Ɛpsilon

From James Paget   14 August 1875

Rectory. | Godstone

Aug. 14. 1875

My dear Darwin

I enclose a copy of the description of an outgrown stump in the Museum at St. Bartholomew’s—1 Two similar cases have lately occurred, I am told, in the Hospital—

Your last report of your case makes it, I think, yet more probable that the amputation was done through a bone or cartilage— The objection which Syme made against a deeper cutting was, probably, founded on the fear of cutting into a joint—2

I should like, before seeming to think everything settled, to look again through Sir J: Simpson’s cases: and I will do this when next I go to town.3

Sincerely your’s | James Paget.

Charles Darwin Esq.

CD annotations

Top of letter: ‘Nails | an other case of | 2d Regrowth | & case of’ blue crayon
1
The enclosure has not been found. Paget had been a lecturer at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London.
2
No letter to Paget on the subject of the reported regrowth of an extra finger removed by the surgeon James Syme has been found, but see the letter from Annie Dowie, [after 27 July 1875], and the letter to Annie Dowie, 1 August [1875].
3
In Variation 2: 15, CD cited James Young Simpson’s paper on the apparent regrowth of amputated limbs in human foetuses (Simpson 1848); he removed the discussion from the text of the second edition, noting Paget’s doubts about Simpson’s cases in a footnote (see Variation 2d ed. 2: 358 n. 22).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-10117,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-10117