[Professor William Bevan Lewis, psychiatrist.] Autograph Letter Signed ('W. Bevan-Lewis') to Bedford Pierce of the Retreat asylum in York, discussing a course of lectures they are to give together.

3pp, 12mo. Bifolium with mourning border. In fair condition, lightly aged, with thin strip of paper from mount adhering to blank reverse of second leaf. Folded once. Forty-three lines of text. He begins by expressing pleasure at the prospect of being associated with Pierce 'in the Course of Lectures on Mental Diseases', and at the news that Pierce has 'decided to take up the Systematic Part'. He leaves the choice of day to Pierce, and offers to put him up for the night. They must 'talk the matter over thoroughly so that there will be no gaps or breaches of continuity between Systematic & Clinical Teaching'. References follow to the 'Council', 'the Board', and 'Edgerley' [Dr Samuel Edgerley (d.1954) of Menston Asylum], to whom he asks Pierce to write, as he is anxious that he should not 'get it into his head that I have been opposing his interests'. The letter concludes: 'I will not enter here into detail as to my method of teaching in former years, but will leave this to our meeting'. 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'.