2416. Robert Southey to Henry Herbert Southey, 6 May [1814] ⁠* 

P 55. [1]  If consumption originates in the Azores, it surely must originate also at in Madeira, – climate, race & habits of life being the same. But a Port. D^r Pitta has lately published an English book about Madeira which you should look for. [2] 

P. 60 Stable boys grooms &c – pass a good deal of time in stables , where perhaps incipient colds may be cured by the climate.

P.61. So in this vale, – consumption has increased with the increased use of cotton among the women, in place of worsted, flannel & shifts.

P. 62 Sir Kenelm Digby was too eminent a man to be designated thus lightly. [3] 

I have found a passage for you in Izaak Waltons Life of D^r Donne [4]  which must relate to the human milk prescription. “His old friend & physician D^r Fox, a man of great worth, came to him to consult his health; who after a sight of him, & some queries concerning his distempers, told him that by Cordials, & drinking milk twenty days together, there was a probability of his restoration to health; but he passionately denied to drink it. Nevertheless D^r Fox, [5]  who loved him most entirely, wearied him with solicitations, till he yielded to take it for ten days; at the end of which time he told D^r Fox he had drunk it more to satisfy him, than to recover his health; & that he would not drink it ten days longer upon the best moral assurance of having twenty years added to his life; for he loved it not, [ie his life] [6]  & he was so far from fearing death which is the King of terrors, that he longed for the day of his dissolution.” [7]  – Donne died of consumption. Perhaps D^r Zouch, who edited all Izaak Waltons Lives may have a note upon his passage, but certainly old Donne would not have rebelled against the prescription had it been any other kind of milk than human. [8] 

I find also tho too late for your present use in Abraham Parsons’s Travels that at Aleppo ‘the air is reckoned pernicious to people in consumptions; in which disorders those who can afford the expence usually go to some part of the sea coast, mostly to Latachia which often recovers them.” –  [9]  Th[MS torn] Parsons was Uncle to Berjew the apothecary at Bristol, [10]  & his book is an exceedingly interesting. It may yet be of use to you to know that at Aleppo “the night air in summer is so dry, that a sheet of the finest writing paper exposed to it all night, may be written on in the morning without the least sign of its having imbibed any moisture.” P. 65. [11] 

Obs: on P. Cons. will be title enough, & better than if more were said.

RS.

Keswick. May 6.