Vienna, Nov. 16, 1800.

MY DEAR WEGELER,--

I thank you for this fresh proof of your interest in me, especially as I so
little deserve it. You wish to know how I am, and what remedies I use.
Unwilling as I always feel to discuss this subject, still I feel less
reluctant to do so with you than with any other person. For some months
past Vering has ordered me to apply blisters on both arms, of a particular
kind of bark, with which you are probably acquainted,--a disagreeable
remedy, independent of the pain, as it deprives me of the free use of my
arms for a couple of days at a time, till the blisters have drawn
sufficiently. The ringing and buzzing in my ears have certainly rather
decreased, particularly in the left ear, in which the malady first
commenced, but my hearing is not at all improved; in fact I fear that it is
become rather worse. My health is better, and after using the tepid baths
for a time, I feel pretty well for eight or ten days. I seldom take tonics,
but I have begun applications of herbs, according to your advice. Vering
will not hear of plunge baths, but I am much dissatisfied with him; he is
neither so attentive nor so indulgent as he ought to be to such a malady;
if I did not go to him, which is no easy matter, I should never see him at
all. What is your opinion of Schmidt [an army surgeon]? I am unwilling to
make any change, but it seems to me that Vering is too much of a
practitioner to acquire new ideas by reading. On this point Schmidt appears
to be a very different man, and would probably be less negligent with
regard to my case. I hear wonders of galvanism; what do you say to it? A
physician told me that he knew a deaf and dumb child whose hearing was
restored by it (in Berlin), and likewise a man who had been deaf for seven
years, and recovered his hearing. I am told that your friend Schmidt is at
this moment making experiments on the subject.