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March 29, 1897
IX., Berggasse 19
My dear,
Today, after a week-long misery, extending from one special date to the next one, I woke up refreshed. Mathilde is well, except for albuminuria; still in bed. Today everything will be disinfected. The others have remained well. — Cordial thanks for your lecture;1 it reveals an unbelievable power of condensing thoughts and in twenty minutes leads one through the universe. Can well believe that you needed [to make] the remark about the audience's changing expression.2 I yearn for the days in Prague. In these bad days my work is a terrible torture for me. How fortunate that I no longer see Br[euer]. He would surely have advised me to emigrate.3 I am still having the same difficulties and have not finished a single case. I trust Robert has been well again for some time?
With cordial greetings to you and Ida,
Your
Sigm.
Freud is referring to a paper entitled “Über Dysmenorrhöe und Wehenschmerz,” read at the meeting of the Gesellschaft für Geburtshilfe and Gynäkologie zu Berlin on December 11, 1896 — an informal speech rather than a lecture, published in the Zeitschrift für Geburtshilfe und Gynäkologie. Here Fliess outlines his periodicity theory. He tells the audience that they know of course about a twenty-eight day period. But the “twenty-three day period, which you are hearing about here for the first time, will, in the future, occupy an equally important place in biology.” A slightly paranoid cast and grandiosity are evident in this early lecture.
Mimik. The passage that Freud refers to concerning the audience's reaction is on p. 366 of Fliess's paper (see preceding note). Fliess evidently interrupted the lecture as follows: “For each one of these series of dates, I could also include the birthdates of the siblings on the mother's side, the uncles and aunts. I see, gentlemen, that this proposal stimulates your laughing muscles in a dubious manner. But I can
reveal to you that we are dealing here with a