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To T. L. Brunton   19 November 1881

[Down.]

Nov 19. 1881

Dear Dr Lauder Brunton

I saw in some papers that there would probably be a subscription to pay Dr Ferriers legal expences in the late absurd & wicked prosecution. As I live so retired I might not hear of the subscription, and I should regret beyond measure not to have the pleasure and honour of showing my sympathy and admiration of Dr Ferriers researches1

I know that you are his friend, as I once met him at your house, so I earnestly beg you to let me hear if there is any means of subscribing as I should much like to be an early subscriber   I am sure that you will forgive me for troubling you under these circumstances and I remain

Yours very sincerely | Ch Darwin

P.S I finished reading a few days ago the several physiological and medical papers which you were so kind as to send me. I was much interested by several of them,—especially by that on night-sweating and almost more by others on digestion.2 I have seldom been made to realise more vividly the wondrous complexity of our whole system. How any one of us keeps alive for a day is a marvel!

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1
On 3 November 1881, a summons was issued to David Ferrier for violating the 1876 Cruelty to Animals Act, which prohibited vivisection from being performed without a licence (see The Times, 4 November 1881, p. 12); he was the first physiologist to be prosecuted under the terms of the Act. On the subscription fund, see British Medical Journal, 19 November 1881, p. 834. For more on the controversy surrounding Ferrier’s experimental work, see Finn and Stark 2015. On CD’s earlier involvement in the vivisection debates, see Correspondence vol. 23, Appendix VI.
2
Brunton had recently sent CD a collection of his papers; however, these have not been found (see letter to T. L. Brunton, 11 October 1881). For the paper on night-sweating, see Brunton 1879; for a collection of Brunton’s work on digestion, including a chronological list of his papers on the subject, see Brunton 1886.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13490,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13490