2. The Letters

Abstract

My dear Singer, Many thanks for your letter of the 15th April. You probably have also received the enclosed sheet about the Greek Tour. Since I apparently suggested it I shall have to join the group. I had thought that the tour would take place after the Rome meeting, but our American colleagues apparently must be back home by the end of September. If a sufficient number joins the group, which I very much doubt, I would not be able to meet you in Naples and I would regret it very much. $ 400 is a lot of money for two weeks even for Americans, and seems rather unlikely to me that a group of twenty will come together. A very nice hotel in Naples is Santa Lucia. It is on the waterfront and my daughter Nora and her husband 1 liked it very much. In Rome I asked for reservations at the Hotel Continental, it is not a particularly pleasant hotel but has a good central location. I quite agree with you about the subject of drugs. I of course shall have to discuss them and their preparation in my book, 2 but I cannot possibly devote too much space to them either. The policy you outline for your book is absolutely correct and as a matter of fact the only possible one. 3 My health is better than when I wrote you last time, I am on a strict reducing diet and have to take off twenty lbs. I am also taking Serpasil with good results. It is a drug that Ciba 4 is producing, and which actually is a very old drug[,] a glucoside extract from Rau-wolfia, a plant used in India for 2000 years. Maybe Dorothy [sic] should take it also, it lowers the blood pressure and is at the same time a sedative. You need not be vaccinated for smallpox, but inoculation for typhoid may be advisable as there is a good deal of typhoid in Naples and the whole of Southern Italy. I keep my immunisation up by having a shot every year when I go to WHO in Geneva. 5 On the other hand if you are a little careful, drink wine instead of water and avoid salads etc. you should be perfectly safe. I do not know if I ever wrote you that my daughter Erica got typhoid in Geneva a few …