Thomas Beddoes to Davies Giddy, 23 August 1805

23 Aug 1805

Dear Giddy

I know not whether you intend to prepare your mind for the next parliament^y campaign – But I think it w^d be worth while to prepare your body.

I should think that whenever the skin is of a dry warmth – say on waking – it w^d be worth while to spunge the trunk of the body with strong brine, previously taking a little ginger, hartshorn sal volatile or peppermint water so as to bring out a glow –

This being done more and more freely for a time I w^d come to the cold bath with the same preliminary of a cordial – or the having a bucket of water thrown over the shoulders as a cold bath –

For medicine
Tinct ferr muriat ʒiii
---- lavend c ʒi
---- cantharidis ℥ss
xii to xxx drops twice a day – adding 3 to 5 drops of Tinct of digitalis now & then.

I have heard with concern that King has little or nothing to do & that this has been the case pretty much for some time – I think his situation at the Hotwells in some respects very unfavourable, in as much as, my own single case excepted, every thing depends upon cabal & correspondence. Now I suppose K has nobody to cabal for him & scarce a correspondent in the world to send him patients – a middling town, sh^d there be a vacancy & he c^d get recommendations, w^d be in many respects a more favourable scene – As he has certainly not advanced in practice progressively, I fear he is not likely to see better times upon the whole – And if he have paid his way, it is the utmost – & behold a family that threatens to increase fast –

These reflections arise from my having been coming out of Miss Morgan’s & her saying he had told her, he had no patients too strong a phrase I hope but still too near the truth & he had mentioned a similar thing to Mrs B repeatedly during the summer –

Now where is the remedy? He cannot send y^e children to the foundling, get a divorce from the Pope & begin the world anew – be so good as direct the inclosed to Deboffe the bookseller

Endorsement: Doctor Beddoes / 1805 / Aug the 23^d / containing a prescription
MS: Cornish Archives DG 43/25

The full versions of these letters with textual apparatus will be published by Cambridge University Press.