According to my opinion, said disability and the constant use of
  morphia in consequence of it may have been the cause of his death.

This and the statement of a druggist in Louisville that he sold him morphine to alleviate pain, and of two different persons with whom he boarded at that city in 1885 to the same effect, is all the evidence that I can discover tending in the least to hint that the death of the pensioner resulted from any cause but sunstroke, which really stands as the undisputed cause of death.

The allegation in the committee’s report that the beneficiary’s claim was rejected by the Pension Bureau on the ground that her husband’s death proceeded from the use of morphine is erroneous.  The cause of rejection is stated to be “that the death cause (sunstroke) was not the result of the soldier’s military service.”

We are not, therefore, left to the consideration of the question whether death from the use of morphine to allay pain can be charged to the disability incurred, for if death resulted from sunstroke it will hardly be claimed that it was in any way related to such disability.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, October 16, 1888

To the House of Representatives: 

I return without approval House bill No. 6201, entitled “An act granting a pension to John Robeson.”

The beneficiary named in this bill enlisted August 8, 1862, and was discharged for disability on the 21st day of November, 1862, after a service of a little more than three months.

In the certificate of disability upon which his discharge was granted the captain of the beneficiary’s company states that “he has been unfit for duty for sixty days; that the soldier represents that he has not done efficient service since enlistment by reason of phthisic, from which he has suffered since childhood, but has grown worse since entering the service.”

The surgeon of the regiment states in said certificate that “the soldier has asthma, with which he has been afflicted from his infancy.”

Upon this certificate, based necessarily so far as his previous condition is concerned, this man procured his discharge after doing but very slight service.

He filed an application for pension in the Pension Bureau in October, 1879, basing his claim upon the allegation that he contracted asthma in September, 1862, about a month after he entered the service.

Two special examinations were had in his case, and his statement was taken in each.

On the first examination he said he could not account for the statements of his captain and surgeon, unless they arose from a remark he made that he had phthisic when he was small.

On the second he accounted for the statements of the captain and surgeon by saying that he felt very sick and feared that he could not live if he remained in the service; that he was suffering with jaundice as well as asthma; and having been told that he could not be discharged on account of jaundice, but could on account of asthma, he asked the captain to tell the surgeon that he had known him to have asthma before enlistment.  He also says that he procured others to tell the same story.