4 Marlborough Place, November 4, 1881.

My dear Lens,

There is truth in the rumour; in so far as this that I was asked if I would allow myself to be nominated for the Mastership of University, that I took the question into serious consideration and finally declined.

But I was asked to consider the communication made to me confidential, and I observed the condition strictly.  The leakage must have taken place among my Oxford friends, and is their responsibility, but at the same time I would rather you did not contribute to the rumour on the subject.  Of course I should have told you if I had not been bound to reticence.

I was greatly tempted for a short time by the prospect of rest, but when I came to look into the matter closely there were many disadvantages.  I do not think I am cut out for a Don nor your mother for a Donness—­we have had thirty years’ freedom in London, and are too old to put in harness.

Moreover, in a monetary sense I should have lost rather than gained.

My astonishment at the proposal was unfeigned, and I begin to think I may yet be a Bishop.

Ever your loving father,

T.H.  Huxley.

[His other occupations this year were the Medical Acts Commission, which sat until the following year, and the International Medical Congress.

The Congress detained him in London this summer later than usual.  It lasted from the 3rd to the 9th of August, on which day he delivered a concluding address on “The Connection of the Biological Sciences with Medicine” ("Collected Essays” 3 page 347).  He showed how medicine was gradually raised from mere empiricism and based upon true pathological principles, through the independent growth of physiological knowledge, and its correlation to chemistry and physics.] “It is a peculiarity,” [he remarks,] “of the physical sciences that they are independent in proportion as they are imperfect.” [Yet] “there could be no real science of pathology until the science of physiology had reached a degree of perfection unattained, and indeed unattainable, until quite recent times.” [Historically speaking, modern physiology, he pointed out, began with Descartes’ attempt to explain bodily phenomena on purely physical principles; but the Cartesian notion of one controlling central mechanism had to give way before the proof of varied activities residing in various tissues, until the cell-theory united something of either view.  “The body is a machine of the nature of an army, not that of a watch or of a hydraulic apparatus.”  On this analogy, diseases are derangements either of the physiological units of the body, or of their coordinating machinery:  and the future of medicine depends on exact knowledge of these derangements and of the precise alteration of the conditions by the administration of drugs or other treatment, which will redress those derangements without disturbing the rest of the body.