Broughton | March 14th/55
My dear John,
I was sorry to hear from Wright that you were suffering a great deal from your headaches on Saturday last.1 I expected a letter from yourself before this to tell me for I remember that when you can no longer work you can find employment and occupation in writing to me. I wish you would do so for your silence makes me anxious when I know you are not well. I wish you would come down and see us again and stop a day or longer so that the good effects of your visit may be more durable.
Since you left nothing new has taken place here, except what you already know from Wright. We expect a new master (Foreman)2 daily. I am not yet quite well but I can do my work. In my spare time I work away at the magnetic problem which makes a little but only slow progress. Francis has not yet sent me Reiss’ paper.3 In your lectures on Heat last session4 I believe you froze water in red hot crucibles.5 I wish you would describe to me how you did this.
I often think of your suffering there alone from your headaches and wish I could be near you. Rest is absolutely necessary for you and yet for you it is difficult to procure, for it is wearisome when you are alone. I wish I was nearer you. Write to me immediately if you please and tell me exactly how you are. With love from Anna and myself, believe me
Yours affectionately | T A Hirst
RI MS JT/1/H/214
your headaches on Saturday last: In almost every Journal entry between 6 and 17 March Tyndall complained about his headaches (RI MS JT/2/13c/732–6).
Foreman: not identified.
Reiss’ paper: P. Riess, ‘Ueber die Wirkung nicht-leitender Körper bei der electrischen Influenz’, Poggend. Annal., 92 (1854), pp. 337–54; see letter 1068, n. 5.
In your lectures on Heat last session: Tyndall delivered a series of twelve weekly lectures ‘On Heat’ at the RI, beginning at 3pm on Tuesday, 17 January 1854.
you froze water in red hot crucibles: Tyndall reported a similar experiment in a later series of published lectures on heat at the RI: see, J. Tyndall, Heat Considered as a Mode of Motion: Being a Course of Twelve Lectures Delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in the Season of 1862 (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green, 1863), p. 165.
Please cite as “Tyndall1055,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on