PRECARIOUS HEALTH
While admiring her industry. Dr. House expressed foreboding very early, writing six months after her arrival: “H. is really very well now, but is far too industrious. I am curious to know the effect a Siamese sun will have on such habits of diligence as she has brought from the United States.”
That the tropical rays were not to be ignored, even by consecrated diligence, early became manifested by a strange “burning sensation in the top of the head,” from which Mrs. House began to suffer within a year and which continued, sometimes with alarming discomfort, throughout her residence in Siam. As the pain increased rather than abated after seven years in the tropics, her physician recommended a sojourn in her native climate in hopes of gaining permanent relief. Accordingly Dr. and Mrs. House left Bangkok in February, 1864, and spent two full years in America. The change brought relief which at the time it was hoped would be permanent.