Box 11, Folder 5: Correspondence January-April 1873

Blank No. 1 The Western Union Telegraph Company

Dated Bucksport Me 23 1873 Received at [illegible] Feby 23 to I. A. Lapham

I send you nine thousand salmon eggs today.

C. G. Atkins

paid via Bangor Me

Blank No. 1 The Western Union Telegraph Company. Dated Bucksport 4 187 Received at [illegible] 4 To I. A. Lapham

I sent you eighteen thousand salmon eggs today [illegible] as before

C. G. Atkins

11 pd

via Bangor Me

C. G. Atkins March 4 1873

26 Feb 1873

My dear Mr. Lapham

I hardly know how to express to you the depth of my obligations, your package arrived yesterday & found me on a sick bed. I went over to Hamilton Canada, to meet my wife & the first night out I was taken with violent pains in my limbs, when I reached Mr. Prices (Gen Manager GWR) whose guest I was, by leaning on his arm I got into a carriage. The next morning I was barely able to dress myself. Price urged me to stay, but I feel that if I was to be sure I would make every effort to be at home - when the train arrived on which my wife was a passenger, [illegible] men carried me ^aboard^, & I at once went to bed. When I got to Chicago, similar arrangements had been made & I was placed on my own bed — that was last Friday, & today I leave my bed for the first time. The Doctors do not seem to comprehend my case, or at all

events, fail to give me relief. The first symptoms are acute pains in my limbs followed by swellings then for several days I have something like chills & fever, intense nausea & retching, panting for breath & excruciating pains in the right side which nothing will relieve but chloroform administered to insensibility. Where these occur everyday for a series of days they rapidly exhaust the system. Yesterday I could not raise my my left hand to my head, nor could I guide a pencil in my right hand. I hope the severity of the attack has ceased. But this afternoon the climax will arrive.

I have felt the premonitory symptoms of this attack for two months. If I could have been assured of a quiet place & of the presence of someone to take charge of me on my arrival, I would have gone to Madison, but to go to a hotel & be compelled to climb two or three series of stairs, to walk slippery streets, &c although to most men such objections

[written in left side margin] these spasms they are inclined to think are due in the passage of gall stones though none have been detected.