BUCHANAN.

I also called on Dr. Samuel Jackson, who, during a long and extended
practice in his profession, had been at one time Henry Clay's
physician. I attended a course of his lectures at the Medical
Department of the University of Pennsylvania. He had lost the use of
his lower extremities, and was seated in a chair, at his home in
Philadelphia, Pa. He stated he had from early life to the present been
a hard student; and as he was about to pass through the portal of this
life into another, he expected still to be a student there. He stated
that it had at different times of his life been a matter of serious
consideration as to how much inflammable matter in a given time the sun
used in warming the space included in the solar system. He said he
expected to be able to make this calculation in another life.

I also met with General James L. Kiernan, in New York city. I was
called to attend him whilst visiting in that city, in an attack of
congestive chills, which he had contracted whilst on duty in the State
of Louisiana. He had stumped several of the northern States for
President Lincoln's second election, and had been appointed United
States Consul to China after that election. He filled this office till
the close of President Johnson's administration. He was a man about
forty-five years of age, an excellent conversationalist, a good
companion, and a fine orator.

On September 23, 1865, I was ordered to Cairo, Ill., for duty aboard
the U.S. monitors Oneota and Catawba, as a relief to Acting Assistant
Surgeon Geo. C. Osgood. I reported to Commodore J. W. Livingston for
duty October 6, 1865, having arrived in Cairo on the previous evening.
I stopped at the St. Charles Hotel all night. The weather was very hot
and dry, the river was low, and for a distance along shore an unhealthy
green foam had gathered along the edge of the river. Congestive chills
were quite prevalent there that fall.

Cairo is a large and thriving town, situated at the extreme southern
point of the state of Illinois. Many of the houses then were built on
stilts or posts. The sidewalks were also resting on stilts or posts, so
that in crossing a street a person would have to walk down a pair of
stairs, then across the street, and mount another pair of stairs.
During the time of a rise in the Mississippi or Ohio river, the place
was flooded, and then the citizens would use boats for the purpose of
navigating from place to place. The