[Sir James Crichton-Browne, Scottish physician and psychiatrist.] Autograph Letter Signed ('James Crichton Browne') to 'Bastian', i.e. Charlton Bastian, questioning the 'overwhelming conclusions' of his 'ingenious and laborious experiments'.

The entry on Bastian in the Oxford DNB finds one of 'the great paradoxes of Bastian's work' to be 'that in neurology his views were highly conventional, while in biology, and what became bacteriology, they became unorthodox and eventually eccentric.' Chief among Bastian's heterodox positions was his belief in the spontaneous generation of bacteria, the subject of the present letter. 8pp, 12mo. On two bifoliums, both with mourning borders. In fair condition, lightly aged and worn, with minor damp staining. He begins by thanking him for his letter and 'the interesting abstract enclosed'. He would 'greatly like to hear your paper but alas! I am compelled to be in the North of England on the 22nd. inst. on official duty'. He states that he is 'dominated by a philosophical creed that makes it as impossible for me to believe in the origin of life from matter as in the origin of matter from life, but facts are facts and demonstration is demonstration, and it may be that you have by your ingenious and laborious experiments brought to light new facts which may necessitate a readjustment of hypotheses.' Bastian will recognise, more than anyone, 'the rigorous nature of the proof that is required before your facts can be accepted. They are at variance with the facts of all other experimenters and assuming that your mico-organisms [sic] are really organisms and not crystals it is still possible that some loop-hole for the intrusion of progeniters into your solution may have escaped you.' He gives examples of spores able to 'resist higher temperatures than has been hitherto believed', and queries why these should have 'adopted various methods of reproduction by fissiparous division'. Not being an expert 'in investigations like yours' he does not feel entitled to criticise them, but at the same time does feel that 'much must be said and done before your overwhelming conclusions can be accepted'. From the distinguished autograph collection of the psychiatrist Richard Alfred Hunter (1923-1981), whose collection of 7000 works relating to psychiatry is now in Cambridge University Library. Hunter and his mother Ida Macalpine had a particular interest in the illness of King George III, and their book 'George III and the Mad Business' (1969) suggested the diagnosis of porphyria popularised by Alan Bennett in his play 'The Madness of George III'.