[Marshall Hall Higginbottom, Nottingham surgeon, nephew of eminent neurophysiologist Marshall Hall.] Autograph Letter Signed [to Rev. Samuel Walker], recommending the ear-surgeon Joseph Toynbee.

A nice item, casting light on the practice of the provincial medical profession in Victorian England. See Higginbottom’s obituary in the British Medical Journal, 16 March 1895. There are a number of references to Higginbottom in the memoir of 1861 memoir of Marshall Hall (1790-1857) by his widow. For information about Hall, who died the following year, see his entry in the Oxford DNB, together with that of the otologist Joseph Toynbee (1815-1866). The item is from the papers of Rev. Samuel Walker, successively of Nottingham and Liverpool. 4pp, 12mo, with a concluding fifth page, including Higginbottom’s signature, written lengthwise on the first page. Bifiolium. In good condition, lightly aged. Walker is nowhere named as the recipient - the letter is addressed to ‘My dear Sir’ and signed ‘Marshall Hall Higginbottom’ - but the references to ‘Mrs. Walker’, and the recipient’s time in Nottingham, seem conclusive. The pleasure Higghinbottom was given by receiving Walker’s letter and recognizing his handwriting was mitigated by the news of his continuing indisposition, including the ‘relaxation of the throat’ he was suffering from when he was in Nottingham. He urges him to ‘consult an eminent physician in London, and I am sure you cannot do better than have Mr Toynbee’s opinion’. He considers Toynbee ‘an extremely clever man’, who has ‘devoted himself exclusively to the study of the Ear’. As his uncle ‘Dr Hall’ has ‘not made diseases of the Ear a distinct Study’, he will not recommend Walker to his ‘best attention’, but he is willing to write to Toynbee, having received ‘a letter from him in reference to a patient not long since’. Should Walker wish for ‘a change of air’, the Higginbottoms will be pleased to receive him. His ‘professional engagements’ have prevented him from increasing his ‘study of old Divinity’ since Walker was in Nottingham, but he is looking forward to doing so in future. He sends the regards of his father and ‘Mrs. H. Florence, Mr & Mrs. Hall’ to the recipient and ‘Mrs. Walker’.