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Vienna, Sunday
May 17, 1885
Precious darling
While you are taking such pleasure in the activities and management of the household, I am at the moment tempted by the desire to solve the riddle of the structure of the brain; I think brain anatomy is the only legitimate rival you have or ever will have. Let me tell you about this first: I have had some rather lucky ideas recently and enough points of view from which to go on working. I even hope here and there to draw an important conclusion from my discoveries. Yesterday I received from Berlin a very flattering letter promising to include my paper, provided I send it at once and that it doesn't run to more than a page, as promised. When the letter came I was suffering from migraine, the third attack this week, by the way, although I am otherwise in excellent health -I suspect the tartar sauce I had for lunch in Fleischl's room disagreed with me-I took some cocaine, watched the migraine vanish at once, went on writing my paper as well as a letter to Prof. Mendel, but I was so wound up that I had to go on working and writing and couldn't get to sleep before four in the morning. Today I am in fine fettle again, very pleased with my paper1 which is short but contains some very important information and should raise my esteem again in the eyes of the public. It is to appear either on the first or fifteenth of June, depending on whether it can still be placed or has to take its turn.
Today I missed making one important find because the slide in which I had put great hopes turned out to be useless, so now I shall have to wait for a new one. Otherwise I go on working hard.
You, Marty, why are you keeping me on tenterhooks like this?