CLOSING YEARS 313frustrations. We know little about his health during the first few
years of his residence in the United States, except that he suffered
from a long and serious illness during his propaganda tour in 1852
and had to spend many weeks recuperating at the home of his
friend Baumann on a farm in New York State. Apparently, the
illness was typhoid fever, though Weitling also referred to what
might have been symptoms of gall-bladder trouble and to the
"aigue" which was the common malady of the American frontier.
In 1852 he embraced homeopathy, which one of his friends de
scribed as "good only for rich, elegant people who are sick from
ennui."
In 1868 Weitling fell on the ice in the yard of his home and so
severely stubbed his toe that it became badly infected. When a
second doctor was called in for consultation, it was decided to
operate, and the injured member was amputated at home. There
after, the patient's health seems to have declined, and there are
reasons to believe that he was suffering from diabetes.
With his usual desire to reduce his observations to writing,
Weitling devoted pages of his diary to keeping a clinical chart of
his own afflictions and carefully noted the multiplying evidences
of his physical decline. The "Pathological Items" begin with
March, 1869, and include notations about urine, chest pains, the
pulse rate, frequent headaches and spells of dizziness, night sweats,
swollen feet, and pressures on stomach and liver. One day when
the patient considered his appetite particularly poor he "ate butter,
bread, cheese, and chocolate." At other times he reported using
massage treatments, mustard plasters, sulphur and cream of tartar.
His eyesight became worse, though it was not until he was sixty-
one years old that he recorded that he could no longer read with
out glasses. He slept well, apparently, and could not quite decide
whether a decrease in headaches and spells of dizziness was the
result of his use of sulphur or of giving up coffee. Thus, even as he
watched the mounting symptoms of his own approaching old age,
Weitling remained the avid observer and investigator and kept a
record of the mysteries of his own physiology with as keen an