Thomas Beddoes to William Withering, 1 June 1797
Dear Sir,
I am sorry by Mr Watt to learn that your health is in so indifferent a state. I had hoped that the termination of your great work on English Botany would sooner have been followed by the observations on the climate of Portugal with reference to phthisical people. I have myself got a set of facts which I hope may be useful to persons, threatened with that disorder, but before laying them under the eye of the public I had greatly wished to have seen in detail what you mentioned to me summarily.
I have had many opports of enquiry, & every person who knew any thing of the matter has confirmed your remarks on the impropriety of sending this class of patients to Lisbon. What I more particularly was anxious to learn respects the remote causes of consumption as it affects the natives. The unequal climate is an obvious condition but it appears to me probable that to make the disorder rife others must concur. As conversely answering to your own just observation butchers are very much exempt from consumption with us.
If you could dictate, without inconvenience, answers to the following queries, you would much oblige me.
1. Is consumption common in Portugal?
2. Can you state nearly its degree of frequency as compared with G. Britain?
3. Did any thing strike you in the manners & mode of life as likely to produce it?
If it happens that any part of your pamphlet, capable of satisfying these queries as far as you can satisfy them is imprinted, perhaps you will have the goodness to enclose & at all events say whether I may quote your authority for any information in the above subject with which you may favour me. I am Dear Sir
with sincere wishes for your better health
Yours with great esteem
Thomas Beddoes
1 June 1797
MS: Typed transcription inserted in a copy of Stock, Osler Library of the History of Medicine, McGill University Library, B399zs 1811