Katagiri, Nilgiri Hills, South India,
April 21, 1925.Dear Miss Turner,
For ever and ever so long I have been meaning to write to you. A few weeks ago I wrote a letter to Ruth Addams [sic] which I asked her to share with D. Elizabeth and you but I meant to follow it at once with a letter to you. It probably sounded much worse than it need have. I think I was pretty much down when I wrote it!
Anyhow I had the emetive injection, ten of them, at intervals all through March. They knocked me out quite badly. Probably if I had been able to stay in bed with proper diet they wouldn't have pulled me so low; but the staying in bed was out of the question during the last month of the term and you will understand that in institutional life not much attention can be paid to individuals' diet. I am now living with the family of the Danish doctor who discovered the dysentery. He is back at work now but he was here for the first few days after I came. He thinks the injections were probably too strong for me (it was our college doctor who gave them), that 1/2 gram doses would have been better than one gram ones. And he says it will probably take a month to get over the effects of the emetive. As soon as I came here & had some proper rest in bed, I got rid of the diarrhea and the horrible feeling of weakness that I was having in Madras, and am feeling a hundred times better. So far I've not gained any weight, and the doctor lays great emphasis on the necessity of my doing so. I am only 102 lbs., so you can imagine that my poor bones are much in evidence. He says I ought to get up to 135!! That is out of the question, I'm sure, but I should like to get back to the 112 that I had when I reached India. I may not play any tennis until I am 110! The old trouble, intestinal flatulence, I still have; that he thinks is a hang-over from the emetive, for the faecal examination in Madras a month after the injections began showed negative results with respect to the amoebic cysts.
That is a long dissertation! Before I forget it, I wrote last week to the Association Press (Y.M.C.A.) in Calcutta, asking them to send you Albert Schweitzer's "On the Edge of the Primaeval Forest." (To Brookline) I don't know whether you have heard of Schweitzer. I must confess that I hadn't until recently, but his name is well known to continental folk. He was Professor, when still very young, of either Theology or Philosophy in the Univ. of Strasburg, a brilliant scholar; also he was famed as an organist. My Danish friends tell me that he was the best interpreter of Bach on the continent, and he has written a book on Bach. Suddenly, at 30 years, he resigned his professorship and began to study medicine, and when he was qualified he went to Equatorial Africa as a medical missionary. This book is his own account of his experiences there. I finished it last week and found it most fascinating reading. He touches upon every phase of life there among the primitive peoples. I think you will be most interested in the accounts of his medical work, but the whole book - social life, economic, colonial, religious - is splendid. It is a small book, nice reading for a holiday. By the way, are you having any holiday, or are you working all summer? I wish I knew how you were getting on with your problem.
I don't think I have told you what use I made of your book on Capillaries. Once a year I have to lecture at the Presidency College Natural History Association. It is an ordeal that I do not greatly enjoy, and I always tear my hair over a subject. This time I planned to talk on Pasteur. D. Elizabeth had sent me the Centenuary Edition of Valery Radot's Life, and I was full of thrills over it. But on the day of the lecture a delegation of youth from Presidency College called upon me to announce that their last lecture had been on the same subject!! So, I postponed mine for a fortnight and reported on Krogh's book which also thrilled me much and which was entirely new ground to the students. I wish more attention were paid to Physiology in the University here. It is required in our group of the Intermediate, but there are only two hours a week and the students are about at the mental level of our freshmen. The University syllabus offers it for the B.A. Honours Degree, but nobody ever elects it and no college gives it. Our college at present does not attempt more than the B.A. Pass degree. To prepare for the Honours Degree, the equivalent of an M.A., we would need a larger teaching staff than we have and we feel that it is better to send students who wish that work to Presidency College where they come into contact with other Professors and men students. I am now on the Board of Studies in Zoölogy. Perhaps we can some day manage to get physiology in for the Pass Degree. That Board is too funny! There are twelve members. I am the only woman on it and distinctly the youngest of the crowd. There is one other European, an Englishman who is in charge of the Government Museum. The whole crowd are through-and-through systematists, and I sit on the side lines and groan! I wish I were an "authority" on anything! I do think I know more of the genetics than any of them but that subject simply does not exist for them.
There is a project in motion to establish an Institute for Scientific Research in Madras. It will be under the Management of the University and will offer opportunities for research to Honours and graduate students and will be available for any of the staff who wish to use it. The first line to be opened will probably be Marine Zoölogy for we are right on the coast and have a splendid variety of Marine fauna. At the rate things move in India this will probably be ready when I am gray-haired, but at least it is being talked about! Our Science Building, which I had expected to step into when I arrived in 1921, is to be opened in July 1925! That prospect is a joy. I do hope our orders will come through in time. And I wonder how long it will be before I shall wish that I had planned all the rooms differently!
This is such an interesting world, Miss Turner! When I sit at meals here I am filled with the strangeness and yet the naturalness of it. We are five in the house now, two Danish, two English, and myself, still a Yankee. Mrs. Frimodt-Möller, wife of the Sanatorium doctor, is a thoroughly delightful person, full of vigor, sympathy and interest in life. It is a treat to know her. Then there is my great friend, Karen Bardenfleth, who has her degree from Copenhagen Univ., and who belongs to the Danish Nobility. She is splendid; I don't think I know any friend whom I admire more for sheer worth. The Danes whom I have known best are such a delightful and satisfying mixture of sentiment and humour and good sense. I do love them! The English lady is a Mrs. Reilly, wife of a Government Official, whose twenty years in India have been spent in district camp life, touring, as the wife of the great authority. She naturally looks at the Indians from a very different angle from what we do. The fourth is a young man recently out of Oxford, a missionary in the Anglican Church. He was in the Medical Service in the war, doing laboratory work, & it is most interesting to talk with him. He was hard hit with t.b. after about a year in India & has been at the Sanatorium for a year and a half. They expect to discharge him at the end of this summer, to go back to work.
I could go on forever, but I must write to my family. They have just moved (Mother & Father & Peggy) to 134 Ridge Ave., East Aurora, N.Y. where they have bought a house. I do wish you might meet them, esecially Mother.
Much love to you, Miss Turner, always,
Eleanor.