 Empress Dowager Cixi regarded this incident as a humiliating scandal, so she warned the imperial physicians to remain silent about it.The physicians lied that the emperor was ill with smallpox and prescribed medicine and treatment for smallpox.A court official, Yun Yuting, wrote in his memoirs that the empress visited the Tongzhi Emperor on his sickbed while he complained about his mother's interfering and domineering ways.