16th April 1855
My dear Mrs Coxe
Your last kind letter1 lies before me, as yet unanswered. I have been waiting until I should be able to grasp my pen with the vigour of a man, and make my friend feel through the very energy of my penmanship that my heart is still beating, and that the ‘struck eagle’2 can yet clap his delapidated wings.
At all events my ailments are useful, though stern teachers – they let me know the needs & infirmities of human nature – I believe every man must be able at times to withdraw himself from the world and hold pleasant communion with his own soul, but he cannot permanently sever himself from his fellows without injury to the best part of him. The shock of personal contact is necessary to stir up the forces resident within him. I once thought it my duty to fast and afflict my unfortunate body in a variety of ways – Now fasting and other acts of self denial are very useful sometimes, but their range of usefulness is I believe very limited, and I am inclined to think that a good song over a good glass of whiskey toddy, might, under certain circumstances be made conducive to religion and morality. Luther you know once recommended a young clergyman who tortured himself on the question of predestination & election to get well drunk as the best method of surmounting his difficulty.3
If Dr Coxe were in town at present he would feel an interest in hearing one of our courses of lectures which commences on Saturday next. It is by DuBois Reymond4 – the subject being electro-physiology.5 I admired your husband’s caution in dealing with this point in his edition of his uncle’s works6 – Many would have treated it more boldly and talked eloquent nonsense about it – Dr Coxes caution was never more prudently exercised than in connexion with this subject – but I must stop.
Goodbye & believe me ever | Most faithfully yours J Tyndall
RI MS JT/1/T/247
Your last kind letter: letter missing.
struck eagle: ‘So the struck Eagle stretched upon the plain, / No more through rolling clouds to soar again,/ Viewed his own feather on the fatal dart, / And winged the shaft that quivered in his heart’ (G. G. Byron, ‘English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers’, ll. 823–26).
Luther … his difficulty: The probably source is Ralph Waldo Emerson’s lecture on Montaigne, in which he related Luther’s advice to ‘a young scholar perplexed with foreordination and free-will, to get well drunk’ (Emerson, Representative Men. Seven Lectures (London: J. Chapman, 1850), pp. 112–13). See also Tyndall’s Journal entry for 21 September 1850 where he recounted having enjoyed a ‘supper of black-pudding and some fine ale and porter. The change [in fare] roused me and did my system good. [That reminded him of] Martin Luther’s advice may under some circumstances be a sound one – “Get well drunk!”’ (RI MS JT/2/13b/510).
courses of lectures … by DuBois Reymond: Beginning on 21 April, Emil du Bois-Reymond delivered a course of eight weekly lectures on ‘Electro-Physiology’ at the RI.
electro-physiology: A branch of physiology that deals with the electrical phenomena associated with physiological processes, esp. in nerve and muscle; also the electrophysiological characteristics of a process, tissue, disorder, etc. (OED).
this point in his edition of his uncle’s works: Coxe was the nephew of the phrenologist George Combe (1788–1858) and the physiologist Andrew Combe (1797–1847). Tyndall was probably referring to the fourteenth edition of Andrew Combe’s The Principles of Physiology Applied to the Preservation of Health, and the Improvement of Physical and Mental Education (Edinburgh: Maclachlan & Stewart, 1852), which was revised and enlarged by Coxe.
Please cite as “Tyndall1066,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on