I have yours of 22d. I am glad you are coming round to the Hospital scheme.2 It is (of all others) the scheme for you. You may live for years, you cannot get much (if any) stronger and may get much more helpless. In a good hospital you would be surrounded by absolutely capable attendants (doctors and nurses) and whatever happened you would be properly cared for and made as comfortable as skill and science could make you. I know your powers of endurance, they are (like the rest of your faculties) out of the line of ordinary. But what use to tax them unnecessarily? I believe with care and skill properly directed you might even loc_es.00708.jpg yet have many a good week and month while I fear as at present situated you have mighty few. I will make enquiry about Johns Hopkins (that is a palace of medical skill and physical comfort for the sick and helpless) Baltimore and let you know. If a change is decided on I shall go on and see you moved and settled. Don't forget to send me the "poemet."3 Where is Symonds4 letter5? I should like much to see Steads6 "Review of Reviews" please send it. I think you are right not to trouble about the money (income) matter. If money is needed it will be found.
We are better here—La Grippe is "letting up" on us and things are beginning to resume their old course
I send my love to you R. M. Bucke loc_es.00705.jpg loc_es.00706.jpgCorrespondent:
Richard Maurice Bucke (1837–1902) was a
Canadian physician and psychiatrist who grew close to Whitman after reading Leaves of Grass in 1867 (and later memorizing it) and
meeting the poet in Camden a decade later. Even before meeting Whitman, Bucke
claimed in 1872 that a reading of Leaves of Grass led him
to experience "cosmic consciousness" and an overwhelming sense of epiphany.
Bucke became the poet's first biographer with Walt
Whitman (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1883), and he later served as one
of his medical advisors and literary executors. For more on the relationship of
Bucke and Whitman, see Howard Nelson, "Bucke, Richard Maurice," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998).