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I beg leave to give you the trouble of this
from an anxiety lest a letter I wrote to you on
Monday night at Carlisle should not go safe. It was
not got to the Post Office till the man was on horse¬
back, it was given to him with strict charge to put it in
at Longtown, & to enforce his care, it was told him it
was for a Physician, & concerning health. These fellows
are sometimes forgetful of letters; & it is not impossible
as the letter was thick, he might think there were some
Scotch Notes in it, as it was about a consultation, in that
case the letter would run some risk. I therefore write
from this, as this is the first place that answers for ↑the↑ Edinr
Post, as it came across the country, and thought to have
got the post here this morning, but this is their Lay Day
answering to Sunday at London.

The letter I wrote was about my son Daers health, & had
inclosed a sheet of memorandums & excerpts from letters.
giving the particulars that had been wrote at different
times. I hope the letter has not miscarried, but lest it should
I shall write something in general, & hope you will
excuse it if unness unnecessary.

About the middle of Janry Daer caught a Cold (which he is
very liable to, & they often are tedious,) he had some cough
as usual, but they say the cough did not last long, but
he after some time had a light feverishness, not however
such as to confine him, nor interrupt his school business.
His cold & feverishness grew better, & worse, & at intervals
seemd quite gone, or nearly so, but often returned, or new
colds brought back the feverishness; once or twice he was
so ill as to lose his rest, & be obliged to keep his rooms I believe
a day, or part of a day. In february I wrote desiring, if he
was not soon well, to ↑write &↑ consult Dr Wm Fordyce at London, who
had about two years before attended him in a like complaint
when he had I think been confined partly to his bed, & partly to his room.

They write to me that they have got Asses Milk for him,
& if the weather was favourable he was to ride out.

I had determined to set out for seeing him, & only waited
one post for their account of what Dr Fordyce should write
in his second letter to them, & expecting one to myself from F–
on getting theirs of the 1st I set out & got Fordyces at Dum¬
fries. His letter I sent you extracts of, & I was before it
uneasy enough, & his letter tho I could not see from it any
thing of the present disorder being more immediately dange¬
rous than I had before had fears of, yet he speaks in very
strong terms of the danger he was in some years ago,
when I did not then apprehend he was in any.

I go now to do whatever shall be advised, & wish very
anxiously for your advice to me. I mean to take him
from school, & to keep by him, if or him with me this Sum–
mer. He was last winter to have come to Scotland to the
University, but I had imprudently brought him to Scotland the
year before, & keept him more than six months ↑there↑, at

When Daer is intirely free of this cold, cough & feverishness
& the weather proper, pray would not the Cold bath be good.
All that Summer he was last in Scotland he used it frequently,
yet he is still very apt to take cold: but where he is at present
they have no place for bathing, so he has had little of it
since. –– In the last letter I got, I observe they say though the cough
was returned with a fresh cold caught, yet there was not any pain
in the side; hence I fear there was a pain before, tho it had not
been mentioned. I am uneasy at the cold weather we have had ever
since the 1st of April till the 11th when it began to rain a little, & I
hope will now bring mild weather; but all the Cumberland Mountains
were covered with snow as I came along. Farewell Dear Sir

a Single Sheet
To
Doctor Cullen
Edinburgh