528 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xxxiii 



give yourself any trouble about him, I need not say I shall be 

 very grateful for any notice you may take of him. 



I am giving him as much independence of action as possible, 

 in order that he may learn to take care of himself. 



Now that is enough about my children. Yours must yet be 

 young^and you have not yet got to the marriage and university 

 stage — which I assure you is much more troublesome than the 

 measles and chicken-pox period. 



My wife unites with me in kindest remembrances and good 

 wishes. — Ever yours very faithfully, T. H. Huxley. 



An outbreak of diphtheria among his children made the. 

 spring of 1878 a time of overwhelming anxiety. How it 

 told upon his strong and self-contained chief is related by 

 T. J. Parker — " I never saw a man more crushed than he 

 was during the dangerous illness of one of his daughters, 

 and he told me that, having then to make an after-dinner 

 speech, he broke down for the first time in his life, and for 

 one painful moment forgot where he was and what he had 

 to say." This was one of the few occasions of his absence 

 from College during the seventies. " When, after two days, 

 he looked in at the laboratory," writes Professor Howes, 

 " his dejected countenance and tired expression beto- 

 kened only too plainly the intense anxiety he had under- 

 gone." 



The history of the outbreak was very instructive. Hux- 

 ley took a leading part in organising an enquiry and in 

 looking into the matter with the health ofificer. " As soon 

 as I can get all the facts together," he writes on Dec. 10, 

 " I am going to make a great turmoil about our outbreak 

 of diphtheria — and see whether I cannot get our happy-go- 

 lucky local government mended." As usual, the epidemic 

 was due to culpable negligence. In the construction of 

 some drains, too small a pipe was laid down. The sewage 

 could not escape, and flooded back in a low-lying part of 

 Kilburn. Diphtheria soon broke out close by. While it 

 was raging there, a St. John's Wood dairyman running 

 short of milk, sent for more to an infected dairy in Kilburn. 

 Every house which he supplied that day with Kilburn milk 

 was attacked with diphtheria. 



