In August, the President addressed Congress regarding the increasingly economically damaging coal and rail strikes. Florence followed the events of the strikes closely, while Warren drank excessively to deal with the anxiety it brought about in him. Florence instructed her Secret Service agent Harry Barker to keep tabs on her husband, especially if she happened to be away from him. Her discovery of the affair with Nan Britton took its toll on her health. In early September she came down with a serious kidney ailment, and the public was alerted as to the severity of it on September 8 in a medical bulletin. The eminent physician Charles Horace Mayo was called in to treat her, which sparked jealousy from Dr. Sawyer. By the time he arrived, she was suffering from septicemia and was falling in and out of consciousness.