I am very touched by the honor of your remembrance of me, and by the tokens of your goodwill, which have been so plentiful and so generous. The day after your too early departure, one of your friends provided me with Mr. Dimsdale’s treaty on smallpox, which gave me remarkable pleasure. I had always considered the warming method and the cooling method (as it is commonly understood) to be two opposed systems which were equally dangerous and equally suspect, and I had always sought to hold to the best middle course between the two. It is precisely this middle course that I now find in the new cooling method, which is not be confused with the old or “antiphlogistic” method as it used to be called. The old method, consisting simply of repeated bleedings, a strict diet, whey, barley syrup, and other similar drinks, would have been more aptly named the “weakening” method. The new cooling method, on the other hand, consisting as it does primarily of the letting in of pure fresh air, rightly deserves to be called the tonic or bracing method, and has a better claim to the title than the old warming or “incendiary” method of cordials and alexipharmaceuticals. I am astonished that this observation has not been put forward in support of the new method, for it would be a mistake to believe, when new things are proposed to the public, that the names given to them are of no consequence. It is precisely this, Monsieur, that your example should make clear to those gentlemen. What an admirable model for careful speech you give them in the periodicals of which you have been kind enough to send me a sample! Your friends will be very happy that you have called them madmen and abandoned them as such, and it will not be at their expense that the public will laugh, but at the expense of their opponents, whom you have not troubled to call fools. Rather you have made them aware of their own foolishness, to the extent that they themselves will not be able to mistake it, and will be forced to acknowledge it, whenever someone presents them with your little mirror. I hastened to have these papers translated, along with your earlier Examination, as it is called, in order to regale my compatriots with them, and everything will be published in succession in the Citizen’s Ephemerides, beginning next month. Although the translator who has undertaken the job can be securely relied upon, I do not let a single word go to press without doing my utmost to assure myself personally of its accuracy, your work is such an object of solicitude to me. Nevertheless, I delivered a rough translation of it aloud in certain respectable gatherings at the house of Monsieur the Marquis de Mirabeau, but only as a preliminary measure, and accompanied by strong protestations against the wrong that would be done to the work by a hasty judgment of it, based on such an imperfect attempt at translation. Please find enclosed the short explication of my chronographic chart, which you have been so kind as to request. To make such an exchange with you is to trade arms of bronze for arms of gold; it is to do as Diomedes did with Glaucus, and I blush at my part in the transaction, for in the ancient example the advantage was all on the hero’s side, and in this case it is just the opposite. I received with gratitude and read with pleasure Mr. Priestley’s biographical chart, which is in fact constructed on almost the same principles as mine, without plagiarism on either side, for I make no claim whatever to pride myself on the date. I was only slightly acquainted with walnuts, and not at all with hickory nuts, and I am extremely obliged to you for your kindness in sending them to me. Should we be able one day to eat their nutmeats together here, how delicious I would find them under such circumstances! You have shown me so many favors that I am emboldened to ask one more service of you: it is to know whether freedom of the press is established enough, either in London or Philadelphia, for a bold work of pure deism to be published there, and then, supposing that this freedom did exist, to know whether you would permit me to put the work into your hands and to commit it to your protection. Mesdemoiselles Basseporte and Biheron thank you for the honor of your remembrance of them, and each of them presents you with a thousand compliments, and my wife, for her part, with at least two thousand. If you have an opportunity to see Mr. Pringle, kindly present him with my very humble regards. I am, Monsieur, with high esteem and respectful consideration, your very humble and very obedient servant