the glaring inconsistencies in the healing art are ferreted out and held up to the indignation of an injured community, and the vegetable system of practice substituted, to meet the emergencies of the people.
OUR MOTTO.
We use such balms as have no strife
With Nature or the laws of Life;
With blood our hands we never stain,
Nor poison men to ease their pain.
Our Father—whom all goodness fills—
Provides the means to cure all ills;
The simple herb beneath our feet,
Well used, relieves our pains complete.
A simple herb, a simple flower,
Culled from the dewy lea—
These, these shall speak with touching power
Of change and health to thee.
I have alluded to the great injury of my health from the incarceration, privation, and horror I experienced in the Washington bastile, better known as the "Old Capitol Prison." Compensation for this is beyond all price, for health is an inestimable jewel, that cannot be purchased with gold; and I feel that I shall never again realize the hardy and robust physique for which I was distinguished previous to my arrest in St. Louis. But the pecuniary loss I have sustained, and the disarrangement of my business, are other matters, for which I have a clear claim upon a Government by whose authority I have been so outraged and despoiled. I will here just adduce one instance as a sample, and it will be seen how my professional reputation has been trifled and tampered with.
Upon my return to the West, and while laying over in Indianapolis, I was waited upon by a person of genteel address and consummate impudence, which latter will be pretty well exemplified by the following:
He introduced himself as from Louisville, and hearing of my arrival in Indianapolis, he said that he had come to pay me a visit.
I acknowledged the compliment, and, at the same time, I desired to know why I was indebted for this honor.
"Oh, Doctor," said he, "I'll tell you all in good time. You see, I heard of your arrest in St. Louis, and how you were whisked off to Washington, that celebrated
'————bourne
From whence no traveller returns.'
At least I thought so in the case of a gentleman who, like yourself, was snapped up by order of the all-pervading Edwin M. Stanton. However, you are an exception, for which you may thank your lucky star, which, somehow or other, must have been largely in the ascendant."
"Well, sir," I remarked, "I know all this, and now for the especial occasion to which I am indebted for this visit."
"All in good time," replied my free-and-easy acquaintance; all in good time, for I am coming at once to the point. You see, that hearing, as I have remarked, of your arrest, and knowing the great reputation you have acquired, I though it a pity that such first rate capital should be lost to the world; and, moreover, being under the impression that, in consequence of your having got into Stanton's clutches, the aforesaid world, in an outer point of view, had looked its last upon you, I determined to step into your shoes, which I did, and as you will fully concede, to pretty good purpose.
"What, sir," said I; with a perceptible flush of indignation, "do you mean to say that you have been personating me?"
"Keep cool," replied my imperturbable visitor, "for I intend to be candid with you, if only for the gratitude I owe for the use of your title. I have told you truly that I never expected you would revisit the outer world, professionally or otherwise, and hence I deemed that it wouldn't be the slightest injury to you, my going to some place where you have not practiced, and taking your title. I found out that you had never been to Louisville, but it didn't take long after my arrival there to discover that your name and fame were not strange to that community. In short, I played my rôle with such success that I soon had more practice than I could attend to;" but, he added, laughing, "I am afraid I did not advance your reputation in the Falls City—for, honestly, I believe that I have about played myself out; however, I made my hay while the sun shone, and here is the result" [unfolding a pocketbook, and taking out a draft for $8,000], "which I have made clear in the course of my short practice."
I was dumb with astonishment at the cool impudence of the fellow, and indignation at the trick he had played upon the public in my name—when, finding that I did not speak, he went on:
"And now, Dr. Tumblety, I come to the practical and business portion of my visit. As I have said, I have made this $8,000, in a manner, under false pretences, by taking your title. You are again free—something I did not expect—and doubtless prepared to resume your profession and standing. Now, I offer you this eight thousand dollars upon condition that you take me under your instructions—now, then, say, is it a bargain?"
I must have been poor indeed to have accepted this offer; so, telling him that I regarded him as the most unblushing impostor that had thus far ever crossed my path, I pointed to the door—a gesture which he at once comprehended. Nevertheless, he walked toward it with the most provoking composure, bowed with admirable sang froid, and disappeared; since which I have never seen his face.
I have already alluded to a resolution, taken upon the breaking out of the civil war, of tendering my professional services to the Government—in which event I should have received an appointment on the medical staff. This I subsequently abandoned, in consequence of ill health, but it seems that the report had reached my relatives in Europe that I was attached to the United States Army, as also that I had fallen in one of the engagements. I first knew this by meeting with Captain Anderson, of the Royal Navy, but extensively and favorably known in this country, wherein he made himself a legion of friends, as the commander of the steamship Great Eastern.
He knew me well, as also my relatives, a long time previous, while he was the captain of one of the Cunard line of packets, and while I resided in Boston, at the time the steamers came to that port. He frequently pressed me to take a trip with him to Europe, to visit my friends there, among whom I had a near relative and namesake (Tumblety), who has been connected over twenty years with the Cunard line. On one of his trips the Captain took my daguerreotype to my uncle in England, who has since died, in order to satisfy him that I was still in the land of the living.
Another distinguished commander in the Cunard line, Captain Moody, was also an intimate friend of my family, and, he, too, I used to meet with friendly greeting at the old Tremont, in Boston. I recall these reunions with pleasurable emotion, for they were magnetic links that connected me with dear friends far away across the stormy Atlantic. Nevertheless, it is not for the purpose of indulging pleasant reminiscences that I have introduced these personages, but simply in proof of my standing in society; for the many friends and acquaintances of Captain Anderson will understand that the person he would take by the hand must command a spotless character and a gentlemanly record.
I cannot trust myself to reflect upon the cruel manner in which I have been treated and the indignity I have suffered, for at such times I feel the hot blood tingling to my finger ends, and it requires a strong effort to calm an indignation which, if allowed full scope, might lead the victim of a tyrannical despot to contemplate redress, by personal chastisement, upon the author of his misfortunes. Thank Heaven! there is considerable philosophy in my composition, and I can bear and forbear—or, at least, bide my time—
"For time at last sets all things even—
And, if we do but wait the hour,
There never yet was human power
Which could evade, if unforgiven,
The patient search and vigil long
Of him who treasures up a wrong."
I certainly have been fortunate in the majority of my acquaintance, and it has moreover consisted, in a great measure, of those whose association should have been sufficient to vouch for my loyalty to the Government. In the category I take pride in recalling the name of General Joe Hooker, with whom I have, for a long period, been upon terms of cordial friendship. I met him last summer at Saratoga, and was happy to experience proof of his continued kindly feeling by his cordial recognition. At the same fashionable resort I met Lieutenant-General Grant, to whom I was introduced, and by whom I was treated with flattering consideration. Certainly my character could not be more satisfactorily sustained than in the recognition of two such illustrious men and distinguished warriors.
In a previous portion of this sketch there is mention of a distribution of flour to the poor of Buffalo. I will here add that it is my usual custom to remember the needy of every city in which I practice, and my method of benefiting them is to my mind the most practical. I know that bogus benevolence exists to a lamentable extent in every community, and I have had experience how mercenary and designing persons, under the hollow pretence of collecting funds for charitable purposes, impose upon the public, and appropriate the funds so raised, or at least the greater portion of them, to their own use. While, therefore, I am constantly importuned by such persons to contribute to their peculiar charities, I seldom respond; at the same time I challenge the world to prove that any legitimate claimant ever left my threshold empty handed. My distribution of flour was not in an ostentatious spirit, but simply as a means to benefit, in a small way, the largest number of the suffering poor within my means. I do not court fame—for, with Colton, of present fame I think little, and of the future, less; for the praises we receive after we are buried, like the flowers that are strewed over our grave, may be gratifying to the living, but they are nothing to the dead; the dead are gone, either to the place where they hear them not, or where, if they do, they will despise them. No, I do not covet fame for my alms, but if I can leave behind me a name and reputation as an alleviator of the bodily ills that afflict poor humanity, my mission upon earth will be accomplished.
Since, however, I have tasted of' the hospitality of the Old Capitol Prison, there is another class of sufferers with whom I would share my last crust. I mean the poor victims of Stanton, that same Edwin before whose tyranny the acts that cost Charles the First his head are tame and trivial. And, apropos, I am here reminded of an article I clipped from the Cincinnati Commercial, a republican journal, from its Washington correspondent. Here it is:
I trust this Congress will do something to settle the question whether the Government under which we live is a republic, of which Andrew Johnson is President, with Edwin M. Stanton—to use the language of a distinguished military chieftain—'a d——d clerk," or whether it is really an absolute monarchy, under the reign of Edwin I. Pope's couplet about forms of government may be all well enough for philosophy, but it won't do for actual practice after all. If Edwin is really king, by all means let him have the crown and the name. As to his authority there is no need of change in that for what he exercises now is limitless, and what is limitless can't be extended—so the mathematicians say, and they're right. But if Edwin is not actually king, then it would pay to inquire by what authority he arrested and sent to prison a reporter of a Washington paper within a week, for publishing a harmless item of news; and by what authority he denies the use of the telegraph wires to the conductors of loyal newspapers in the South, while he permits gamblers, speculators and prostitutes to use them ab libitum.* If he has a right to say that such and such matter shall not go to the New Orleans papers by telegraph, hasn't he a right to say it shall not go by mail, and, therefore, a right to interdict the transmission of Northern papers through the mail to the South, and for that matter, to stop the mails entirely? Where does power leave off and usurpation begin with the autocrat of the War Department? Or, can there be such a thing as usurpation by kings? Is it "loyal" to ask the question? Think of a d——d clerk" of the President's having a mounted guard stationed in front of his palace day and night, to prevent carriages from driving past and raising a dust to permeate his highness' chambers, and perchance reach the royal nostrils; and a guard of honor to the hall door, tool The reader may be incredulous, but it's an actual fact that for months past no public or private conveyance has been allowed to drive past the residence of Edwin I, and the preventing power has been a couple of United States cavalry soldiers. What a glorious occupation for the volunteer army-keeping the dust out of Mr. Stanton's window curtains Who wouldn't rush to arms for such a glorious purpose? Who'd hesitate? None but an arrant Copperhead. Happy Edwin, in the possession of a dust guard; but thrice happy guard in such a post of honor!
NOTE.—At this point, in the first edition, there was introduced the certificates of several hundred persons of prominent standing, testifying to my professional skill in their behalf. These are omitted save an exceptional few, who have been most anxious to add their testimony in grateful remembrance, otherwise I deem such documentary evidence at this present date unnecessary and superfluous. Scores of similar testimonials from New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, Buffalo, Montreal, Quebec, Pittsburg, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, New Orleans, Mobile, Charleston, and indeed every city of note throughout the continent, I have in the original handwriting of my patients.
A few more remarks will not be inapplicable concerning my arrest and the presumed cause, for it was all presumption, and the arrangement was so mystified and befogged that, at the time, I was almost tempted to question my own identity. Indeed, I was somewhat in the same predicament as the rustic wagoner whose team had been unhitched an carried off by rogues while he was asleep.
Awakening soon after he rubbed his eyes in a state of bewilderment, and after a few minutes' intense cogitation delivered himself of the following soliloquy:
"Am I Hodge or ain't I Hodge? If I am Hodge I've lost four fine horses. If I ain't Hodge I've found a wagon."
In my case, however, if I lost my identity, I discovered something far less agreeable than a wagon in the shape of the Old Capitol Prison. The application of the above is that I was first suspected of being the friend, associate and partner of the notorious Harold, and, consequently, that I must have teen privy to the project of the assassination. Then the article quoted from a St. Louis paper announced me as Dr. Blackburn and this idea derived additional force by being flashed broadcast upon the telegraph wires. The fact is my arrest was one of those open handed acts of wantonness that could only spring from a reckless and irresponsible official, wielding absolute authority, and without the pale of the fear of God or of mankind.
Now that the wounds of this so lately distracted country are rapidly healing under the benignant influence of peace, and happily the constitutional right and liberty of the citizen is again restored, should it not be a serious question that must come home to every individual, to guard for the future against such tyranny and oppression as were practiced with so much impunity by the Secretary of War? My case might, under a similar state of affairs, be yours. No man, however innocent, can be sure of escaping the foul wrong which, with me, resulted in great pecuniary loss, bodily and mental suffering, and a broken constitution. I am aware, in time of civil war—and a war, too, in which it required the full force and power of the Government to put down one of the most formidable rebellions that ever arrayed itself against the constituted authorities—that extreme measures are necessary; but surely the lives of innocent people are not to be jeopardized with such capricious indifference. The chronicles of Ireland will furnish many instances of undue harshness exercised. during troublous times, and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, but I challenge the record to produce such a flagrant abuse of power, and wanton outrage of the liberty of the citizen, as was exemplified in my case, and I may say hundreds if not thousands of others. Under these circumstances, is it not a dangerous precedent to allow the prime minister of these un-American atrocities to escape a just and wholesome castigation for his treasonable practices against the Constitution, in the persons of those who should be protected in its broad folds? I do not write in a vindictive spirit; Heaven knows that were I alone the sufferer, I would endure and rest content with the vindication of my name and fame from the odious calumnies which were so heedlessly, and upon no foundation, cast upon me; but the names of my co-mates are legion, and I feel that the public good demands an example for all future tyrants, who, dressed in the garb of brief authority, may otherwise take advantage of precedent to play the same fantastic tricks at the expense of right, justice, humanity and liberty.
And yet the man's love of office is wonderful, for he holds on with tenacity—and certainly with greater damage to the subject—like the barnacle to the bottom of the ship. No public man was more hated than Edwin M. Stanton; at the present time no one is so despised. He will leave a name in history, but beside it that of any other who figured in a the late eventful epoch will be respectable.
It is not easy to make a catalogue of great men, but it is easy to see how, from time to time, the standard of greatness changes. A military General can hardly ever again enjoy the exclusive kind of fame that once belonged to him. "The victories of peace are beginning to supply heroes for the laurel as well as those of war. Still the wise and benignant Statesman and the victorious General will live in the grateful remembrance of their countrymen, while the cruel despot of the day will go down to posterity cursed with the immortality that encircles the name of Nero."
It is now within a few days of the anniversary of my arrest. Looking, back over the year that has passed, the light and shadow of good and ill flits before me in sunny and sombre hues, and by-gones are softened by the soothing hand of time. A year ago and I stood unconsciously upon the threshold of a bastile. It was the opening of May, that sweet season so beautifully described in Solomon's song: "The time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the laad."
In this buoyant and festive season, when the earth is carpeted with its tenderest green, and the poetry of nature is realized in the many tinted buds that already perfume the soft southern breeze; when the birds are singing, the cattle' lowing, the trees blossoming, the brooks gurgling, the rivers flowing, the sun shining, and the clouds flying; in this month of beautiful May, when the whole world is quickened and kindled, and, like nature, assumes its holiday attire, it is hard, indeed, to be consigned by a ruthless and arbitrary power to the gloom of a State dungeon, and the dark speculation of an uncertain future. But the night is past—the reign of terror that cast its shadow across the blue ether, and reflected an ominous cloud upon the fair land, is no more. We have fallen upon happier times—upon peaceful and tranquil days. Let us hope that the dark page of history will, like "the uses of adversity," prove a jewel in the shape of a warning to guide the future course of the nation; and that even now, as the sun of liberty is blended with the sunshine of May, so may its bright and joyous light never again be dimmed, but remain with us in all its pristine beauty.
After I had laid down my pen I unfolded a morning paper that, as usual, was placed upon my table, and there read the startling intelligence that the cholera had been brought to the shores of America by an overcrowded passenger ship. The news was sufficiently exciting to induce me to address the reader a few concluding remarks upon what bids fair to be the engrossing and all-absorbing topic of the day. Perhaps one of the greatest, as it certainly has been the most benevolent act of the present ruler of France, was the tracing this dreadful scourge to its source, in the vast congregation of pilgrims who flock to the shrine of Mahomet—who, being necessarily compelled to crowd together in unwholesome masses, exposed to a foetid atmosphere, with impure diet, and the impossibility of indulging in the necessary ablutions so indispensable to a healthy condition, engender disease, which, in that climate especially, assumes a malignant form, and is thus spread until its baleful influence is felt, although, of course, in a modified form, throughout the civilized world.
Now, far beyond the precincts of Mecca, a like cause must necessarily produce a similar effect; nor can I conceive a situation more rife for breeding the disease than an overcrowded emigrant ship, where a mass of over a thousand ill assorted persons are crowded together within the contracted, badly ventilated, and pestiferous atmosphere of a steerage. Indeed, it has frequently been a matter of surprise to me that every breeze from the East, as it sweeps over these floating repositories of animal filth and misery, is not laden with infection.
These remarks are suggested in the hope that they may have the effect of allaying the fears and excitement of those who read them; for I can assure the reader that there is a mysterious influence which the mind exercises over the body, and experience proves that the fearful and most excitable portion of the community are invariably the first victims of contagious disorders. An even and temperate course of life, cleanliness, and moderate attention to the regular operations of nature, and a cheerful mind, are the best preventives for cholera; but should it come, nature has spread forth her store of roots and herbs to combat the Asiatic scourge, for here her resources are boundless; and to him who has studied her there is life, health and vigor in her simple teaching. Has it never struck the reader that the untutored Indian, with all his bad habits, has suffered so little in the periodical visits of this particular scourge? The reason is as simple as it is significant. The Indian experiences one blessing in being exempt from the baleful influence of old medical fogies. For his ailments he relies upon the antidotes which nature has spread before him, and which first instinct and then tradition has taught him the use of; hence it is that while contagion and death have desolated alike the hovel and the palace of civilization, the child of the forest in his wigwam stands erect, fearless of an enemy which, if it attack him, he knows he can combat with success.
As I write the name of the celebrated phrenologist, Professor Fowler, catches my eye. He is, I perceive, advertised to deliver a series of lectures in this City of Cincinnati;* and this recalls a not unpleasant reminiscence in which the Professor is identified. I became acquainted with him some years since, while we were each pursuing our professional avocation, and I have reason to hope that the friendly sentiment with which he imbued me was, in a measure, reciprocated. I admire a man of science—for genius is a god-like gift, more precious than ancestral honors or the much coveted wealth of gold. and silver. Professor Fowler is the first, as he is the most celebrated in his profession, and I here take pleasure in adding my tribute to the many of which he is justly the recipient. His is a bold, and in many respects an original theory, and the truth has been pretty fairly illustrated by continued success.
And here I am, as it were, once again inadvertently led to the contemplation of the old, and in many respects ridiculous practice insisted upon by the ancient faculty, who really appear to imagine that prejudice is a holy principle if sanctified by age. To no point do they hold with more tenacious determination than blood letting—which by many is esteemed a remedy for all the ills that afflict humanity. Dr. Smollet, in his admirable translation of Le Sage's "Gil Blas," shows up in inimitable satirical style the absurdity of this destructive course. Dr. Sangrado was but a type of the great mass of our modern M. D.'s, who continue to extract the life-blood of their patients in spite of nature and common sense.
In an excellent treatise upon this subject the eminent Dr. Coggswell said that the disuse of the lancet and blisters is demanded both by humanity and science. Is it not a mistake to suppose that a kettle of boiling water (the inflamed blood) will cease to boil by dipping out a part of it? Is it not a mistake to suppose that blisters and rubefacients will remove inflammation, when they virtually superadd one inflammation to another? But I fear that philosophy or the most lucid reasoning will fail with the indomitable prejudice of the majority of the old time practitioners, who, following the example of Dr. Sangrado, will still go on blood letting and sowing a profitable harvest for the undertaker and the sexton.
In the testimonials I have adduced** there are but very few cases which were not treated by the regular practitioners before my services were called into requisition—and, therefore, to the most obtuse the superiority of my treatment must be apparent. In the category there are cases which were so desperate that the last lingering hope of life was abandoned, and I am happy to know that there are many at this time who regard me with grateful remembrance as having snatched them from the grave. I never knowingly deceive a patient; my motto is, and always has been, to deal frankly and honestly with all who consult me. The following notice, which appears in the Woodstock, C. W., Spirit of the Times, is equally applicable at the present time:
Invalids, and all those suffering under lingering diseases, will find it to their interest to give Dr. Tumblety a call. If he can do you no good he will frankly tell you so, and not charge you for advice.
While there is life there is hope; but there are cases in which the physician will best exercise the attribute of mercy by preparing the unfortunate sufferer for that final dissolution which the experienced practitioner but too well can perceive must come surely and speedily.
TO THE LIFE OF
FRANCIS TUMBLETY, M. D.
SINCE the publication of the foregoing I have visited many far off places, including the golden region of California, Great Britain and Ireland, and the European continent. My tour was not one of mere pleasure, but rather of research in behalf of my profession; but my labor was not without pleasant intervals, in w1ich valuable acquaintances, often ripening into friendship—which, let me hope, will not be interrupted through life—were made. Those upon whose footprints the shadows have fallen will best enjoy the transient gleams of sunshine which may illumine their way. We should weary of perpetual summer, and unalloyed prosperity would grow stale and insipid. A congeniality of ideas is the foundation of a friendship which must last through the brief span of mortality. I am too much of a republican or cosmopolitan to attach extra importance to the favorable opinion of a man simply because fortune, or rather accident has placed him in a more elevated position than the majority of his fellow beings—
"The gold is but the guinea stamp,
A man's a man for a' that."
No; worth and merit I prize, no matter in what rank they are found, and the truest nobility is that of nature. But within the aristocratic precincts of the British peerage there are unquestionably men not only of genius and education but of the largest and most liberal philanthropy. Such an one is the Right Honorable Lord Headley, whose valuable acquaintance and subsequent friendship I made during my professional experience in London, England. The palatial country residence of his lordship is the Aghadoe House, in the beautiful and romantic region of Killarney, Ireland, and his London mansion is No. 47 Princess Gate, Hyde Park South; to visit both of which I have been cordially and pressingly invited. Lord Headley takes much delight in botany, and his conservatories are esteemed among the richest and rarest of Europe. Previous to my journeying through California, and while yet in New York, in the course of our correspondence I proposed to forward him some rare and exclusively indigenous seeds of that country. His reply is before me, and I produce it verbatim:
AGHADOE HOUSE, KILLARNEY, KERRY,
5th November, 1869.
Dear Sir: I received your letter and read it with much content and admiration. The first feeling was caused by satisfaction that it was in my power, by so small an act of courtesy and attention, to give you so much pleasure; the second was caused by the high talent the composition of your letter showed, with its aspirations, feelings, and sentiments telling of a mind of no common order, and a disposition at once appreciative, kind and generous. Yours was by no means the first occasion upon which I have enjoyed an interview and a conversation with your countrymen. All your remarks touching this country and your own are fresh, genuine, sound and natural. I shall keep your letter, and shall take that much liberty with it (and you) as to show it to those friends who may be able to enter into its cleverness, expressive language and admirable impulse. I will not refuse—nay, I will accept with gratitude any seeds you may consider suitable to this somewhat damp country. My gardener is a first rate man, and will be sure, as a matter of interest (from their origin), to pay all skilful attention to their culture. As to plants, their transmission would be perilous and troublesome; so I will only thus refer to them: Acacias and others, so famous in California, do not answer here. In conclusion, let me wish you all the success in your career that you appear to merit, and let me further add that a letter from you at any time will be received with pleasure by me, for I feel sure your pen must always be instructive as well as amusing and agreeable.
My address will generally be as on this sheet, and from whence, if away, it can be forwarded. If an opportunity of sending any novelty should offer itself to you, be sure it will be prized by
Dear sir, yours very faithfully,
HEADLEY.
P. S.—Upon second thought I shall ask you to consider my address to England to be " The Carlton Club, Pall Mall, London."
The foregoing is but one of many warm and friendly letters which I received from Europe after my return to this country, and, I may add in all truth and candor, that my correspondence was invariably from high toned and distinguished sources.
In my collection of photographs is one of that highly educated gentleman, scholar and eminent physician, Dr. Barter, of Cork, Ireland, with the following inscription.
"Presented by Dr. Barter to his friend Dr. Tumblety, of the City of New York, July 27, 1869."
I did not visit Europe without satisfactory credentials, one of which will serve as a sample:
OFFICE OF WILLIAMS & GUION,
No. 71 Wall Street,
NEW YORK, July 13th, 1869.
Messrs. A. S. PETRIE & SON, London.
Dear Sirs: We have the pleasure of introducing to you Francis Tumblety M. D., of this city, a passenger per steamer Nebraska, to whom we have given a letter of credit on yourselves. Any attention to Dr. Tumblety during his stay in London will be appreciated by him and also by your friends,
WILLIAMS & GUION.
LONDON AS IT IS.
The modern facilities for travel have placed Europe almost within a pleasurable excursion distance of America. A trip to the old country is no more arduous a task now than was formerly a journey to Washington. It is strange that any who is possessed of the requisite means and leisure does not embrace the opportunity of visiting the scenes of so much historical interest. My impression of that vast metropolis, London, will be found in the following letter, written to a friend in New York, a copy of which I find among my papers:
LANGHAM HOTEL, PORTLAND PLACE,
LONDON, ENG., August 23d, 1869.
The population of this immense human hive is between three and four millions. It covers a space of one hundred and twenty square miles. The cabs are the legs of London, so to speak, and the hurried traveller should use them. Westminster Abbey is the first object of interest from the number of great and historical dead lying within its walls. The object of the most marked interest in the Abbey is the noble building itself, with its wonderful aisles, arches and forests of noble columns. The monuments of Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Dryden, Queen Elizabeth; the tombs of Edward the First, Henry the Fifth, and a host of warrior kings—the weapons carried by many of them, and the coronation chair in which every sovereign of England has been crowned, are subjects of contemplative interest. I have wandered with a vague feeling of melancholy pleasure through the gloomy recesses of this last resort of grandeur, reflecting upon the instability and evanescent character of human life and worldly fame, mentally tracing the history of the tenants of this great national mausoleum through the wilderness of their frailties, glory and misfortune, from the cradle to the grave. I have reflected upon the brief span of our existence here, and that I am but one of the millions who have over and over again been found in this same place ruminating upon the trophies of mortality before me—and then comes the seasonable yet sad conviction that, in a space which is but momentary in the eternal circle of time, I, too, must moulder in the dust, and quit this scene for a new and successive generation.
The Tower of London is the next object of interest. The leading attractions in this wonderful cluster of fortifications are to be found in the Traitor's Gate. Queen Elizabeth's Armory is in the same tower where Sir Walter Raleigh was so long confined, and where the fatal axe and block are yet to be seen by and on which fell so many loyal and noble heads. The Jewel Tower, where the Regalia of England, Crown, Sceptre, Sword, etc., are shown in an iron cage. The Beauchamp Tower, where so many noble captives languished away their lives; the tremendous collection of ancient and modern arms, armor, etc. This tower represents upwards of eight hundred years of English history, nor is there anything in London which has more powerful attraction to the intelligent traveller.
St. Paul's Church, which, after St. Peter's at Rome, is the grandest ecclesiastical pile on earth. It contains, among other heroes, the remains of Wellington and Nelson. The British Museum demands an entire day for the inspection of its wonders, and so does the Crystal Palace.
The monuments of London are too numerous to detail, and I might dwell to the extent of a volume upon the many objects of interest, including the National Gallery, the Thames Tunnel, the Underground Railway, the Parks, etc.
Within a short trip of the metropolis are Oxford and Cambridge, those great seats of learning, with their wilderness of cottages and picturesque grounds. Brighton, too, the sea bathing place par excellence of the British islanders. I have just returned from the latter place, which I very much like. I was also at Sheerness, where I lunched with the chief officer on board of the Great Eastern. I left the vessel at Queenstown, Ireland, and afterwards visited Cork, where I was the guest of Dr. Barter for a few days. He is one of the most distinguished gentlemen in the United Kingdom. I visited the Lakes of Killarney, where Lord Headley entertained me as if I were a Prince. I explored the Wicklow Mountains, the Curragh of Kildare, and many other points of legendary interest. I remained some time in Dublin, which is really a beautiful city. I also visited the Giant's Causeway; the scenery beggars description. From Ireland I crossed over to Liverpool, the great maritime port, so noted for its magnificent docks. Those of the Laird's are very grand. Mr. Laird gave me a piece of the famous Alabama. When I visit Paris I will again write.
Respectfully yours, &c.
After my tour through Ireland, Scotland, and the continent of Europe, I returned to London, where I was induced to prolong my stay beyond the anticipated period through the request of parties who were anxious for me to prescribe for them. It was at this time that I had the gratification of an introduction to Charles Dickens, the immortal "Boz," and my brief acquaintance with this eminent writer constitutes one of the most pleasant epochs of my life. An extract from the copy of a letter which I wrote to a friend in New York will best detail my accidental meeting with the author of the "Pickwick Papers" and its results:
As I advised you, it was my intention ere this to be in New York, but circumstances will prevent my leaving England for a week or ten days from this time. I have been induced to remain thus long through the urgent entreaties of certain parties, who are anxious that I shall prescribe for them selves and friends. Among the former is no less a person than Charles Dickens, to whom I was introduced at Brooks' Club House. My American antecedents were a sufficient passport, and we were speedily engaged in conversation relative to the scenes and observations upon which he founded his "American Notes." He expressed an earnest desire to take another trip to the United States, and I assured him a hospitable reception. He spoke in enthusiastic terms of certain parties whose acquaintance he made during his American tour, and said that he would not grudge a journey of double the distance to shake them by the hand. He is a charming conversationalist and the soul of congeniality. A gentleman here, for whose health he evinces much anxiety, has an affection of the liver, and I have been induced by the persuasion of Mr. Dickens to attend to him.
My continental experience was detailed in correspondence of a similar character, and I may add that the reminiscence of that period of travel is one of unalloyed pleasure. In every locality—although not upon an ostensible professional tour—it happened that my services were in demand, and the success of my treatment was the foundation of much warm friendship between my patients and myself, which will continue until we are jointly beyond the reach of human ailment.
Since my visit continental Europe has passed through an epoch of fire and slaughter, and poor France is still bleeding at every pore. Paris, that gay and brilliant capital, birthplace of fashion, art and elegance, has realized the ideal of Pandemonium, and that which the hereditary foe had spared her own sons sought to destroy. Let us hope that the ordeal may prove the purifying means to a more perfect future, and that, unlike the fallen Empire, the newly born Republic will prove a long continued reign of peace.
MY INTRODUCTION TO LOUIS NAPOLEON.
Since the days of the events about which I am now writing the then most powerful monarch in the world has become an outlaw, and an exile from the country which, but a short time before his downfall, voted by an overwhelming majority to maintain him and his dynasty upon the throne. As I write I have before me a memento of the greatness of the past as well as the instability of human grandeur: the Cross of the Legion of Honor glitters upon my desk, and reminds me of the occasion upon which I was the recipient of this distinguished mark of Imperial favor. While in Paris my services were solicited on behalf of a gentleman, one of the attaches of the English embassy, who was acutely suffering from scrofula. By a faithful adherence to the regimen I prescribed, together with the medicines which I furnished, a rapid and almost miraculous cure was effected. It chanced that the Emperor was afflicted with a similar disease—which, indeed, in his case was chronic—and hearing by a mere accident of the success of my treatment, he gave instructions for my presentation at a private interview.
This was accomplished without the knowledge of the Imperial physicians—for there as here there is much of the old-time prejudice to be surmounted, especially as it affects the practice of medicine. The Emperor treated me kindly and even cordially, and I soon became as much at home with him as I would have felt in the boudoir of a private gentleman. He talked of America, expressed faith in my theory, and even made some jocular and sarcastic remarks upon the Sangrados of the old school of medicine. Finally, he submitted himself without reservation to my treatment, and within ten days the Parisian journals announced that His Majesty had happily recovered from an indisposition which it was at one time feared might prove serious.
VISIT TO BERLIN.
Among the notable cities of the continent of Europe the German capital is worthy of especial mention. During my visit it presented an exceedingly gay appearance, and my surroundings were of such an agreeable character as to induce me to prolong my stay for a much longer period than I had originally determined. Berlin itself will compare with any of the continental capitals for wealth, grandeur and beauty. Its public buildings are many and remarkable for their solid and architectural beauty. The museum is peculiarly rich in works of art and natural curiosities; it constitutes an attractive feature to strangers, who can agreeably employ several days in exploring its wonders. The city is ornamented with historical monuments, among which the equestrian statue of Frederick the Great is pronounced one of the finest and most finished specimens of sculptural art in the world. The city itself numbers about three quarters of a million of people, and is rapidly increasing in population and importance. Its present circumference is some fifteen miles; one street, Unter den Linden, may be termed an avenue of palaces; it is absolutely unequalled in architectural grandeur and the shady summer luxuriance of foliage.
The credentials which I bore were passports to the most distinguished circle, and before I became a resident of the city one week I was formally presented to the veteran King William, whom I found as simple and unostentatious in manner, and free and familiar in conversation, as the most unpresuming of his subjects. His Majesty at the first expressed a desire to consult me upon matters pertaining to the United States, and our subsequent converse was as free and affable as between two equals in rank. I was honored with an appointment upon his medical staff, and the portrait upon the title-page of this work is copied from a photograph taken in Berlin at that time, at the instance of the king, and represents me as I appeared in the uniform of the Imperial Guard.
The favor extended to me by His Majesty was enlarged by the familiar intercourse with the members of the royal family; and my residence in the imperial palace, to which I received a cordial invitation at my first private interview with the king, was one of unalloyed pleasure. The agreeable and high toned companionship of that happy period will not readily fade from my remembrance; it was a bright era in my existence, a flood of sunshine undimmed and cloudless, an oasis in the arid desert of a struggling life.
From Berlin I returned to London, from whence, after a brief sojourn, as already stated, I posted for Liverpool and embarked for New York. As passenger upon the same vessel was the celebrated blind preacher, the Rev. Mr. Milburn, one of the most earnest and eloquent divines that it has ever been my fortune to listen to. A pious and indefatigable worker in the cause of Christianity, there is, nevertheless, no vestige of the ascetic or bigoted zealot in his composition; on the contrary, his is the spirit of a pure philanthropist, whose view of human nature is fraught with kindness and benevolence. I thought, while listening to his dispassionate yet forcible reasoning, that Providence, which had deprived him of physical sight, had more than compensated him by the acuteness of his mental vision.
TRIP TO CALIFORNIA.
After my return to the Atlantic States I was possessed with the desire to visit California, that modern El Dorado, wherein so many fortunes have been made and wrecked. This was intended more in the nature of a professional trip than was my tour in Europe, and, so far as the success of my practice is in question, my journey may be classed as an undoubted success. There, too, I formed acquaintances which speedily ripened into friendship of a lasting character. My impression of the Pacific region will be best elucidated by the following copy of a letter to a friend in New York:
THE FAR WEST.
Westward the course of empire takes its way.
The yellow ore which has been found in California drew the tide of emigration westward. The far west of to-day has become far removed from the far west of thirty or even of ten years ago. All has changed. The foam crested waves of the Pacific bear on their bosom a mighty and steadily increasing commerce. A rich, powerful and populous section, comprising three States, has arisen, where but a few years since Jesuit missions among the savages were the only marks of civilization; and all over the once unknown waste, amid the cosy valley and on the broad plains, are scattered homes of the brave and hardy pioneer husbandmen. The bleak mountains, once the home of the savage and wild beast, the deep gulches and gloomy cañons, are now alive with the sound of labor—the ring of the pick, shovel and drill, the clatter of stamps and booming of blasts—all of which tell of the presence of the miner and the future stream of wealth destined to flow into our national coffers; for as the individual becomes enriched so does his country share in his good fortune.
Figuratively speaking, the land is so rich in California that if a crowbar were stuck into it there would, within ten days, be sprouts a foot in length.
This city contains upwards of 150,000 inhabitants. It is well built and regularly laid out, and resembles New York more than any other city in the Union. The climate is unsurpassed by that of any large seaport town upon the continent—uniformity and dryness constituting its chief claim to superiority. The markets of San Francisco are worthy of especial mention, and it is undoubtedly true that no other country in the world can produce fruit in such profusion and perfection. The grapes, peaches, pears, etc., upon exhibition in the city markets, represent the choice productions of every section of the State.
The Dry Dock, the fortifications at Fort Point, the Branch Mint, the Stock Exchange, Libraries and Mechanics' Institute, are places of much interest to the traveller. Here. too, they mingle religion with pleasure—for persons who regularly attend church on Sundays, forenoon and afternoon, as regularly rush to the theatres at night.
Did you ever see two butterflies in a window, one anxious to get inside and the other fluttering to get out? Just so there are crowds of people in the Atlantic States who are most anxious to get to California, imagining that they can here pick up gold in the streets, while numbers here are striving to get back to their old homes. You can mark them by their sorrowful and despairing countenances.
SALT LAKE CITY.
This is a beautiful and pleasantly located place. The surrounding scenery is bold and impressive. While there I was introduced to the most extensively married man in America—Brigham Young.
is situated upon the western bank of the Missouri river; it is a thriving and growing city of some 15,000 or 18,000 inhabitants. While there I was introduced to Mr. A. D. Jones, one of the-noted men of the place. He improvised a post-office by using the crown of his hat for that purpose. When he met one of his neighbors for whom there was a letter off came the hat from the postmaster's head, when he fished out the missive and placed it in the hands of its owner. It is said that at times, when the postmaster was on the prairie, some expectant and anxious individual would chase him for miles until the travelling post-office was overtaken and made to disgorge the letter. The battered hat post-office has given place to a large first class institution, commensurate with the growth of the city. It is a distributing office, and employs six clerks besides the assistant postmaster. Omaha is destined to be a very large city. I like it better than any other place in the United States.
CHEYENNE CITY.
This is the largest town between Omaha and Corinne. Its elevation is 5,931 feet. Here I had antelope steak for breakfast and I found it exceedingly good. The trains stop here thirty minutes, during which interval I had entered into conversation with a "Bull Whacker," who boasted that he did not chew, smoke or drink; neither could he tell a story, sing a song or whistle a tune; in short, he prided himself on being an example and a model for his fellow toilers on the plains.
is 8,235 feet above the level of the sea. It is named after General Sherman, the tallest General in the service. Twenty-five miles to the southwest is Long Peak; to the south, 165 miles, is Pike's Peak, both plainly visible. In this region the Indians call the telegraph "the whispering spirit."
I met an old Irishman in Colorado who said that he had worked several years in the mines with pick and shovel; at last he struck a quartz vein, and, after making considerable money, he sold out. He added that his business was so enormous that his book-keeper used up 520 lead pencils in one day in reckoning up the profits!
The hardest point on the route is the "Point of Rocks." The tunnel and snow sheds are quite interesting, but at present I have neither time nor space to describe them, with many other matters of like character.
Respectfully yours,
Without egotism I may say that no medical practitioner ever visited San Francisco who so speedily established an enviable reputation as myself. The success of my practice speedily spread, for no advertising is so valuable as the grateful expressions of those who have been rescued from pain and suffering by the ministering office of the physician. My office daily presented the appearance of a levee, and, so far as the realization of a golden harvest was concerned, at no previous epoch of my life did fortune furnish me with so favorable an opportunity. That I intended to make San Francisco a permanent residence will be inferred from the following letter, which I received from a distinguished correspondent, C. A. Plummer, then living in New York, to whom I had written upon the subject:
NEW YORK, May 4th, 1870.
My Dear Doctor: Your very interesting and most welcome letter of the 19th of March came duly to hand, for which many, many thanks; for, believe me, that I perused it with much pleasure, not only from the delight of hearing from you, my friend (for I believe I can call you such), but from its really true merit as a fine descriptive letter, such as I am fond of reading. Now, Doctor, that letter should and would have been answered long ere this had you not omitted to forward your address; in fact, I looked for your return, until through a San Francisco paper I saw that you were located in that city. So you are a fixture in my adopted place—the place where for fourteen years I resided, and where I really wish I still lived. Circumstances have kept me where I am, but I often sigh when I think of that to me very dear country and her whole-souled sons—and daughters, too. Doctor, I do not feel that I can do justice in answering your letter, therefore I will be brief, yet in my feeble way I simply thank you again and again for your kind remembrance, and trust that you bear in mind that I shall always be pleased to hear from you, and that your letters will be cherished among my choicest mementoes.
Here matters are moving about as usual. I wish Colonel Von Schmidt was here to blow up Pot Rock, at Hurl Gate, so as to get up an extra excitement. I was much interested in the account of his blasting Blossom Rock; it must have been a grand sight. How do you like our California mustangs? Do you visit the Cliff House and take a ride on the beach? I would be quite at home with you upon one of those rides. Doctor, I should like to sit and talk with you an entire night concerning San Francisco; perhaps we may meet there yet, &c., &c.
The remainder of the letter was devoted to matters of a domestic character, of no interest to the reader, and irrelevant to this narrative.
The extent and character of my professional engagements may be surmised by the following editorial notice, and my accompanying remarks, which appeared in the Alta Californian, one of the oldest and most influential journals of San Francisco:
ANOTHER ADDRESS.
As usual there was a great rush of patients coming from almost every portion of the country. The Doctor, who is wise and shrewd, saw at a glance what could and could not be done in the few remaining hours of the day, and entering the reception rooms proceeded to address those present, giving, as will be seen, some very excellent counsel. The Doctor deals in common sense, makes plain statements, and knows what he says. He spoke as follows:
Ladies and Gentlemen: I see there are more here than I can properly attend to, and I must try to manage to get a limited number of you at a time. Many of you only want a little advice. You have seen me before. Some of you, I suppose, have come a long distance and are apparently too feeble to wait your turn. Those who wish a thorough examination with the Respirometer I will take into my private rooms as soon as possible. My charges are $5 for an examination. I can listen to your lungs and tell pretty well their condition; but if you want to know their exact state—whether bronchial, tuberculous, pleuritic or pulmonary consumption, and whether you are curable or not—you must be examined with the Respirometer. It is the only proper way of ascultating. Consumption can be cured. Lungs deeply diseased may be healed up if the system is got into a healthy, healing condition. The course pursued by a majority of physicians is all wrong; they never cure; their cod liver and whiskey only ruin the stomach. I frequently, in riding in the cars, get seated by consumptives; they have all their traps for drinking with them, and as soon as they get into a spell of coughing they take a drink of whiskey; and so they go on, and take a quart a day. Take a well man and let him drink in this way and he will soon lose his appetite. My first step is to cleanse the stomach and liver and then to create an appetite. Many of you have a cough, night sweats, creeping chills, and you all want to have them stopped; you think you would-be so much better.
Now, I stop nothing. The cough is to relieve the lungs. If your lungs are diseased, the first and only thing to be done is to get the strength, and the only way to do that is to cleanse the stomach and liver. If both lungs are not badly affected, with my herb medicines and syrups I can frequently effect the most wonderful cures of consumption. A cure frequently requires gentle purging for some length of time, to get the stomach and liver to act naturally. As soon as the mucous and slime begin to move the appetite begins to come up. The remedy I use, being an alkali, preserves the food in the stomach until it is digested, preventing it from souring. Now, in almost all cases of lung disease, the action of the system is so slow that food lies in the stomach and sours. Blood is made of it after it is spoiled; and this is the way our blood gets thick and bad. Canker, sore throat and catarrh proceed from this sour stomach. Burning of the throat with caustic and gargles afford only temporary relief. It should be treated the same as when the tongue is coated, or sick headache; the cause is the same. My remedies go right to the brood. Now, I want you to understand that I have no special remedies for chills or night sweats. As soon as the lungs begin to heal these will stop; but opium, quinine; and many other things which are used to stop them, go right into the stomach, and digestion stops. This is the very thing I am trying to restore. If I cannot get patients hungry, and get food to digest easily, I cannot cure them. Get up a good appetite—eat good, rich food, fat meat, gravy, in fact nearly everything the appetite craves, and the lungs will soon begin to heal. No matter whether the sore is inside or outside, if the system is healthy it will heal up; you can hardly stop it. It is nature to heal. You may notice persons who have scrofula or any old chronic running ulcers; they are all of a feeble or bilious condition, their digestion is poor, and they have not a healthy circulation of blood. Some three or four years ago a lady came to my room; she had a tumor with two ulcers on her liver, which had been running for fourteen years, and they kept getting worse. She was costive, skin yellow, very stupid and dull, liver and stomach torpid, and no circulation. In three months I ran the disease all out of her; the ulcers healed, and she is now a bright, healthy woman. Now, there is one very important matter to- be attended to in curing consumption, and that is to prevent taking cold. Your physicians tell you to go out every pleasant day. This, in my opinion, is a great mistake. Persons in ill health go out and take colds. When a lung begins to heal the slightest change will inflame it, and then they are thrown back. When I can persuade patients to keep to their rooms I am almost sure of success. When they are able they can exercise about the room to keep the blood in circulation. The directions which accompany my medicines are so explicit that any one can take them without ever seeing me. There is not a day but what I hear of some that have been cured who I never saw. Take the medicine and guard against taking cold. If the lungs are not too far gone the stomach will soon cleanse itself, the appetite will soon come. Eat plenty of good food and nature will heal the lungs. As I said before, do not depend on something to help the cough or stop the night sweats and creeping chills, for these are only temporary. Some persons may think, when I speak of taking cold, that my medicines may open the pores and lay them more liable. It is right the reverse of this, for when the stomach is cleansed persons are not so liable to take cold as when the system is locked up. Frequently, when people take cold, if they would swallow a dose of Mandrake pills, it would work it off; but instead of this they take s6mething to check it, which drives it back to the lungs, leaving the seeds for tubercles, or the next slight cold, and inflammation on the lungs. I have talked much longer than I intended to, but when I start I get so anxious to convince people how easy it is to keep well and feel fit for business that I do not know when to stop. When your stomach is out of order you are sick all over, and if you keep that right you cannot help but be healthy and fleshy. Look at me. Once I was in the last stage of consumption, as tall as I am now, and I weighed less than one hundred pounds; and yet here I am now, weighing one hundred and seventy-five pounds, cured by the same medicine I offer you.
Subjoined is another complimentary notice from the same source.
The name and fame of Dr. Tumblety have become a household word throughout this continent, and the mere mention of it is a sufficient guarantee that the public may place full confidence in his worth and reliability.
How sublime, how beautiful the thought that the researches and developments of the Nineteenth Century have added fresh and glorious laurels to the great temple of fame and science I In every department and phase of progressive development the hand of the sage and philosopher is ever busy—ever ready to devise means for the amelioration of life.
Think you his an enviable position—an existence without stern obstacles and perplexing cares? Nay, far from it, for he plucks the lovely rose in peril of the thorn—he climbs to eminence and renown, and every step he gains is planted on a prostrate foe.
It must be admitted by every rational mind that the man who contributes the most toward promoting the happiness and welfare of the human race must, of necessity, be the most highly esteemed by his fellow men.
From the San Francisco "Chronicle."
MIRACLES.—The age of miracles would seem reinstated in the wonderful doings of Dr. Tumblety, of No. 30 Kearny street, whose recent visit to this city is attended by so many and such incredible cures of bed-ridden and crippled patients. It is well known to hundreds in-this community that in a short time he has totally removed the infirmities of months and years. Instances are known of his causing the limping cripple to lay down his crutches, without which locomotion was impossible, and giving him full powers of easy movement. The dumb have been enabled to talk, and the helpless invalid restored at once to health and happiness.
From the "Call," San Francisco.
"Who is Dr. Tumblety?" is a question often asked. Well, we happen to know, and we are able to say, having known for several years past, that he is one of the few mortals to whom the divine gift of healing seems to have descended as a legitimate inheritance. People say he is eccentric, but we say he cures, and that is the great test. The high and the low, the rich and the poor have placed themselves in his hands, and have found his simple remedies a radical cure for many of the "ills that the flesh is heir to." His office is at No. 30 Kearny street, and we recommend him, in all sincerity, from personal knowledge and experience.
The reader will bear in mind that the foregoing notices were candid and unbiassed editorials, very distinct in character from what are generally known as paid for puffs. They were founded upon the unsolicited certificates of scores of patients, who themselves sought the medium of the press through which to evince their grateful appreciation of my. efforts in their behalf.
I RETURN TO NEW YORK.
Notwithstanding the great professional success which I was realizing in San Francisco I began to experience a yearning to return to the Atlantic States, where some of the brightest as well as the darkest days of an eventful life had been passed. True, there remained the memory of wrong, outrage and persecution, of which I had been an innocent and unoffending victim; but there were also the remembrance of time-tried friends, professional triumph, and the knowledge that I had braved and outlived the machinations of invidious enemies, and that the tyrannical despotism under which I had suffered had passed away, never again to cast its withering shadow upon this fair land of freedom. The impulse to return was so strong that I could not with-stand it; and so, after satisfactorily arranging my affairs, I bade adieu to the fair City of San Francisco and the many friends whose prayers, I believe, followed me across the ocean.
Generally physicians, as well as others, change their residence through lack of practice or business, but this has never occurred to me. I have never located in a place wherein I could not constantly realize a handsome and permanent income. This much I owe to the efficacy of my treatment and the uniform success of my system; nor do I deem it vanity to make a boast of that which can command the testimony of grateful thousands. There is not a place in this country that I have visited where I cannot find a voucher who will testify from his or her experience, and in San Francisco their name was legion. I was importuned to remain in a manner difficult to resist, but my resolution, although sudden, was unalterable, and upon the deck of the noble steamer I held my parting levee.
My return to New York was no sooner made known through the medium of the public journals than I was the recipient of letters from former patients and friends throughout the country, of which the following will serve as a sample:
FROM A CATHOLIC PRIEST.
ST. XAVIER'S COLLEGE, CINCINNATI, OHIO.
Very dear Doctor: I wonder if you remember the old priest—the old Indian Missionary on the Rocky Mountains—who came to see you and enjoyed your conversation at the Sisters' Hospital, Cincinnati. Oh, dear Doctor, many a time have I thought of you, and prayed for you, spoke of you, and inquired of news concerning you. Once I heard you had gone to Heaven. Yesterday I heard from Sister Anthony that you are alive and doing very well. A thousand thanks to God, and may Heaven be your reward for the kind help you gave to suffering me.
I promise to remember you daily at the altar; please to remember me sometimes.
Very respectfully, I am your humble servant,
A. HOECKEN.
Upon another page is the following from a reverend father of the same college:
Dear Sir: Though our acquaintance be slight I presume you will not take it amiss if I add a few lines to Father Hoecken's note. That God will bless you is the prayer of,
Yours respectfully,
THOS. B. CHAMBERS.
FROM A PROPRIETARY MEDICINE MANUFACTURER.
PITTSBURG, PA.
Dear Doctor: * * * * * If you were here now you could reap a rich harvest of business, as many of your old friends and admirers often ask for you. Your medicines had a wonderful effect in the locality-around Pittsburg. I have met many of your patients who ask after you. I would like to have a recipe or so from you, but I will wait until I see you, and maybe we can make terms.
T. GILLILAND, 74 Third Avenue.
The following T received from a member of the Society of Friends, Mr. John A. Best, and a grateful patient:
WASHINGTON, PA.
Dear Doctor, and very much esteemed and remembered Friend: Though my pen has been inactive, and though absent, thee are dearly remembered, and I have longed to see thee. The holidays were anticipated in the hope of your being with us in our midst, while the oysters and turkey were prepared so temptingly to the pallet, and the hearty wishes of many new years, and very pleasant ones, were fully and often uttered. They came and passed, and our treasured and fond anticipations were not realized. Your presence, perhaps, made other circles happy, and we were left to hope and look forward to a promise and a time again. And now, Doctor, do tell us when it will be when hands will clasp hands once again at our village home.
Your sincere friend,
JOHN A. BEST.
My professional correspondence was, and for years has been of an exceedingly voluminous character, embracing a circle of national and world wide celebrities, as witness the following samples:
FROM HORACE GREELEY.
NEW YORK TRIBUNE OFFICE, July 22d, 1869.
DR. F. TUMBLETY, Fifth Ave. Hotel.
Dear Sir: I am stopping at present at the Union League House, corner of Madison avenue and Twenty-sixth street. You will much oblige me by calling there from 7½ to 8 o'clock in the morning.
JAMES GORDON BENNETT.
This distinguished journalist entertained a high opinion of my skill in the treatment of diseases appertaining to the lungs, as is evidenced by the following letter of introduction to a patient in whom he evinced considerable interest:
NEW YORK, Sept. 9, 1871.
DR. TUMBLETY, Fifth Ave. Hotel.
Dear Sir; The bearer of this is a particular friend of mine, and I ask you to confer a favor on me by doing something for him. He is troubled with a bronchial affection, and as I believe you to be the only doctor in whom I have any confidence, I send him to you.
Believe me, sir, to be yours, &c.,
J. G. BENNETT.
FROM WILLARD PARKER.
NEW YORK, May 18th, 1869.
Dear Doctor: I am most anxious to see you. If you call during my office hours I shall be happy to consult you and shake a hand with you.
PROFESSOR MORSE.
Among the many noble and distinguished gentlemen to whom, through my profession, I have been favorably introduced, there are none whose acquaintance, and, let me add, friendship, I prize more highly than that of Professor Samuel F. B. Morse, who, when apprised of my return, forwarded his remembrance in a card of his residence at No. 5 West 22d street, with the talismanic words "At Home."
In this place I deem most appropriate the accompanying graceful editorial notice, written after the inauguration of his statue in New York:
THE MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH AND HONORS TO PROFESSOR MORSE.
No man among the many benefactors of mankind since the time of Christ, or even before, has done more for the world than that venerable old gentleman, Professor Morse, whose statue was inaugurated on Saturday, and in whose honor the meeting was held in the evening at the Academy of Music. He even, we suppose, did not foresee all the wonderful results of the magnetic telegraph when he first invented it. He realized, no doubt, in his own mind, something of its power and usefulness; but who would have thought that in a quarter of a century the earth would have been nearly girdled and the civilized world covered over with the lightning speaking wire? Who would have supposed that thousands of miles of ocean-would be no obstacle to instantaneous conversation between people of different continents? The progress of telegraphic development is the most astonishing fact in the history of mankind. Well might Mr. Morse say, in his speech at the Academy: "Little did that young friend, twenty-seven years ago (and whose presence here tonight I most cordially greet), in the artless innocence of a devout heart, dream of the far reaching effect of that first telegram which she indited upon him who transmitted it." Yes, little did any one dream of the wonders it has accomplished. But we shall see greater wonders yet. The telegraph, in the hands of the Christian nations, is destined to revolutionize the ideas of the world, to extend civilization and pure religion to the uttermost part of it, and to bring about the brotherhood of all the families of mankind. Long after the statue erected to Professor Morse shall have crumbled to dust his name will live in history and in the grateful memory of the human race.
SETTLING DOWN.
My intention was, and really is to settle in New York, the great metropolitan magnet of the United States and of America, and with this view I entered into negotiation for the purchase of property on Fifth Avenue, near the Central Park. The evidence of my intention will be found in the following correspondence of Mr. W. W. Leland, of first class hotel celebrity:
METROPOLITAN HOTEL,
NEW YORK, January 23d, 1871.
Dear Sir: Yours of the 24th instant is at hand; contents noted. I would say that the Central Park Hotel Company have secured the lots in the finest location on Fifth Avenue, fronting the Park, and I have already had $875,000 in bonds subscribed for. They are 7 per cent., principal and interest payable in gold, with sinking fund to pay them all before they fall due. I am anxious to have an interview with you. Please call here any day after 4 o'clock, or drop me a line when I can call upon you. I can make it greatly to your advantage.
I am, very respectfully yours,
It is my fortune or misfortune to possess a cosmopolitan reputation, which, in consequence of my widely spread fame throughout the length and breadth of the continent, renders it a matter of difficulty for me to locate. Following the notices by the press of my return to this country came innumerable letters from my former patients and others, all breathing a common hope that I would once again pay a professional visit to their particular section. Apart from the gratification afforded me by such evidence of the favorable remembrance in which I am held, my desire to benefit my fellow beings is a paramount incentive to another and widely extended tour. It is a pleasurable feeling to know that one will be the recipient of warm and welcome greeting in a revisit to the scenes of by-gone days. No one is so welcome to the relieved sufferer as the physician who has successfully ministered to his ailment; and, far above the sordid matter of pecuniary compensation, is the delight I experience in again grasping the hands of those who continue to preserve a grateful remembrance of my professional services.
To the press, too, I am indebted for many kind and complimentary considerations, which are the more valuable as they were freely outspoken, without any solicitation from me. I beg to call attention to the fact that the complimentary notices which I have quoted are from the most substantial and influential journals of America, of whom the Pittsburg Chronicle is a sample, from a copy of which I take the following notice of a brief trip to that city:
DR. TUMBLETY IN TOWN.
The friends and numerous former patients of Dr. Tumblety will be glad to learn that he has returned to the city on a short visit. The Doctor looks as bright and handsome as ever, and does not know yet whether he will open an office for professional business here or not, as he is largely engaged in another enterprise at present. Some impostor tried to practice in his name in the neighborhood, but with small success, we should suppose, as Dr. T. is too well known hereabouts. Announcement will be made through the papers should the Doctor conclude to practice here.
And again, the following from the Pittsburg Republican:
HAS RETURNED. —Yesterday we had the extreme pleasure of taking by the hand our old friend, Dr. Tumblety. The Doctor has returned to this city from New York at the earnest solicitation of a number of his former patients, who experienced great and wonderful relief from his remedies.
During my visit hundreds from various points within the scope of the Pittsburg papers availed themselves of the opportunity to visit that city for the purpose of consulting me.
THE SHADOW OF THE PAST.—THE STING OF A FORMER OUTRAGE.
I have heretofore presented the reader with a tolerably graphic description of my arrest, incarceration, cruel treatment, and the great pecuniary damage I sustained, during the American Reign of Terror—for no more appropriate term can I find to stigmatize the regime of the then Secretary of War, the infamous Stanton, whose after expulsion from office and unprincipled career was thus noticed by the Washington National Intelligencer:
THE EXPULSION OF STANTON.
The people of the country will rejoice to hear that the War Department and the Administration have at last been rid of the incubus that has so long weighed them down. Notwithstanding the efforts of those whose services he had employed to make him a hero; notwithstanding their flattering encomiums of the Radical "Carnot" of the war, who had sold himself to Radical influences, and consented to become simply a spy upon the Administration in which, from his position, he was entitled to participate, there are grave charges against his loyalty, and graver still against his proper administration of affairs. He may have been a most excellent political Secretary of War, but he was certainly not a frugal one. He may have administered the affairs of the War Department in the interest of such men as Holt, Ashley, Butler, Conover, & Co., but most surely he has not conducted them for the benefit of the people of the country.
When Mr. Stanton went into the War Office he might have been a Union man, but just before his nomination, when the rebellion was in its incipiency, he applauded the course of John C. Breckenridge; and meeting Senator Brown, of Mississippi, at the door of the Supreme Court room, after Brown had bid farewell to the Senate and announced his intention to join the rebels, Stanton cheered him on, asserted that he was right, that his course was the only one to save the South, and urged him to keep his constituents up to the mark.
When the Committee on the Conduct of the War badgered President Lincoln, and demanded the instant removal of Mr. Cameron as Secretary of War, a member of the Cabinet happened inadvertently, at a late hour in the evening, to express to a friend, "What shall we do for a Secretary of War?" The friend was a friend of Stanton's. He replied: "Take Stanton." "But he has announced that he will not take office under this Administration" (the Administration of Mr. Lincoln). "He may be induced to do so." "Go see him at once, and if he will consent he shall be Secretary of War to-morrow." On the morrow he was made Secretary of War. His first act was to kick down the ladder by which he had mounted to the position. He persecuted McClellan and his staff and drove them all out of the army. He lent himself to the uses of the Radical Committee on the Conduct of the War, and conducted the war not for victory but for the benefit of the Radical Republican faction. When McClellan was about to take Richmond he stole down the Potomac in the darkness of the night and ordered the right wing back from its position, so that Jackson could reinforce Lee and drive McClellan across the Peninsula. The head of the Radical Republican faction had said that if Richmond was taken then it would put the Republican party back twenty years. Again, after the army of the Potomac had been defeated, when it was found absolutely necessary to recall McClellan to the command of the soldiers who loved him so well—when he took a dispirited, demoralized and discouraged army through Washington to the plains of Antietam and pursued the enemy to Rectorsville, Va., where it was proposed to take Lee and his whole army—just at this moment, when our army was about to take Richmond, Stanton, this Radical "Carnot" of the war, stepped in and prevented the victory by the summary removal of McClellan from command.
We are not now defending General McClellan but simply stating facts that the history of the war will confirm. We only intend to show what this "Carnot" of the war did to organize the most disastrous defeats of our army. After his interference at Acquia Creek came the Seven Days' battles, the retreat to Harrison's Landing, and the subsequent abandonment of the peninsula. After his removal of McClellan, at Rectorsville, came the terrible disaster at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. For all these the late Secretary of War is responsible. He seems to gloat upon human agony and human suffering. He is responsible, also, for all the suffering of our prisoners in the south. The record will show it. This record has been published again and again, and no one has dared to deny it or provoke the exhibition of proof in the case. The proof is ready, whenever required, that the then Secretary of War was alone the cause of delay in the exchange of prisoners. When the Confederate authorities were pleading with us to take away, without immediate exchange, twenty thousand of our prisoners, Stanton was inexorable, and refused to listen to the application. He did not wish to exchange skeletons for live men. He did not care to have our soldiers brought back in exchange for rebel soldiers. The rebels would not recognize the negro as an equal, and, therefore, our white soldiers must be allowed to starve, rot, and die in rebel prisons without exchange. Even if the rebels would admit that exchanges should be made including negroes, it was better to let our men die there from starvation and ill treatment than to send the rebel prisoners back to go into the rebel army.
This was the policy. This cool blooded brutality has marked his whole administration of the War Department. Recklessness of expenditures, however high the public debt might be piled; recklessness of consequences, however many thousands of our countrymen might suffer, have been the peculiar characteristics of this "Carnot" of the war, who has invariably organized defeats instead of victories and graveyards instead of glories.
We have nothing to say of his recent course. That he has been antagonistic to the Administration is known. That he has been a spy in behalf of the Radical revolutionists is acknowledged. That he is particeps criminis in the new conspiracy may perhaps be proved.
The feeling of hatred once inspired by this miserable tyrant has given place to contempt; thank heaven, he is powerless for all future harm.
But it will hardly be credited that the shadow of the old persecution has at times fallen across my path, even at this late day, for efforts have been made to perpetuate the association of my name with the original cause of my misfortune—the notorious Dr. Blackburn. True it is that I have been enabled to trace the source of this malignant libel, and, as may be surmised, it emanated from the malevolence of professional rivalry, as represented by the fossilized practitioners of the old, and happily rapidly becoming obsolete school of medicine. But what can be said of men, who assume the rank of gentlemen, who will stoop to such an assassin-like method of injuring one whose only crime in their eyes is his professional success and popularity? But I can well afford to let them and their machinations pass, for I have ever found that he who broods mischief to others most frequently finds the injury to recoil upon himself.
And while upon this subject it may not be inapropos to produce certain correspondence applicable to the outrage inflicted upon myself and others.
Among it I find the acknowledgment of a pamphlet which I forwarded to
GENERAL R. E. LEE.
It runs thus:
LEXINGTON, VA., 21st May, 1869.
My Dear Sir: I have received this morning the pamphlet giving some passages of your life, with your letter of the 18th inst. The former I will take the earliest opportunity to read, and for the latter please accept my thanks.
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
DR. FRANCIS TUMBLETY.
The great man and distinguished General has passed away, and with him, let me hope, is buried the sectional bitterness which detracted from his merit. His autograph, with the above letter, I cherish as a sacred memento.
The following is an acknowledgment from Ex-Governor Brown, of Georgia:
ATLANTA, July 2d, 1868.
DR. FRANCIS TUMIBLETY—Dear Sir: I have just received your kind letter and the pamphlet, for which you will please accept my thanks. It always affords me pleasure to hear from those who were common sufferers with us in the old Capitol. Wishing you long life and prosperity, I am,
JOSEPH E. BROWN.
The following lengthy and indignant letter I received from G. B. Lamar, Senior:
SAVANNAH, 4th March, 1869.
DR. FRANCIS TUMBLETY—Dear Sir: I have the pleasure to acknowledge your favor of the 24th ultimo, referring to our prison suffering under United States tyranny—the vilest and basest of all others. They pretended to have some charge against you, whom they made to personify another person; but in my case they made no charge, nor has any ever been made since, for my arrest and transportation eight hundred miles, and incarceration in the vile vermin infested prison for three months.
Though my letters, both inward and outward, were sent to the War Department and violated, in order to find something upon which to found an implication, I received from that department in November, 1867, through General Grant, a package of those violated letters. And they robbed me of 4,000 bales of cotton after I had taken the amnesty oath under President Lincoln's proclamation, and had received the congratulations of Generals Sherman and Grant for so doing; but they hold on to the-proceeds of my cotton without accounting to me one cent, whilst my creditors have swept away from me my home and nearly all my property, to which, however, they were justly entitled.
As to Stanton and Holt, they induced Conover to testify that I employed him and his associate in perjury to assassinate Mr. Lincoln, and that I got the money from President Davis in Richmond, and paid it to them in 1864; and they, no doubt, intended to hang me as they did that innocent and injured woman, Mrs. Surratt, but Conover relented and swore again that his first oath was a perjury.
One cruel agent, who shut the door upon Miss Surratt when seeking the President for a pardon for her own dear, innocent mother, has, like Judas, committed suicide. The infamous Baker, principal agent for Stanton, has been called to his dread account, and many other actors in those tragic scenes are trying to clear their skirts and soothe their own guilty consciences by charging those bloody deeds upon others, but the awful day of final retribution and punishment must come; their own consciences warn them, and they know it. I would not have the blood of that innocent woman on my soul, as they have, for the universe—and she was but one of their many victims.
What in a Christian country could exceed the malignity which denied the dead body of that persecuted woman to her own daughter's supplications and tears? Are they not fiends upon earth? And not yet satisfied, they employed their own favorite agent, after he had been convicted of perjury, to procure witnesses to swear away the life of the son of that murdered woman and they but too nearly accomplished their purpose.
Already it was given out that I was imprisoned during the war. On the contrary, it was three months after I had taken the amnesty oath and had been restored to my rights of property, except slaves, and after Generals Lee and Johnson had surrendered.
G. B. LAMAR, SR.
GENERAL W. T. SHERMAN.
In the summer of the year 1868 certain gentlemen, who evinced an interest in my welfare, and sympathized with me in the tyrannical outrage to which I had been subjected by my arrest, imprisonment, and the plunder of my- effects, induced me to lay the matter before General Sherman, to whom I also forwarded a pamphlet, believing that the latter would fully explain the entire history of my persecution. To this I was favored with the following reply:
HEADQUARTERS MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSOURI,
ST. LOUIS, July 30th, 1868.
FRANCIS TUMBLETY, M. D., New York.
Dear Sir: Yours of July 9th was duly received, and held for me here till my return this A. M. I also find among the mail matter on my table a pamphlet entitled "Kidnapping of Dr. Tumblety," with a frontispiece illustrating the outrage.
While I regret the indignity and suffering to which you were subjected, I am sorry that it is entirely out of my province to aid you in obtaining the satisfaction which such a case undoubtedly merits.
With great respect, &c.,
THE BRITISH AMBASSADOR.
It is self-gratifying to feel assured that I have many friends who, untiring in my behalf, evince a determination to compel the justice and restitution which they insist, and with reason, that I have a right to claim. Here is the answer to an application made upon this subject to the Hon. Edward Thornton:
BRITISH LEGATION, WASHINGTON,
27th February, 1871.
FRANCIS TUMBLETY, M. D., Fifth Ave. Hotel.
Sir: In reply to a communication of the 24th instant, I have to inform you that I hope the commission which is about to meet at Washington will agree upon some general mode of settlement of all the claims between the two countries, but until that be done I cannot give you or your friends any information as to the proceedings which claimants will have to take.
You may, however, rest assured that due notice of the forms to be observed will be given, and that so distinguished a case as yours will meet with serious consideration.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
My friends and adherents still continued indefatigable in my behalf, as will be seen by the following from the principal representative of the English wing of the Joint High Commission.
LETTER FROM EARL DE GREY.
HER MAJESTY'S HIGH COMMISSION,
WASHINGTON, March 21st, 1871.
Sir: I am desired by Earl de Grey to acknowledge the receipt of a letter and pamphlet, the latter detailing certain events in your life, and which I am authorized to state he has perused with much interest.
His Lordship regrets—so far as your case is in question—that he is not authorized to receive any representations with respect to claims upon the Goverment of the United States, and he can therefore only suggest that you or your friends address all communications to Her Majesty's Minister at Washington, or to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
I am, sir, your most obedient humble servant,
TEN PERDEN.
LETTER FROM LORD STANLEY.
FOREIGN OFFICE, June 4, 1868.
Sir: I am directed by Lord Stanley to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 6th ultimo, and I am to express to you his Lordship's regret that he can only refer you, in reply, to the answer which you have received from Mr. Thornton to the communication which you addressed to him on the same subject.
S. HAMMOND.
It will be seen from the foregoing narrative that the wrong which, at the time, it was deemed could be inflicted with impunity, is in fair progress for full atonement. It is with me a high toned consideration of principle, the vindication of my character and the honorable name which it has been my study to maintain through life, and which—should I, through Providence, become the head of a family—it will be my pride to transmit to my immediate posterity.
I have bided my time, and the reader may, in the perusal of this narrative—a narrative which would never in the first place have been undertaken but for the sake of vindicating my name, which had been the mark of malevolent slander—realize and cherish the immortal principal that, however down trodden and crushed, Truth will arise triumphant in the end, for "It is mighty and must prevail."
Nota Bene.—My numerous friends, acquaintances and others, who may wish, or have occasion to correspond with me, will please address to P.O. Box No. 1199, from whence all communications will be forwarded to my future places of residence, and be acknowledged without delay.
Suspects: Francis Tumblety