Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letter. I wish I could answer it
as expansively and enthusiastically as I might have
in the past, but as I have confessed to you before,
I suffer from chronic "free will" deficiency. Perhaps
that is why I have no control over the spigots of
imagination and initiative. As that great classical
Jewish economist so eloquently predicted: after seven
fat years, will come seven lean years. That, it seems
to me is probably true in the economics of thought as
well as in the economics of finance.

Your mention the Keyser-Fleischer ring in Wilson's
hepatolenticular degeneration evoked memories of the
miasma of medical education when it was impressed on
me that I had a duty to identify the copper deposits
in the peripheral cornea at the presymptomatic stages
of the illness so that dementia and liver failure might
be prevented by early treatment. In the course of the
past 28 years, I've examined 6088 new patients, in none
of whom I found, and so far as I know, in none of whom
I missed, the Keyser-Fleischer ring; not surprisingly,
since the incidence of the disease is said to be 1 to 4
in 100000 patients, in whom not more than 2/3 demonstrate
the ring. These circumstances then raise the usual 
questions about the epistemology of disease, and about
nosology in general.

About E.T.A. Hoffman, I refreshed my memory on the
de.wikipedia entry, embarrassed as usual, by how little
I knew, how little I had read, and how much remained
to be learned. I gather that Hoffman was a very gifted,
and a colorful person, whose path on life was anything
but smooth.

Jochen