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Semmering,
February 27, 1917
Dear Professor,
There is a noticeable improvement in my condition: gain in energy and body weight, lowering of pulse rate. Satisfied with this success, I also wanted to spend the rest of my vacation in the Südbahnhotel, but since the cure house is now offering to place a room at my disposal, I didn't want to refuse. So I will live there from March 1 on. A friend from Budapest, Professor (now staff physician) Dr. Schächter,1 is in the cure house gravely ill (phthisis2 and diabetes). As much as I feel for him, I will—in consideration for infection (which is possible, especially in a weakened condition)—spend only a little time with him daily.
I am sending a small work with today's mail. You will easily recognize the hero in it.3
I am enclosing a few trifles along with these lines.
I have corresponded with Rank on the occasion of a family matter (nephew ill in Cracow). His letter was friendly but showed decided depression.
In expecation of your news,
Yours,
Ferenczi
Miksa Schächter (see also letter 111, n. 4). In his obituary Ferenczi wrote: “I was just recovering in the “cure house” at the Semmering when my poor friend, already gravely ill, likewise arrived there on the advice of his physicians. In the first few days he was greeted by a beaming winter sun; his face and mood were brightened a little by it. But the incessant snowstorms which followed caused him to waste away more and more, and—very mindful of the fate that awaited him—he wanted to hasten his return home. And, truly, he went away … I was still at the Semmering when I received news of his death. But I am still incapable of imagining that I—that we—have lost him” (“Mon amitié avec Miksa Schächter” [Ferenczi 1917, 199], Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2 [Paris, 1970], pp. 291f.).