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 to the point of submitting to the operation.  One quality which implies greatness is told by a visitor, who states that in his call “an allusion was made to a serious fit of illness he had recently suffered; but he took no notice of it” Custis notes that “his aversion to the use of medicine was extreme; and, even when in great suffering, it was only by the entreaties of his lady, and the respectful, yet beseeching look of his oldest friend and companion in arms (Dr. James Craik) that he could be prevailed upon to take the slightest preparation of medicine.”  In line with this was his refusal to take anything for a cold, saying, “Let it go as it came,” though this good sense was apparently restricted to his own colds, for Watson relates that in a visit to Mount Vernon “I was extremely oppressed by a severe cold and excessive coughing, contracted by the exposure of a harsh journey.  He pressed me to use some remedies, but I declined doing so.  As usual, after retiring my coughing increased.  When some time had elapsed, the door of my room was gently opened, and, on drawing my bed-curtains, to my utter astonishment, I beheld Washington himself, standing at my bedside, with a bowl of hot tea in his hand.”