Meanwhile I received your pamphlets, and read every one with more pleasure than you could readily believe a non-scientific man could feel in them. Of course, those which interested me most were:
1. That on the Homing Instinct (a much better word than the French orientation). 2. That on the electric light. My first experience with the light was painful; then I learned to like it (the white, not the yellow) very much and found gaslight intensely disagreeable afterward. By the way, do you correspond with Romanes, who solicits correspondence on the subject of animals? You know him, of course, the author of “Animal Intelligence” and “Mental Evolution in Animals.” A man like that ought to be delighted with such a splendid and powerful suggestion as that of your pamphlet. I hope you are not too patriotic to think you cannot do better with a scientific suggestion abroad than at home. There are certain things that seem to me too worthy to remain buried in the archives of a medical society,—which ought to reach a larger scientific circle through a more eclectic medium, such as that of the superb foreign reviews, devoted to what used to be called natural history, but for which the term has long ago become too small. Still I am sure you must have heard from your paper on the homing instinct if the publication in which it appeared reached the quarters it ought to have reached.
I don’t know what to tell you about myself. Since October last I have been buried in my room—facing, happily, a semi-circle of Mornes curving away into a sea like lapis lazuli—and have neither heard nor seen anything else. We had an epidemic of yellow fever which carried away many Europeans and strangers; but it is over, and the weather is delightful, if you can call weather delightful which keeps you drenched in perspiration from morning to night, and forces you to lie down and sleep in the afternoon if you dare attempt to write or read. The difficulty of work in such a climate only those who have had the experience can understand. I think my case is an experiment; almost a phenomenon,—and I am very curious to know the result by the verdict upon my work. I cannot judge it myself here. What at sundown seems good in the morning appears damnably bad; and I was obliged to give every page a test of three or four days’ waiting. My novelette made itself out of an incident related to me about a case of heroism during a great negro revolt.
There is no question but that I shall be in New York this summer, for a while. It is imperative. I have to oversee work before it can be published;—that which already appeared was in terribly bad shape on account of my not having seen the proofs. Then I may be getting out a little book.
Did you see the incident in regard to the admission of a remarkable young lady doctor into the profession by the faculty of Paris,—the remarks of Charcot and others? I thought of your medical novel. There were some remarks very suggestive made. The thesis of the candidate was the position and duty of woman as a physician. You know what those French are, and what peculiar ways they have of looking at the question of women as physicians;—the Paris papers made all kinds of observations scabreuses; but the dignity of the girl carried her splendidly through the ordeal—an ordeal to which Americans would never put a female student.
I have a curious compilation,—“Etudes pathologiques et historiques sur l’origine et la propagation de la Fièvre Jaune” (1886),—perhaps you know it already,—by Dr. Cornilliac of Martinique. If you do not know it I will send it you from New York. It contains a great deal of valuable matter regarding the climate of the West Indies, and formative influences of that climate on races and temperament. Martinique has had several physicians of colonial celebrity,—how great I cannot estimate, being ignorant of their comparative value; but some of them have a decided charm as writers and historians. Such was Rufz de Lavison, author of a delightful history of the colony, and a work upon the trigonocephalus, which would not bear equal praise, I fancy. If you want any information about medical matters in Martinique, I will hunt it up for you.
I hope to see you and have a great chat with you. But the heat is great, and there is an accumulation of letters to answer, and you will forgive me for saying for the moment good-bye
Your sincere friend,
Lafcadio Hearn.