[Sir Jonathan Hutchinson, Professor of Surgery and Pathology at the Royal College of Surgeons.] Autograph Letter Signed ('Jonathan Hutchinson') to the physician W. F. Cleveland, regarding the forthcoming British Medical Association general meeting.

Author: 
Sir Jonathan Hutchinson (1828-1913), surgeon and ophthalmologist, Professor of Surgery and Pathology at the Royal College of Surgeons [William Frederick Cleveland, physician]
Publication details: 
Finsbury Circus, E.C. [London]; 26 July 1859.
£120.00
SKU: 21550

For information on the recipient the physician William Frederick Cleveland (1823-1898), see his obituary, BMJ, 3 December 1898. The letter concerns the twenty-seventh annual meeting of the British Medical. Association, held at Liverpool, 27 to 29 July 1859.. 2pp, 12mo. Lightly aged and worn, with small square of paper cut from head, slightly affecting the address, and thin strip of paper from mount adhering to the reverse. The letter begins: 'Dear Sir, | The balloting list is of no use excepting to those who attend the Genl Meeting at Liverpool'. Although the Liverpool meeting 'might elect other Officers if it wished […] to do so would necessitate an organised not an accidental opposition. Such an opposition could not be got up unless there was a cause for it.' In the present instance he expects that 'the Balloting will prove a matter of little more than form'. From the distinguished autograph collection of the psychiatrist Richard Alfred Hunter (1923-1981), whose collection of 7000 works relating to psychiatry is now in Cambridge University Library. Hunter and his mother Ida Macalpine had a particular interest in the illness of King George III, and their book 'George III and the Mad Business' (1969) suggested the diagnosis of porphyria popularised by Alan Bennett in his play 'The Madness of# George III'.