Ventnor, 6 January 1883 
1 St Boniface Gardens 

Dear Dr Williamson, 

I return with best thanks the enclosed letter.? 

My intended promenade was yesterday stopped by the rain. When 
rising this morning about a quarter past 9 o’clock, I got suddenly into 
a spasmodic cough, gasping, wrestling as if it were with suffocation. 
Unfortunately, I had used up the morphia, nor had I any of the ‘loz- 
enges’ prescribed by you, but I took a table-spoon-(rather somewhat 
more)-ful of the tonic. What in point of fact surprised me was, that 
during the course of yesterday my cough was much less troublesome 
than it had been for the last weeks. Nor was my night specially dis- 
turbed. Mere moral agencies, I suppose, do not touch the movements 
of the mucus. 

Yesterday afternoon I had received from Paris a letter with bad 
news as to the health of Madame Longuet, my oldest daughter. 
I knew of course that her illness was serious, but I was not prepared to 
hear that it passes now through a critical phasis. 

Yours very truly, 
Karl Marx