My dear Darwin

Ever since I met Frank at the Linnean the other night I have been greatly exercised in my mind about you and I should have written sooner if it were not for a suspicion that you may rate being worried with advice about your health as much as I do—¹ Never mind, I am going to do it— you ⁠⟨⁠are⁠⟩⁠ twenty miles off & I am a hundred feet up— so that you will be well out of breath by the time you reach me if you are revengeful—

What I want you to do is to get one of the cleverer sort of young London Doctors such as Brunton or Pye Smith to put himself in communication with Clark & then come & see you regularly, say once a week or so—oftener if need be—so long as your present not very satisfactory condition continues—² I understand all the difficulties about Clark & this seems to me the only way out of them— But whether it is or it isn’t you really ought to have somebody in whom dependence can be placed to look after your machinery (I daren’t say automaton³) critically— It is just one of these cases in which a stitch in time may save not only nine but ninety and nine.

There— I have delivered my soul—

Ever Yours | T. H. Huxley