Capt. C. E. Estabrook, Milwaukee, July 30, 1908
Dear Comrade:
Nearly four months have
elapsed since the re-amputation of my thigh was performed. Now a cushion
of muscle covers the end of the thigh-bone which was shortened by about
2 inches, where for 45 years the unprotected bone had protruded beyond
the thin rim of cuticle grown fast to its sides. The latter had to support
the whole strain of my bodyweight (155 lbs) at every step during more than
an average lifetime. My present surgeons, Dr. A. J. Herschmann and Dr.
H. Reineking found very little flesh available within reach, so that the
present new muscular cushion is not thick, but it seems to suffice for
protection against the electromagnetic and other influences of the atmosphere
and partly against suffering from pressure and tension. When using an artificial
limb, though the new cicatrice is nearly five inches long.
This new seam unavoidably
remained very sensitive for about three months; but during this last month,
July, the external sensitiveness and the internal painful nervous irritation
and twitching have rapidly diminished, and I am now experiencing what almost
seems a miracle: a very gradually increasing calmness of my whole nervous
system, signs of some degree of rejuvenation of mental working capacity,
a not, exuberant but appreciable awakening of hopefulness.
Endowed with a large
inherited fund of will power and energy, I determined after returning
from the war in a permanently maimed condition, to make every effort, in
the face of most unfortunate economic environments and prospects to neutralize
the disadvantages of my physical condition and other circumstances.
When not absolutely prostrated by the frequent attacks of excruciating
stump pain, I endeavored by continued strenuous exercise to strengthen
my physical powers and skill; endeavors that my friends sometimes called
superhuman and foolhardy, such as the ascent of mountains on foot or on
mule or horseback. In ordinary every day life, I suppressed all outward
signs of suffering as far as possible. I hardly every spoke of my tortures
except to my own family, unless I was questioned, and I accomplished feats
(such as the ascent of the Saentis Mountain (8300 ft.) in 7 hours on a
route for which able-bodied alpinists require 4 hours) which I was
assured by the press in Switzerland, had never been consummated before.
But I did it under tortures and repeatedly risked total exhaustion, as
in the case named and many others, for instance in crossing and recrossing
the Sierras in Mexico on mule back with my blood thickened by the heat
on the torrid lower levels.
Contrasting my present
condition brought about by the recent successful amputation which relieved
my whole nervous system from the never ceasing dull, twitching or
acute pain of the past 45 years, I am convinced that the total miscarriage
of the operations I was subject to in1863 was not only the direct cause
of the more or less severe tortures. I had to suffer at nearly every step
(many thousands of steps per day when not laid up) for 45 years, but also
of mental and physical overstrain in consequence of almost continuous painful
irritation of the whole nervous system, and resulting there from a number
of prolonged periods of nervous and mental affliction and depression which
several times obliged me to give up public offices and business enterprises,
and required years for cure and recuperation.
I was not responsible
in any possible way for the failure of the first amputation and the subsequent
operations performed by the surgeons in the employ of the United States
in 1863. I never objected to the amputation of the let, because I was convinced
that an artificial foot would be much preferable to a stiff ankle. I remember
distinctly that I expressed a wish to be relieved of the torturing leg
which was swollen and discolored up to the knee, long before the surgeons
were forced under hurried preparations, to hastily perform the amputation,
when, June 27,1863, the nurse or steward reported that the lymphatic vessels
on the inside of the thigh were inflamed nearly to the groin, threatening
death within a few hours.
My painful and irritated
thigh-stump with the unprotected bone protruding could never "be compared
in quality either for comfort, or for use in walking, with a stump of less
than half the length of the femur covered with a normal cushion of muscle
and well healed, for which the pensioners received $120.00 more per year
than I did for {?} years until {?} under a ruling giving patients whose
thigh stumps were longer than half the length of the femur ten dollars
($10) per month less than those patients whose thigh stumps were only half
the length of the femur or less, without considering the fact that an ill-shaped,
irritable and painful long stump is much less comfortable and useful than
a sound painless shorter stump.
My life during a large
part of these past 45 years was unnecessarily made a failure by the said
bad operations as to comfort, pleasure, health and the acquisition of money,
a home and competence for old age for myself and my aging wife; a bad condition
of my health was caused a number of times by long and frequent severe attacks
of stump-pain and the narcotics necessarily used to alleviate them.
I was obliged by the failures of health so caused to resign several business
situations, and public offices, and give up business enterprises in which
I had been giving satisfaction, thus losing my income wholly or largely
during about 16 years (1869-75, to 1887 to 93, 1905 to 1908). This loss
computed at an average of $1,500.00 per year (a low estimate for literary
and managerial work of a high grade) amounts to $24,000.00. - The erroneous
classification of my pension to the extent of $120.00 per year for about
37 years I believe, gives me a claim on the pension fund of $4500.00, amounting
to a total claim for losses inflicted upon me unnecessarily and without
any fault of my own, of about $28,400.00.
Author/Creator: Wisconsin History Commission.
Title: Papers, 1861-1865, 1884-1918.
Quantity: 1.6 c.f. (5 archives boxes)
