[Sir Robert Christison, eminent toxicologist and physician.] Autograph Letter Signed ('R. Christison') to R. Herbert Story, regarding attending an address at Edinburgh Univesity by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton.

1p, 12mo. In good condition, lightly aged, with thin strip of paper from mount adhering to reverse. Folded twice. With Christison's expansive signature, and written while Story – future Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Glasgow – was studying at the University of Edinburgh. If he is not 'prevented by professional occupations, which are apt to be rather pressing at this season', it will give him great pleasure 'to attend on the occasion of the delivering of the address of Sir E. B. Lytton to the Associated Societies of the University on the evening of Wednesday the 18th. Instant'. The subject of the letter is the novelist and Whig MP (1803-1873), later Lord Bulwer-Lytton. 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'.