Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Autograph letter signed : Venice, to Dr. Baldwin, 1887 Mar. 8.

BIB_ID
396894
Accession number
MA 8732.3
Creator
James, Henry, 1843-1916.
Display Date
1887 Mar. 8.
Credit line
Gift of Mrs. Arthur Bliss Lane and Mrs. Stanley B. Hawks, 1968.
Description
1 item (16 pages) ; 17.5 x 11.4 cm + envelope
Notes
Envelope with fragment of the Venice postmark on the recto, the Firenze postmark on the verso and addressed to "Doctor W.W. Baldwin / 1 Via del Moro. di faccia a Ponte Carraia) / Firenze."
Part of a collection of letters from Henry James to Dr. William W. Baldwin between 1887 and 1900 (MA 8732.1-75). This collection is part of a much larger collection of letters to Dr. Baldwin from authors, English royalty and other luminaries of the period, including Samuel Clemens, William Dean Howells, Sarah Orne Jewett, Henry Cabot Lodge, Booth Tarkington, Edith Wharton and Constance Fenimore Woolson. See MA 3564 for more information on the complete Baldwin collection.
Written from the "Palazzino Alvisi / Canal Grande / Venice".
Provenance
Gift of Mrs. Arthur Bliss Lane and Mrs. Stanley B. Hawks, 1968.
Summary
Asking for his medical opinion; saying "Perhaps I am guilty of an act of idiocy in attempting to ask a medical opinion of you by letter. But I shall nevertheless try it, & at the worst you can tell me that it's no use without your seeing me. If the affliction for which I am moved to consult you gets worse (as it may) I shall come back to Florence & see you : & in that case it will be simpler for me not to have committed myself to any of the physicians here. I have been suffering for several days & past with very considerable pain in the region of the kidneys, which I at first attributed to a rather violent cold & chill which I took last week. I was in bed for a couple of days with an outrageous neuralgic headache, such as I have every now & then - though much less often than formerly; this made me feverish, & at night I uncovered myself & opened my window - to excess - to relieve myself. This was, I confess, very indiscreet - for the next morning I found that I had caught a 'general cold' lodged, however, particularly in the legs (which ached, rheumatically) in the intestines - which ached also - & the lower part of the back. The effects of this cold have now passed away, save (if their condition be an effect of the cold) from what I suppose to be my kidneys...I have a sense as if they were enlarged or inflamed. When I bend over, the pain is very much increased - especially if I prolong the bending movement. It is also increased by long sitting & leaning back in my chair. It is on the other hand, considerably relieved by walking. I walked yesterday for two hours continuously & at the end of this time I suffered less than at the beginning - though if I had continued another hour & got very tired I should have felt worse again. I have no sensation whatever connected with the passing of water - no pain in the bladder. My water is thick & makes a reddish deposit. But I should add that this has been the case, off & on, for years - & the circumstance has never been accompanied by any disagreeable sensation;" explaining that he had seen a doctor in London who "found my kidney a good deal enlarged, - & in the course of his examination it occurred to me as worth mentioning that I had for a long time previous been drinking large quantities of Apollinaris water - drinking in fact almost nothing else, as I was taking less & less wine (I never have drunk much) - & the London water is bad...He subsequently told me that a few cases of Apollinaris disagreeing in that way had been noted - but only a very few - & oddly enough, they were all Americans;" saying the doctor gave him a prescription which relieved the symptoms and asked him to stop drinking the Apollinaris which he did; adding that the pain he is feeling now is less severe than the pain he felt a year ago and the "...act of sitting is by no means so painful to me as then - when it moved me to buy a standing desk, on triple legs, so as not to sit at my writing (an article which immediately afterwards became useless to me, as my disorder ebbed so suddenly, at the end of three or four days of no Apollinaris!);" asking if "...all this represent any apprehensible condition to you - or are you quite in the dark so long as you don't see my water?;" adding that if he has any recommendation it would be "thankfully received & religiously put into practice..."