Mon cher Mr Tyndal
Soyez assez bon pour [consulter] un Docteur de mes amis qui va en Angleterre recommandant les excellents effets du cuivre comme préservatif du cholera. Il vous demandera de le mettre en rapport avec un des [mécaniciens] de l’institution royale pour la [le confection] des armatures metalliques.
Je [suis] dans les sentiments de la considération la plus affectueuse et la plus distinguée.
Votre très humble serviteur | 3 8bre 1853 | L’abbé F. Moigno
21 Albermale Street | Monsieur | Monsieur Tyndall | Professeur à l’institution royale | à Londres
My dear Mr Tyndal
Would you be good enough to [consult] a Doctor1 of my friends, who is going to England recommending the excellent effects of copper as a prophylactic for cholera.2 He will ask you to [get him in touch] with one of the [technicians] of the Royal Institution for the [fabrication] of metallic armatures.3
Please accept my most affectionate and highest regards.
Your humble servant | 3 October 1853 | Father F. Moigno
21 Albermale Street4 | Sir | Mr Tyndall | Professor at the Royal Institution | in London
RI MS JT/1/M/102
a Doctor: Tyndall reported meeting a ‘Dr. Burg’, recommended by Abbé Moigno, at the RI on 13 October (Journal, JT/2/13b/627). Jean Antoine Victor Burq (1822–84), a Parisian physician, was a pioneer of ‘metallotherapy,’ or the use of metals to heal disease (A. Crabtree, ‘Burq, Victor’, Animal Magnetism, Early Hypnotism, and Physical Research 1766–1925: An Annotated Bibliography [White Plains: Kraus International, 1988], pp. 658, 1016, 1054).
effects of copper … cholera: Tyndall mentioned reading a long report in the ‘Siecle’ by ‘Burg’ on the curative properties of copper in cases of cholera; he noted that they are ‘foolish and to a certain extent contemptible’ (Journal, JT/2/13b/627). While the exact report is not identified, Burq wrote a text in 1853 on the curative properties of metal in the treatment of cholera (V. Burq, Choléra, Préservation et Traitement par le Métaux [Paris: G. Ballière, 1853]).
metallic armatures: ‘a core of laminated iron wound round by coils of insulated copper wire in which electrical current is generated when it rotates in a magnetic field’ (OED).
21 Albermale St: misspelling of Albemarle Street.
Please cite as “Tyndall0805,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on