Reminiscences of the late Mr. Whitney. 259 



so injuriously frustrated.* He examined, with great care and coolness 

 the best medical writers on his disease ; he inspected their plates ; 

 conversed freely with his professional advisers, who withheld nothing 

 from him, and he was not satisfied without such anatomical illustra- 

 tions as were furnished from the museum of an eminent professor of 

 anatomy. He critically recorded such facts in his case as interested 

 him the most, and, in coolness and decision, acted rather as if he 

 himself had been the physician than the patient. 



During this period, embracing at intervals several years, he devi- 

 sed and caused to be constructed various instruments, for his own 

 personal use, the minute description of which would not be appro- 

 priate to this place. Nothing that he ever invented, not even the 

 cotton gin, discovered a more perfect comprehension of the difficul- 

 ties to be surmounted, or evinced more efficient ingenuity, in the ac- 

 complishment of his object. Such was his resolution and persevere 

 ance, that from his sick chamber, he wrote both to London and Paris, 

 for materials important to his plans, and he lived to receive the things 

 he required and to apply them in the way that he had intended. He 

 was perfectly successful, so far as any mechanical means could afford 

 relief or palliation ; but his terrible malady bore down his constitution, 

 by repeated, and eventually by incessant inroads, upon the powers of 

 life, which at last yielded to assaults which no human means could 

 avert or sustain. One of the important inventions of that distressing 

 period is in possession of the artist who was employed to construct 

 the instrument,* but it is to be feared that other coiitrivances, re- 

 markable for their simplicity and efficiency, as well as originality, 

 are but imperfectly remembered by the friends and attendants. 1 

 urged Mr. Whitney and the late Dr. Smith, his attending physician, 

 to make sure of these inventions while it was possible, but I believe 



* He made many journeys to Georgia on this painful business, and generally by 

 land in an open sulkey. Near the close of life, he said in my hearing, that all 

 he had received for the invention of the cotton gin, had not more than compensated 

 him for the enormous expenses which he had incurred, and for the time which he 

 had devoted during many of the best years of his life, in the prosecution of this 

 subject. He therefore felt that his just claims on the cotton growing States, es- 

 pecially on those that had made him no returns for this invention, so important to 

 his country, were still unsatisfied, and that both justice and honor reqiiired that 

 ''ompensatlon should be made. 



* Mr. Deming, 



