[Thomas Sutton, physician who first described delirium tremens.] Autograph Letter in the third person to Peter Mark Roget, regarding Alexander J. G. Marcet and 'a paper deliver'd to the Medical & Chirurgical Society'.

2pp, 4to. Bifolium. In good condition, lightly aged, with thin strip of paper adhering to the reverse of the second leaf, which is addressed, with postmarks, 'To | Doctor Roget M.D. | Bernard Street | London -'. See the entries on Sutton, Roget and Marcet in the Oxford DNB. The letter concerns a misunderstanding between Sutton and Marcet. (Two of Sutton's letters to Marcet with a copy of a reply by Marcet are offered together separately elsewhere.) The present letter is 2pp, 4to. Bifolium. In good condition, lightly aged, with thin strip of paper adhering to the reverse of the second leaf, which is addressed, with postmarks, 'To | Doctor Roget M.D. | Bernard Street | London -'. The letter begins: 'Doctor Sutton's compliments to Doctor Roget and feels somewhat surprized with the honor of a letter from him on the subject of a paper deliver'd to the Medical & Chirurgical Society - Dr Sutton certainly deliver'd the paper to Dr Marcet, with an injunction not to send it to the society until he heard from him, and understood undoubtedly that Dr M wou'd not deliver the paper 'til a further communication.' Sutton claims that 'with this certainty' he has 'as he thought allow'd the paper to remain with Dr Marcet', and he now asks Roget 'to procure him the paper again'. He has 'not yet decided respecting its destination, and whether with others he shall not make it a Society publication, with the addition of that matter which he [?] wou'd be added on a further occasion'. He concludes in the hope that Roget will either 'send the paper inclosed to Murray the Booksellers Fleet St directed to Dr Sutton - Greenwich to be left 'til called for', or allow Sutton to call on him 'in Lincolns Inn on monday or tuesday next'. (Sutton's two letters to Marcet, and the copy of a reply by Marcet, indicater that Sutton had been too forward in his approaches to Marcet, who took offence at having his veracity impugned.) 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.