EXECUTIVE MANSION, _April 16, 1888_.
_To the Senate_:
I return herewith without approval Senate bill No. 549, entitled "An act
granting a pension to Hannah R. Langdon."
The husband of the beneficiary named in this bill entered the military
service of the United States as assistant surgeon in a Vermont regiment
on the 7th day of October, 1862, and less than six months thereafter
tendered his resignation, based upon a surgeon's certificate of
disability on account of chronic hepatitis (inflammation of the liver)
and diarrhea.
On the 12th day of June, 1880, more than seventeen years after his
discharge, he filed a claim for pension, alleging chronic diarrhea and
resulting piles. He was allowed a pension in January, 1881, and died of
consumption on the 24th day of September, in the same year.
Prior to the allowance of his claim for pension he wrote to the Bureau
of Pensions a full history of his disability as resulting from chronic
diarrhea and piles, and in that letter he made the following statement:
I have had no other disease, except last September (1880) I had
pleurisy and congestion of my left lung.
From other sources the Bureau derived the information that the deceased
had suffered an attack of pleuro-pneumonia on his left side, and that
his recovery had been partial.
In December, 1880, he was examined by two members of the board of
surgeons at Burlington, Vt., of which board he was also a member, and
the following facts were certified:
For the past fifteen years claimant has practiced his profession in this
city, and has up to within a year or a year and a half of this date
shown a vigor and power of endurance quite equal to the labor imposed
upon him by the popular demand for his services. About a year ago he
evinced symptoms of breaking down, cough, emaciation, and debility.
These results--"breaking down, cough, emaciation, and debility"--are
the natural effects of such an attack as the deceased himself reported,
though not made by him any ground of a claim for pension, and it seems
quite clear that his death in September, 1881, must be chargeable to the
same cause.
His widow, the beneficiary named in this bill, filed her claim for
pension December 5, 1881, based upon the ground that her husband's death
from consumption was due to the chronic diarrhea for which he was
pensioned. Upon such application the testimony of Dr. H.H. Atwater was
filed, to the effect that about 1879 he began to treat the deceased
regularly for pleuro-pneumonia, followed by abscesses and degeneration
of lung tissue, which finally resulted in death, and that these diseased
conditions were complicated with digestive affections, such as diarrhea,
dyspepsia, and indigestion. Another affidavit of Dr. Atwater, made in
1886, will be found in the report upon this bill made by the House
Committee on Invalid Pensions.
The claimant's application for a pension was rejected by the Pension
Bureau on the ground that the cause of her husband's death was not shown
to have been connected in any degree with the disease on account of
which he was pensioned or with his military service.