
          Paris Feb'y 1st 1822


 Dear Doctor, 


 I wrote you a [quantity?] of talk a few
 weeks since & dispatched it for Havre where I believe it
 is still laying & will not probably reach you sooner than
 what I am now writing. I expected to hear from you ere
 this by Dec'r [Dcember] Packet but did not, and for that reason
 would not now write if it were not that I have business with
 you. You must really be very much engaged. You must either
 have become a very great [beast?] or a very popular physician
 though it is not easy to guess which of the two.


 I have procured the remainder of [Jean-Baptiste] Lamarck's work for the
 Lyceum. There is a 5th & half of a 6th volume. In an
 [adventirium?] & prefixed to the latter he informs us that having
 gone thus far, a most violent optthamia[i.e. opthalmia] followed by cataracts
 on both eyes reduced him to complete blindness. He endeavoured
 to make use of the eyes of others to enable him to finish his task
 but found such difficulties in this, & such danger of falling
 into errors or committing great faults that he took the resolution
 of publishing the first part of the 5th vol separately, & to wait for
 [crossed out: the] finishing other until the epoch favorable for an operation on his
 cataracts.


 I will send them to Havre to [Hottinguen?]
 & Co. who will put them on board the [added with caret: ship] Liverpool Packet
        