On June 4, 1805, Dolley Madison wrote to her sister Anna that she had injured her knee and spent ten days in bed, unable to walk or put any weight on it. Dolley was suffering from an ulcerated knee. She feared she “would never walk again,” suggesting amputation was a possibility.
Dolley’s knee and mental well-being gradually worsened. A letter to Anna from her niece Lucia Cutts Beverly’s collection “The Letters and Memoirs of Dolley Madison,” dated to July 8, 1805, had her still bedridden and alone in a deserted Washington, D.C. – Congress was presumably not in session. Despite her problems she had committed to helping Thomas Jefferson’s granddaughter Virginia do her wedding shopping.
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When Dolley knee problem began, her husband, then-Secretary of State James Madison, begged her to see Philadelphia Dr. James Physic for treatment. She initially refused because she “dread[ed] the separation,” but eventually assented, writing to Anna from Philadelphia that she had been well received and assured of recovery.
Despite the high standard of care she received, Dolley’s letters make it clear that the months of separation from her husband were not easy. When James Madison faced weather problems traveling to Washington, she wrote that she was “unable to sleep, from anxiety for [him] … Detention, cold, and accident seem[ed] to menace him.” She also started having dreams about her husband “unable to move, from riding so far and so fast.” It was not until mid-November that she was released. But not before she received a special treat: a visit from her sister Anna.
