to be with the highest regard

Your obed. servt.

ELISHA C. DICK
Superintend. of quar.
Port of Alexa.

In 1801 Dr. Dick was declared bankrupt, but in 1811 he was setting free
his Negro slave, Nancy, aged about forty. During these years he tended
the sick (a bill for sixty-five dollars was tendered to John Harper's
widow in 1804), fought the plague and fever, epidemics, and prescribed
for his friends with time out for a song or a sketch. His copy of James
Sharples' George Washington, now in the Mount Vernon collection, is a
competent, artistic portrait. He was fond of good food, good talk,
people and music. His genial spirit and charming wit graced many a
festive board, and that he was hospitable as well needs no further proof
than the following invitation:

If you can eat a good fat duck, come up with us and take pot luck. Of
white backs we have got a pair, so plump, so sound, so fat, so fair,
a London Alderman would fight, through pies and tarts to get one
bite. Moreover we have beef or pork, that you may use your knife and
fork. Come up precisely at two o'clock, the door shall open to your
knock. The day 'tho wet, the streets 'tho muddy, to keep out the cold
we'll have some toddy. And if perchance, you should get sick, you'll
have at hand, Yours,

E.C. DICK[144].

Surely this friendly medical advice is well worth including in any
sketch of Dr. Dick. A mature physician, he wrote to James H. Hooe:

Alexandria 20 of 2nd Month 1815

Respected friend:

I am in great hopes that the instructions I shall be able to give
thee with regard to the general treatment of the prevailing disease,
will be found on trial to be so far successful as to quiet in a good
measure thy present apprehensions. Having received applications by
letter from several physicians at a distance requesting information
as to the character of the disease and the plan of treatment
possessed by myself, I have thrown together a few practical remarks,
which I shall here transcribe, and then add such other observations
as may seem more especially necessary for thee in the present
emergency.

The disease usually commences with a chill, succeeded by fever and
accompanied either in the beginning or at a subsequent stage with
pain in the head back breast or sides, and sometimes with an
affection of