ng at home. I always felt while there as if I was one of the
family. I gladly recommend your Institution to all persons who are
afflicted with any kind of chronic disease, for from my own experience I
_know_ the professional staff will do all which they promise to do.
Please accept my thanks for the speedy benefits and perfect cure of my
diseases, and I think your Institution is worthy of the highest
endorsement.

Yours truly,
WILLIAM HENKEL,
No. 1917 Congress Street, St. Louis, Mo.

"_A question of life or death!_"

CASE 2A-107. STONE IN BLADDER. CASE SIMILAR TO THAT OF COL. ELLIOTT F.
SHEPARD, WHO DIED IN NEW YORK WHILE UNDERGOING AN OPERATION.

[Illustration: David S. Clark, Esq.]

_Gentlemen_--I am seventy-seven years of age and have resided in Erie
for sixty-two years, and for thirty-six years have been an elder in the
First Presbyterian Church. During four or five years I suffered from a
painful affection of the bladder; the severity permitted neither freedom
from pain by day nor calm repose by night. Meanwhile, I consulted
leading physicians and visited numerous health resorts. Neither time,
means nor effort were spared that I might be free from pain. Relief came
unexpectedly. A signal act of Providence, that should be acknowledged
daily, brought your Institution to my notice, though I had then no
acquaintance with any one connected with it. With me it was a question
of life or death. Up to last March I was in a condition of unendurable
torture. I knew that at my age, after the months of pain already borne,
that any operation would be serious, perhaps fatal. Accordingly, I
arranged my temporal affairs and carefully "set my house in order." On
the 13th of March last, I started for Buffalo to your Institution. Still
uninformed as to the cause of my trouble, I submitted to a searching
examination, as to my habits, constitution, parentage, the age and cause
of death of my parents, and other facts, from which a tolerable
biography could have been prepared. All was kindly intended. Their aim
was to locate my ailment and then to determine my ability to undergo an
operation. Having found a stone in the bladder, they advised that it be
crushed and extracted. By a strange coincidence as this was announced, I
learned of Col. Elliott F. Shepard's death under an operation for the
same disease. He was many years my junior, and seemingly far better able
to undergo the operation. Still, in my desperation, I d