From J. D. Hooker 3 April 1867
Kew
April 3d/67.
Dear Darwin
We have had a terrible fight with the grim destroyer, but I do hope that we have pulled baby out of his clutches for the present.1 Up to the present hour (10 am) he has had no fits for 12 hours—& is taking his Asses milk freely & looking brighter. I quite suppose it was a case of defective nutrition, the nervous system especially not being nourished—since he was weaned, though the child looked so well & plump, & took its food so freely, that no one guessed that anything could be the matter— I kept at him day & night, craming in nutrient by oil rubbing, keeping a lump of bacon in his mouth during the fits, which lasted 5, 8, & in one case nearly 10 hours, without intermission, & during which he took no other food. The affection was confined to nerves of motion— the last was on Monday, when he lay 5 hours, violently jerked twice every second, with perfect rhythmic regularity, each jump sufficient to have tossed him up in the air: the muscles all clenched as if with strychnine, except those of the face, which were all in motion—& the pulse at 156— No doctor had seen anything like it & I have had 5 at him—& I am sure that Sibson2 was right, & that it is a mere case of defective nutrition.—that his blood is, like his mother’s, deficient in red globules, or quality of these.
Mrs Hooker is all right again.3
Ever yr affec | J D Hooker
Footnotes
Summary
Begins to hope baby may survive; description of symptoms.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-5483
- From
- Joseph Dalton Hooker
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Kew
- Source of text
- DAR 102: 157–8
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 5483,” accessed on 18 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-5483.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 15