Autograph letter signed by Edinburgh Physicist Dr Samuel Brown dated 1854

"I am & have been just in my nasty ordinary."
 
BROWN, Dr Samuel (1817-1856). Autograph letter signed to Professor John Stuart Blackie (1809-1895), Gifford, September 13th 1854.
 
Single bifolium, 4 pp., written in a fine flowing hand. Old horizontal folds, slight edge wear and a few minor marks; very good overall.
 
A content-rich letter from the Scottish physician, speculative chemist, lecturer, and man of letters Dr Samuel Brown, addressed to the celebrated Scottish scholar and Hellenist Professor John Stuart Blackie. Brown writes during a period of acute crisis, describing the near-fatal illness of his wife.
 
"Four days after your visit, my poor wife was taken ill of fever... she has been dangerously sick ever since nearly." Brown continues with a striking maritime metaphor: "It was only two days ago that she doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and had her little bark of life labouring against the cruel current yet." At the height of her delirium he confesses, "I had actually to fight off the Present Visible Devil one night!" before concluding with the memorable self-assessment: "I am & have been just in my nasty ordinary." The letter also contains references to the historian James Anthony Froude, within Blackie's intellectual circle.
 
Samuel Brown was one of the more original and brilliant figures of nineteenth-century Edinburgh intellectual life. Trained as a medical doctor, though never a conventional practitioner, Brown became known for a controversial series of lectures delivered in 1843 on magnetism, chemistry, and atomic theory, in which he advanced theories concerning elemental transmutation, including the conversion of carbon into silicon. Though heavily disputed, his work attracted considerable contemporary attention. Thomas Carlyle described Brown as a man of "universal genius and wonderful eloquence", while his circle included Thomas Chalmers, John Brown, John Stuart Blackie, and other leading Scottish literary and scientific figures. Brown died prematurely in 1856 after prolonged ill health. A portrait of him by David Scott RSA is held by the National Galleries of Scotland.