Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1900-02-08
Ex-sECRETARY THOMPSON DYING.
Venerable Statesman is Now Ninety
One Years of Age

One Years of Age.
dispatch from Terre Haute, Ind, last
night says: Col. Richard W. Thompson is
on his deathbed at the age of ninety-one.
When DR.. Roberts left Col. Thompson at
IL o'clock this morning he said: Col.
Thompson is growing weaker all the time
He has no stored vitality and he is acquir-
ing none. He had a lot of trouble in his
throat this morning, bur it was temporary
and soon relieved. 1t is only question of
how long the remarkable old man can hold
cut against the natural process of exhaus:
ton. He may live day or two, and he
may die at any hour
Tonight at his bedside are his daughters,
Miss Mary Thompson and Mrs. G. w. Hen
ry, wife of the internal revenue collector
and his son, Harry Thompson. The physi-
can at a late hour tonight says that he
expects death at or o'clock in the morn
ing.
Col Thompson's last public appearances
were when he introduced President McKin-
ley at Terre Haute. when the latter was en-
route home from the trip to the Omaha ex-
position, in October, 1885, and again when
President Mckinley was in Terre Haute
last fall, returning from the northwest. He
is the oldest living ex-member of Congress,
and was Secretary of the Navy in President
Hayes cabinet. He has seen every Presi-
dent this nation has had except two. John
Quincy Adams died in his arms
Col Thompsons friends and physicians
think that he might have lived longer had
1t not been for excessive smoking.
In this connection the correspondent of
the New York World at Terre Haute says:
Col. Thompson was the greatest smoker
among the public men of the country, not
even excepting Grant Up to the last few
years, when his doctor prevented it, Col.
Thompson smoked almost necessarily night
and day A few years ago Gen. Tom Ben
nett of Richmond, Ind, himself a great
smoker, was urged not to shorten his life
by excessive cigar smoking, and he replied
Now, there is Col. Dick Thompson who
has smoked not less than twenty cigars a
cay, made of Wabash tobacco, for the last
sixty years. He is one of the youngest men
of his age in the world, and l do not in
tend to get scared until see him beginning
to break"
DR.. w. H. Roberts, Col. Thompson's physi-
clan, regarding his patients habits, said:
col. Thompson has been an excessive user
Of tobacco for the last seventy years. The
last fifty years he has not chewed, but only
smoked. For sixty years he has averaged
from ten to twenty cigars a day, although
during much of that time he smoked in
ceSsantly both day and night, and the num-
Der would be hard to estimate. For the
last five years l have restricted him to four
and sometimes three cigars a day, because
his nervous symptoms became threaten
ing as to produce originally what the
French call petit NAL which later on de-
veloped in Col. Thempson's case into full
fedged epileptic seizures. OF course, he is
an old man, but l believe he would have
lived longer If he had not used tobacco eX-
cessively. Col. Thompson has not been a
teetotaIer. but very moderate drinker, and
largely for medicinal purposes, and do
not believe ii in any way conduced to the
shortening but rather TO the lengthening
of his life. In fact. l am confident that if
he had not taken liquor under my advice
for the last few years the end would have
come sooner. l believe that what liquor he
has used in the last few years stimulated
and improved his vital forces, and that it
has not acted as a food or as creator of
power, but as whip and spur TO develop
latent powers