160 MEM OIK OF J)K WHIGHT. 



I alone am responsible for the statements which it contains. 

 I have, therefore, unknown to him, adopted the less circui- 

 tous and more open measure of corresponding directly with 

 yourself. 



" Your communication, my dear Sir, has grieved me be- 

 yond expression. To give unnecessary pain, even to an ene- 

 my, would be revolting to my principles ; but to find that a 

 revered friend and benefactor considered himself as grossly 

 injured by any thing that had dropped from my pen, could 

 not fail most distressingly to agitate my mind. 



" Five years have elapsed since the paper in question was 

 committed to the press. I could not, without inspecting it, 

 recollect in what terms I had expressed myself with regard 

 to you. Yet I was comforted by the certainty, that it must 

 have been impossible for me to defraud you of the credit 

 which you had so honourably earned. I felt that my un- 

 feigned affection for you, must, even independently of a 

 higher principle, have excluded every such intention from my 

 mind ; and I could not but know that the attempt, had it 

 been made, must have failed, and must have exposed me 

 to the ridicule and indignation of the medical world. Nor 

 could any genuine friend of Dr Currie have wished to ex- 

 alt such a character as his at the expence of another's reputa- 

 tion. Under these impressions, I turned up the passage to 

 which your letter relates, and I do think, on reper using it, 

 that it will be no difficult matter to convince you that you 

 have taken a very erroneous view of my statement. 



" It is true I have referred the origin of Dr Currie , s 

 work on the effects of water in fevers, to the fact of his at- 

 tention having been attracted to the subject of the operation 

 of cold on the living body, so early as 1778, when he was a 

 student of medicine ; and I am of opinion, that, had it not 

 been for this circumstance, your valuable paper in the Lon- 

 don Medical Journal might not have struck him more forci- 

 bly than it did other able physicians, who read and admired 



