Darwin Correspondence Project

The Lodge | Malvern

June 13th—

My dear Sir

I thank you cordially for your extremely kind note & for all the trouble & precautions which you have taken, & which are almost more than the occasion deserves.— I have, also, had a very obliging note from Mr Murray, written, I think, before even he had heard from you, so that all will be made quite right & very much obliged I am to you. I hope that the volume may bring forth some good fruit & so repay you for your trouble in superintending it.—

I have been here for three months under Dr Gully & the Cold Water Cure, which has had an astonishingly renovating action on my health; before coming here I was almost quite broken down, head swimming, hands tremulous & never a week without violent vomiting, all this is gone, & I can now walk between two & three miles. Physiologically it is most curious how the violent excitement of the skin, produced by simple water, has acted on all my internal organs.

I mention all this out of gratitude to a process which I thought quackery a year since, but which now I most deeply lament I had not heard of some few years ago.

Excuse this medical dissertation, & believe me dear Sir John Herschel, with much respect | Yours sincerely obliged | C. Darwin