From Frithiof Holmgren   8 May 1881

Dear Sir

It is my duty, as well as a great pleasure to thank you most heartily for the valuable letter about the vivisection, you kindly sent me. By publishing it in the Times, you did me and our science a still greater service, as it got a much wider publication, than I could have given it in a small brochure.¹

I am sorry you have by this step been exposed to unpleasantness from the anti-vivisectionists. But for such everybody must be prepared, who coolly and calmly takes part for the science against their irritated minds. You may console yourself with the certainty that the case, for which Lord Shaftesbury and Miss Cobb stand up, not will gain anything in our country by the tone that those people have seem fit to employ against you.² Your name is held in too great regard among us for that.

Your letter has been of the greatest use for our defense of the vivisection, not only directly, but indirectly through the support it has given me personally, which has been of great service, when the agitators try by all means to lessen our authority to propagate their own aims—³ Therefore I must thank you also for the honour you have done me.

I beg you to receive my respectful and most heartfelt thanks, and permit me to send you my photography (from 1870).⁴

I am, Sir, | your most obedient servant | Frithiof Holmgren | Prof of Physiology | University Upsala, Sweden

To Mr. Charles Darwin F.R.S. | London.