Letter from J. Walter Ferrier, Edinburgh, to My dearest Cog, 1880 June 1 : autograph manuscript signed.

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."