The certificate of the surgeon of his regiment, made at the time of his discharge, stated his disability to be “lameness, caused by previous repeated and extensive ulcerations of his legs, extending deeply among the muscles and impairing their powers and action by cicatrices, all existing before enlistment and not mentioned to the mustering officers at the time.”

Upon this certificate, given at the time of the claimant’s discharge and while he was actually under the surgeon’s observation, an application for a pension was rejected by the Pension Bureau.

In the absence of anything impeaching the ability and integrity of the surgeon of the regiment, his certificate should, in my opinion, be regarded as a true statement of the condition of the claimant at the time of his discharge, though the committee’s report suggests that the surgeon’s skill may have been at fault when he declared that the ulcers existed before enlistment.  The cicatrices showing beyond a doubt the previous existence of this difficulty would be plainly apparent upon an examination by a surgeon, and their origin could hardly be mistaken.  The term of the claimant’s service was not sufficiently long to have developed and healed, even imperfectly, in a location previously healthy, ulcers of the kind mentioned in the claimant’s application.

My approval of this bill is therefore withheld upon the ground that I find nothing in my examination of the facts connected with the case which impeaches the value of the surgeon’s certificate upon which the adverse action of the Pension Bureau was predicated.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, May 24, 1886.

To the Senate of the United States: 

A bill which originated in the Senate, entitled “An act granting a pension to Edward Ayers,” and numbered 363, is herewith returned without approval.

The person named in this bill enlisted October 3, 1861, in an Indiana regiment and was mustered out of the service December 13, 1865.  He represents that he was injured in the hip at the battle of Days Gap, April 30, 1863, and for this a pension is provided for him by the bill under consideration.  His application for pension has been rejected by the Pension Bureau on the ground that it was proved on a special examination of the case that the claimant was injured by a fall when a boy, and that the injury complained of existed prior to his enlistment.

There is not a particle of proof or a fact stated either in the committee’s report or the records in the Pension Bureau, so far as they are brought to my notice, tending to show that the claimant was in hospital or under medical care a single day during the whole term of his enlistment.

The report of the committee contains the following statement: