After his retirement from office, in 1798, he "was seized with a fever, of
which I took little notice until I was obliged to call for the aid of
medicine; and with difficulty a remission thereof was so far effected as
to dose me all night on thursday with Bark--which having stopped it, and
weakness only remaining, will soon wear off as my appetite is returning;"
and to a correspondent he apologized for not sooner replying, and pleaded
"debilitated health, occasioned by the fever wch. deprived me of 20 lbs.
of the weight I had when you and I were at Troy Mills Scales, and rendered
writing irksome."

A glance at Washington's medical knowledge and opinions may not lack
interest. In the "Rules of civility" he had taken so to heart, the boy had
been taught that "In visiting the Sick, do not Presently play the
Physician if you be not Knowing therein," but plantation life trained
every man to a certain extent in physicking, and the yearly invoice sent
to London always ordered such drugs as were needed,--ipecacuanha, jalap,
Venice treacle, rhubarb, diacordium, etc., as well as medicines for horses
and dogs. In 1755 Washington received great benefit from one quack
medicine, "Dr. James's Powders;" he once bought a quantity of another,
"Godfrey's Cordial;" and at a later time Mrs. Washington tried a third,
"Annatipic Pills." More unenlightened still was a treatment prescribed for
Patsy Custis, when "Joshua Evans who came here last night, put a [metal]
ring on Patsey (for Fits)." A not much higher order of treatment was
Washington sending for Dr. Laurie to bleed his wife, and, as his diary
notes, the doctor "came here, I may add, drunk," so that a night's sleep
was necessary before the service could be rendered. When the small-pox was
raging in the Continental Army, even Washington's earnest request could
not get the Virginia Assembly to repeal a law which forbade inoculation,
and he had to urge his wife for over four years before he could bring her