This letter was sent to Ira Sayles’ pharmacist buddy, E.B. Hall, during the USGS employee’s field work several months after the June correspondence. Though Ira does not name the son who is traveling with him through the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, it can be deduced. Ira and estranged-wife Serena lost their daughter, Florette, in 1858 and son, Merlin, in 1877. Clifton, Ira’s oldest boy, was farming Mecklenburg County (VA) soil by the 1880s, and raising three young kids, Alice, Harold, and Jennie Belle, with wife Anna and mother Serena. That leaves only one child able to be the son referenced in this letter, their youngest child, Christopher Sherman, born in 1862 shortly before Ira enlisted in the Union Army. Apparently the boy was close to Ira, leaving Virginia to live with Ira in New York by 1880. And then, as mentioned here, traveling with his father as Ira conducted specimen-collecting fieldwork for the United States Geological Survey.

---

Whitesburg, Hamblen Co., Tenn.,

Thursday Morning, October 9, 1884

Friend Hall,

I send enclosed a Post Office Money Order for $20. Out of this pay yourself what I have so long owed you, and send to my address, as above, the balance in Lactopeptine, same as hitherto.

My son is just recovering from a run of Typhoid Congestive Fever. During its entire course, I have given Lactopeptine after every mouthful of nourishment; and I continue this now, uring his convalescence.

I proceed on the theory that, if no crude undigested food is permitted to pass out of the stomach into the lower bowels, first, a main cause for irritation of the lower portion is stopped; and secondly, all the secretion into the chylopoietic viscera will be healthy, and as nearly healthy chyle will be formed in its passage into the circulation as it is possible for the chylopoietic glands to form.

I think my reasoning correct; and I know this practice is proving correct. I have thereby prevented the loss of strenght; and, though my patient is quite weak, as compared with the strength of health, yet he is in a better condition than I ever before saw one come out of Typhoid.

Please send the medicine as soon as practicable, and

Great Oblige (sic)

Yours Very Respectfully, Ira Sayles