Autograph Letter Signed from Sir Robert Christison to John Eddowes Bowman, 11 April 1846

Christison begins the letter by referring to a previous communication received from the South of England on the subject of the Nitrate of Iron as a remedy for chronic diarrhoea. He assumes that Dr Graves took his information from some old pupil of his, who, "carrying away with him the main fact, had forgotten the original purpose of the remedy, and ascribed the suggestion of it to [him]self , when in fact the gentleman who first proposed the nitrate of sesquioxide of iron was Mr. Wm. Kerr, at one time surgeon in Paisley, and now of Glasgow". He gives a reference to a paper in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal which gives his observations, with the mode of preparing it". Christison adds that he has occasionally used it, and found reason to be satisfied of its efficacy.