To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Glion-sur-Territet, Switzerland. September 5, 1929
Dear Cory,
It is very nice to have news of you so soon, and I am glad you are trying the system of eating out. It is more Parisian, and although I daresay you will like to go back later to your pension, this will give you a taste of the other method, useful for future occasions.
I went yesterday to Val-Mont and was thoroughly examined, my urine distributed into several parti-coloured phials, my heart photographed, and my lungs sounded. My superfluous flesh was also pressed down in various places to discover how soon it would rise again. Dr Hannelé ?1 was agreeable, and said my bronchitis was not of the bad infectious kind, that the bottom of both my lungs contained a deposit, and that it was better to attack the predisposition to bronchial colds indirectly through the heart. This sentimental organ he said was organically sound but sluggish (moux) and he thought there was too much blood in one vessel and not enough in the other: but the photo would make that point clear. In general, he said I might drink wine, there was no harm in that, but that there was too much water in my body. He means to stimulate my heart somehow so as to correct that dropsical (or lymphatic?) tendency: and he said the pleasure of prescribing for such cases as mine was that they might be cured. We shall see.
Have a good time, don’t spend all your money at once, get nice clothes, don’t forget the Realm of Matter, and forget, as soon as possible, the Realm of Venus. With “these few precepts in thy memory”, remember also your old friend G.S.
1. Santayana drew a wavy line beneath his misspelling of the Swiss physician’s name, Hämmerli.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Four, 1928–1932. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY