Washington did not approve of the bleeding before the doctor came, but
Washington said, "More, more." It was a universal remedy in those days,
but it brought no relief to the sufferer.

During the day three doctors arrived. Washington was bled three times;
blisters were applied to the throat and the feet; all that medical
science could do in that day was tried, but without success. The disease
was an acute laryngitis, and could have been relieved only by
tracheotomy, which was not practical in the South, though it had been
tried in Philadelphia at an earlier date. About half-past four in the
afternoon the sick man asked Mrs. Washington to go downstairs and fetch
two wills from his desk. He looked at them, and asked her to burn one of
them, which she did. Lear now came to his bedside and took his hand.

"I find I am going," Washington said to him. "My breath cannot last
long. I believed from the first that the disorder would prove fatal. Do
you arrange and record all my late military letters and papers. Arrange
my accounts and settle my books, as you know more about them than anyone
else, and let Mr. Rawlins finish recording my other letters which he has
begun."

Washington asked Lear whether he thought of anything else that ought to
be done; he had but a very short time, he said, to remain with his
friends. The secretary answered that he could think of nothing, and that
he hoped the General was not so near his end as he thought. Washington
smiled, and said that he certainly was, "and that, as it was a debt
which we must all pay, he looked on the event with perfect resignation."

Sometimes he seemed to be in pain and distress from the difficulty of
breathing, and was very restless. Lear would then lie down upon the bed