Manuscript Releases, vol. 6 [Nos. 347-418]

Dr. Jackson's Reports Description of Willie C. White's Character

This boy is of the nervous-bilious constitution and gets his peculiarities almost entirely from his father or from his father's mother's side. He is of good stock and good blood—he is “thorough bred.” He has got a woman's temperament and will be kind loving and courteous. He has an excellent head, and will make a kind, good, true man. He will always make friends wherever he goes. He has a fine physical build throughout, with the exception of his bowels which are too large. He is of scrofulous habit and decidedly pre-disposed to enlargement of mesenteric glands, and is in danger, under bad habits of living, of having them so increase in size as to break down his nutritive capacity. He should live upon the simplest food, making fruit an essential or staple of his ailment. He should not be pushed in school, but be permitted to learn largely from out of door things or inductively, cultivating his special senses rather than his abstract capacity for learning until he is twelve or fifteen year of age. If he is cared for with proper heed and propriety, there is no reason why he may not live, but he is liable to diseases of the glandular system, and bad habits of living (indicated by gross food and the use of stimulants and spices) would, in the long run, be very prejudicial to his health. 6MR 346.3

He has a very fine organization. His bone and brain, muscle and sinew and blood are all of fine quality. If he can be reared to manhood, he will take rank as a lover of whatever is good and true in any community where he may be. He naturally takes to the right and true. Of his own accord he would sustain loving relations to those of his own age or more advanced in years. 6MR 347.1

His education we could hardly speak of at present until he is older. That needs to be decided by what he will, in years to come, exhibit. He should eat but twice a day have his body kept clean, be brought up to industrious habits, and taught to regularity in their exhibition. 6MR 347.2

(Signed) James C. Jackson, M.D.

Our home

Dansville, N. Y.,

September 14, 1864.