From Sister Marie‑Dosithée Guérin to Mr. Guérin.
Source: autograph fd 20,5 x 13,1 cm.
V. + J.
From our Mother of Le Mans
the 8 January 1869
Dear brother
I received your last letter in which you announced two bottles of syrup which we did not receive, perhaps they were lost on the railway.
I thank you very much for all the wishes that you form for my happiness I assure you that they are fully realized because I am as happy as it is possible to be here below.
You reproach me for not telling you I was ill but when I wrote on the little girls' letter.
I wasn't as sick as when Zélie saw me; now I will give you exact news of my health the doctor came this morning. He finds me better breathing is better, last Sunday he had me put a blister behind my shoulder which we will maintain for some time (this process consisted in causing a serous secretion on the surface of the epidermis. We evacuated the liquid by piercing the resulting blisters. Many blisters will thus be applied to Thérèse during the last phase of her tuberculosis); the [1 v°] perspiration is less abundant and the cough is not frequent. If you knew all the kindness people have for me, I am ashamed and confused; Our good Mother, although ill herself, comes to see me several times a day and makes a novena with me at Ne-De de la Salette; I would like to be able to express all my gratitude to her for all the kindness and care she has always had for me, but as I cannot, I beg NS to be good enough to pay my debt.
Our good nurse sister confuses me and makes me suffer at the same time by all the care and all the pains that she takes after me. If she hears me coughing at night, she gets up straight away to bring me candy, my good mother (Mme Guérin mother) who took care of me so well has never done better, nor with more tenderness and I assure you if one becomes a nun in order to leave everything, NS knows how to provide for it even here below.
So dear friend here is my treatment with good water and horseradish syrup which I take but I have just as much confidence in cod liver oil, we follow the doctor's prescription exactly and he does not has not prescribed.
The little girls (Marie and Pauline) have just returned very happy, their mother is
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very happy she finds a lot of change in Marie and tells me that she did not believe that there could be a pension like the Visitation; don't worry about [2r°] my health if I were to be sicker I would write to you.
Kiss my sister-in-law and little Jeanne for me; I take part in all your embarrassments because I don't know of anything so boring as having workers (for the new layout of the Pharmacy).
I thank you very much, dear friend, for the syrup that you had the care to send me, I think that I won't need a box of it and that these two bottles will be enough for me; I am sorry for all the trouble it will give you to claim them.
Goodbye dear little friend, I kiss you with all my heart.
Sr. Marie Dosithee Guérin
of the Von Ste Marie
DSB
