Thomas Bell¹ to Faraday²   After 1839

My dear Sir -

I have been for the last fortnight postponing from day to day writing to you to tell you how I am & have for sometime been situated. After an interval of twelve years I have for some months past been suffering severely from a return of the [word illegible] which comes on almost every evening, and not only unfits me for study during its stay, but as it remains nearly the whole night, deprives me of my rest & thus makes me drowsy and stupid in the evening. This circumstance has occasioned such a crowd of work, arising from long standing engagements that I cannot avoid, though I do it with extreme reluctance, throwing myself upon your compassion and asking you whether you can supply my place on the evening you mention[.] I doubt not my friend & colleague Professor Jones³ of King’s Coll. would gladly give you an evening & he has a great number of excellent diagrams to illustrate lectures on any department of comparative anatomy.

With the assurance of my sincere regret at being thus obliged to beg off, I remain

My dear Sir | most truly yours | Thomas Bell

17 New Broad Street | March 26th

Watermark: 1839