Our Daily Bill: Passages

[tealin]

After several months, Wilson's treatment at Davos saw his TB retreat, and he was sent home to recover further. He passed the medical exams he'd been training for before falling ill, and wrote home in what was apparently a fit of loquacious giddiness:

This is a home-letter for you all, ALL at Westal, married or single, maiden ladies or aunts, insects or Buzzard Eagles. It is meant to be a letter such as may well be written by a demented monomaniac recovering from general Paralysis of the insane. As a monomaniac on Physic and the allied sciences I have been found not wanting. I am admitted into the comparatively select circle of amateur and other druggists. The prospect of immediate admission to the degree of M.B. is the Christmas present which I propose to proffer for your acceptance. It has cost a mint of money, but will produce such consequences in aiding Nature to abet only the survival of the very fittest that I am glad to join that select company to the dismay of their Pyrixites Bacillus Tuberculosis and Staphylococcus Pyogenes Aureus ...

– from Edward Wilson of the Antarctic, pg 63

His doctors recommended a quiet life away from the stress of the hospital, doing pathological illustration, but of course he wanted a bit more excitement than that ...