EXECUTIVE MANSION, _July 6, 1886_.
_To the House of Representatives_:
I herewith return without approval House bill No. 3043, entitled "An act
granting a pension to Lewis W. Scanland."
The claimant filed his declaration for a pension in 1884, alleging that
he contracted chronic diarrhea while serving in a company of mounted
Illinois volunteers in the Black Hawk War.
The records show that he served from April 18, 1832, to May 28, in the
same year.
He was examined by a board of surgeons in 1884, when he was said to be
75 years old. In his examination he did not claim to have diarrhea for a
good many years. On the contrary, he claimed to be affected with
constipation, and said he had never had diarrhea of late years, except
at times when he had taken medicine for constipation.
I am inclined to think it would have been a fortunate thing if in this
case it could have been demonstrated that a man could thrive so well
with the chronic diarrhea for fifty-two years as its existence in the
case of this good old gentleman would prove. We should then, perhaps,
have less of it in claims for pensions.
The fact is, in this case there is no disability which can be traced to
the forty days' military service of fifty-four years ago, and I think
little, if any, more infirmity than is usually found in men of the age
of the claimant.
Entertaining this belief, I am constrained to withhold my signature from
this bill.