344 CORRESPONDENCE OF RAY. 



Mr. RAY to Dr. HANS SLOANE. 



Black Notley, August 19, 98. 



SIR, I am much, obliged to you for your condolence 

 with me, for truly I am but in evil case, partly with 

 itching, and partly with smarting, which are most grievous 

 in the night, keeping me waking very often many hours 

 together. One while I took these eruptions to have been 

 pernios, but now am returned to my first opinion, that 

 they are herpeses, but mali moris, and suspect that they 

 may be occasioned by nests of insects harbouring under 

 the cuticula, and making cunicult, and so spreading from 

 place to place ; for round every sore there are small red 

 tumusculi, flat, and bigger near the sore, which I conjec- 

 ture to be the nests or swarms of those insects. The 

 news of the sickness of that sweet lady, the only daughter 

 of my ever honoured friend, Mr. Fr. Willughby, would 

 have been very sad and bitter to me had it terminated in 

 death ; but since, through the Divine blessing upon your 

 endeavours, she is recovered of it, the more dangerous 

 her condition was, the greater subject of joy and eucharist 

 it is to me. 



Your botanic books, if you please to afford me a sight 

 of them, if I be in case, I shall gladly peruse and make 

 some excerpt out of them. Dr. Hobbs's ointment you 

 mention, I fancy would be the most likely thing in the 

 world to afford relief in my case, but I am not able to 

 bear mercury : it will by no means agree with my temper, 

 however taken or applied. I am so drowsy that I can 

 scarce hold my pen, or know what I write, and therefore 

 it is time to take leave. I am, sir, 



Yours in all service, 



JOHN RAY. 



For his honoured friend, Dr. Hans Sloane, 



at his house at the comer of Southampton street, 

 towards Bloomsbury square, London. 



