[Sir Robert Christison, distinguished Scottish phyisician and toxicologist.] Autograph Letter Signed to ‘Dr. Bowman’ [John Eddowes Bowman Jnr], correcting a statement regarding ‘the subject of the Nitrate of Iron as a remedy for chronic diarrhoea’.

Christison was the author of a standard Victorian textbook of toxicology and founder of a medical dynasty; see his 1885 autobiography and his entry in the Oxford DNB (the latter also contains an entry for Bowman). 2pp, 12mo. In fair condition, lightly aged. Folded twice, with small closed tear at edge of one fold. Looping stylized signature ‘R. Christison’. He begins by referring to ‘a previous communication received from the South of England on the subject of the Nitrate of Iron as a remedy for chronic diarrhoea’. He assumes that ‘Dr Graves’ took his information from ‘some old pupil of mine, who, carrying away with him the main fact, had forgotten the original purpose of the remedy, and ascribed the suggestion of it to myself’, when in fact ‘the gentleman who first proposed the nitrate of sesquioxide of iron was Mr. Wm. Kerr, at one time surgeon in Paisley, and now of Glasgow’. He gives a reference to a paper in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal which gives ‘his observations, with the mode of preparing it’. Christison has only to add to the statement made there that he has ‘occasionally used it, and found reason to be satisfied of its efficacy’.