During the day three doctors arrived. Washington was bled three times; blisters were applied to the throat and the feet; all that medical science could do in that day was tried, but without success. The disease was an acute laryngitis, and could have been relieved only by tracheotomy, which was not practical in the South, though it had been tried in Philadelphia at an earlier date. About half-past four in the afternoon the sick man asked Mrs. Washington to go downstairs and fetch two wills from his desk. He looked at them, and asked her to burn one of them, which she did. Lear now came to his bedside and took his hand. "I find I am going," Washington said to him. "My breath cannot last long. I believed from the first that the disorder would prove fatal. Do you arrange and record all my late military letters and papers. Arrange my accounts and settle my books, as you know more about them than anyone else, and let Mr. Rawlins finish recording my other letters which he has begun." Washington asked Lear whether he thought of anything else that ought to be done; he had but a very short time, he said, to remain with his friends. The secretary answered that he could think of nothing, and that he hoped the General was not so near his end as he thought. Washington smiled, and said that he certainly was, "and that, as it was a debt which we must all pay, he looked on the event with perfect resignation." Sometimes he seemed to be in pain and distress from the difficulty of breathing, and was very restless. Lear would then lie down upon the bed and raise and turn him as gently as possibly. Washington often said, "I am afraid I shall fatigue you too much"; and when the young man assured him that he wished for nothing but to give him ease, Washington replied: "Well, it is a debt we must pay to each other, and I hope that when you want aid of this kind you will find it." He noticed that his servant, Christopher, had been standing most of the day, and told him to sit down. He asked when his nephew Lewis and his adopted son Custis, who were away from home, would return. When his lifelong friend, Dr. Craik, came to his bedside, he said: "Doctor, I die hard, but I am not afraid to go. I believed from my first attack that I should not survive it. My breath cannot last long." The doctor was unable to answer from grief, and could only press his hand.