Written from Gladstone Terrace, Edinburgh.
Sophia Jex-Blake, Miss Rorison and Mrs. Foggo were among the original fourteen students at the London Women's medicine School but were earlier part of an Edinburgh student group.
Commenting humorously on the medical profession; discussing W.E Henley and a possible piece on Heine Ferrier intends to do for Leslie Stephen; commenting on Jex Blake and female doctors and mentioning mutual female friends; saying he is happy "...to learn that thou hadst escaped out of the clutches of Jonathan (Hutchinson) & David (Maceeee Anderson) - Depend upon it they know nothing about your case or anybody else's. When two doctors get together it is a very poor look out for the patient both as regards body & purse. There can only be one worse predicament, namely to be the subject of a consultation between three doctors. I have been behind the scenes a good deal in the matter of doctors & of late I have consorted much with sucking MDs - indeed my class (in photograph) is entirely composed of medicine-men actual or potential - & they all admit that nobody knows anything about it. They don't even know what it is. In surgery, of course, it is different - your surgeon can cut off your leg or head or a stone out of your belly or a fistula &c &c - But your doctor does nothing but look at an expensive watch & order your bowels to be kept open . . . 'Oh Lord! Oh Lord! Giver of Light & Hater of Darkness! How long, how long!' (Carlyle). I have not the slightest doubt that your voyage across Atlantic will set you up as well as you ever were. One thing you must steadily avoid, however, - don't become a Yankee! don't talk about a thing being 'quite' nice &c&c Louis Stevenson is a vile Yankee now, I suppose - he doesn't talk about being 'ill', but says he 'I have been very sick' - Can you vomit? - He (RLS) is married now. He told me he was to be turned off early in May & then go to the 'mountains a withered bridegroom' - A cheerful prospect for his wife, ain't it? But I believe, she takes fits like fun, so it's all right...It's a sad business I think & so does Henley, who seems indeed to think that RLS has committed a felo de &c - I was deucedly glad to see Henley again as you may imagine. He is one of the right sort, if you like - there is not another man going probably with less humbug about him...I intend to do a Heine for Leslie Stephen, but I am not ready yet. I have much to say about the Jews generally...Your account of John's flatulence nearly drove me wild. I cannot conceive a man consulting a woman doctor upon many subjects, but Wind is the one subject which I for one could not touch upon with a Female. I hope Mrs. Foggo's Nitro-hydrochloric acid will give him something to think about. What a joke it would be if she ended in marrying him for flatulency! There may be no other cure & he is bound to place implicit confidence in his medical adviser...I saw Jex Blake driving in a pony carriage in the Meadows not long ago with a boy in buttons behind her! Ye Gods! What a sight! a fat, fierce, black-whiskered woman (armed with an enema) pervading space - & resolutely bent upon giving everybody a hearty injection - Rorison I remember & liked, but God keep us all, say I, from women doctors. 'Twas one of the few good points about Goldie in Chal. Hosp : - that she detested Jex Blake & Co (Jealousy probably). I would not submit my naked body to any woman's inspection - save in the way of kindness, of course. I am very glad to hear that Ray is not dead but merely Scandinavianizing as usual. What a rum little woman she was. I regret very much now that I didn't speak more openly to her about the Relation of the Sexes. I hope to do it yet; if we are both spared. So you remember her telling us that if it had not been for her belief in a future state she would have been a perfect Messalina? - or some such statement - She overlooked the fact that it takes two to do that. The Vulture was also a curious person - probably a dangerous lunatic, like the woman in Jane Eyre - Rochester's wife - Frewer or Frewen, too, was interesting in her intense schoolmissishness, although I have no doubt that she was the Devil at bottom. How Ray gloated over Atheism & every possible form of intellectual infidelity - & then how she abused Rubinstein for being an immoral man. Don't you remember? I was very glad to see that Grant was to have a DCL from Oxford. I have often wondered he didn't get it long ago. Tell Jean to write some day soon."