My Dear Sir
I ought to have thanked you long ago for the very beautiful drawings <1> which you sent me of the optical phenomena exhibited by the circular crystals <2> of Borax and Phosphoric Acid; and I am doubly indebted to you for the kindness with which you have overlooked this apparent negligence and again written me.
Having been appointed Principal of the United College <3> of St Andrews, I have been resident there since February and my time much occupied with the many unimportant concerns which a change of position creates. Excepting delivering a few Lectures on the Double Refraction & Polarisation of light, I have been able to do nothing of a scientific nature all winter.
I was surprised by your saying that the Coloured drawings of which you sent me specimens were too expensive. Perhaps it would not be necessary to make them so minutely accurate, as the general character of the phenomenon is all that is required; & from my experience of these matters, I should be disposed to think that they could be executed at a moderate price.– The custom is to get one copy done by the author or the artist and to have all the rest copied from it by Women or girls who are employed for such purposes. – If this were done by estimate I have no doubt that it would be done cheaply.
I heard lately a very singular account of the Patients of a German Doctor who is now in London employing Animal Magnetism <4> as a Remedy; but I did not expect that the subject would excite such notice as to come under discussion of the Royal Society. <5> I should like much to hear from you if any specific facts are clearly established; for the facts always seemed to me to be of the same ambiguous character as phrenological ones <6> – a sort of cross between conjecture and observation.
If you should happen to meet with Mr Dollond <7> at the R. Society, you would oblige me by urging him in your capacity of a Councillor of the R.S. to complete the Telescope which he undertook. The Brit. Association <8> has put at my disposal a handsome sum for Expts on the action of Gases &c and Mr Dollond had done nothing so far as I know to the apparatus which I wanted for this purpose. I have for three months nearly had the benefit of a Sea Horizon for my observations, and have thus been able to do nothing whatever.
I am glad to see that Sir John Herschel <9> has returned safely. He must be richly laden with nebulæ, and clusters of stars, & binary systems, and worlds on the anvil and in their dotage, and I long to hear some news of his most interesting discoveries.
I am My Dear Sir Ever Most Truly yrs
D Brewster
Rankeilor Hope <10>
May 23d 1838
Notes:
2. See Doc. No: 03261.
3. The United College of St Salvator and St Leonard, University of St Andrews. Brewster was Principal 1837–1859.
4. ‘A presumed intangible or mysterious force that is said to influence human beings.’ The term was applied by the German physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1733–1815) to the hypnotism that he used in the treatment of patients. He believed that it was an occult force or invisible fluid emanating from his body and that, more generally, the force permeated the universe, deriving especially from the stars.’ There was a renewed flurry of interest in animal magnetism during 1838, with the activities of the German doctor in London. [See Doc. No: 03697].
5. Royal Society of London.
6. Phrenology was the supposed determining of the size of various areas of the human brain, and thus the strength of the supposedly corresponding mental faculties, from ‘bumps’ on the surface of the skull.
7. George Dolland (1774–1852), optical instrument maker, member of the Royal Society of London.
8. The British Association for the Advancement of Science.
9. Sir John Frederick William Herschel (1792–1871), astronomer & scientist, who had been at the Cape of Good Hope.
10. Near Cupar, Fife, Scotland.