May 10, 2011
Dear Marion,

It's Tuesday, one of the two days of the week when I permit
myself a letter to you. I've neglected, - postponed -, acknowledging
your account of "Feathered Cocaine," not from disinterest, but from
perplexity. The Falcon Trade which you describe raises in my mind
numerous issues, none of which I feel able to address, - the culture
of wealthy Arabs for whom falconry is a status symbol, the interactions
between humans and animals, of which Arab falconry is but one facet,
interactions in which we are all implicated and which are, in varying
degrees, occasions for remorse and distress; and not least, the virtue
of propaganda in a noble cause, and the function of a propagandist,
such as Alan Parrot in improving the world, or at minimum, keeping it
from becoming even worse. About all such matters I know nothing but to
plead nolo contendere.

My own mind has been focussed on the Biblical injunction: "Bestelle
dein Haus, denn Du wirst sterben und nicht lebendig bleiben," which
I glean from Bach's Cantata #106: Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit.
The quotation derives from the first verse of the 20th chapter of the
Second Book of Kings, which Luther translated: "Zu der Zeit ward Hiskia
todkrank. Und der Prophet Jesaja, der Sohn des Amoz, kam zu ihm und
sprach zu ihm: So spricht der Herr: Beschicke dein Haus; denn du wirst
sterben und nicht leben bleiben." and translated by the acolytes of
the most high and mighty Prince James, by the Grace of GOD, King of
Great Britain, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc.
"In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And the prophet Isaiah
the son of Amoz came to him and said unto him, Thus saith the LORD,
Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live." As it
turned out, Isaiah's prophecy, not unlike much medical prognosis,
was faulty.  Only five verses later, GOD changed his mind and added
fifteen years to Hezekiah's life, and it turned out, he didn't have
to set his house in order after all. Assuming Hezekiah obeyed Isaiah's
original injunction, the cleaning up was premature and for nothing.

For all that, I decided not to take a chance. Went down to the basement,
started in the shop, threw out boxes of rusty tacks, cans of bent
and twisted screws, brackets for curtain rods never to be used. I rubbed
the mildew off my father's medical bag, in it a set of vials, some empty
some partially or wholly filled, labelled with the name of the drug:
sulfanilamide and the sales price, .10/doz. or triple bromides .06/doz.
The good old days will never return. I swept up the floors, littered
mostly with dead insects, wasps, lady bugs, but predominantly flies.
Next I started working in the large nominally designated "drying room"
whose cinderblock walls have for years been damp with rainwater percolating
through the soil and the porous foundations. Here are stored among many
other objects, Margrit's pottery which we retrieved last year from Detroit,
my father's diathermy machine, his ulttraviolet lamp, a medical couch,
neatly reupholstered in naugahide, collections of lawn and porch chairs
with broken hinges, with frayed or broken webbing, the ancient radio
receiver on which I listened to news of the war, the bombimgs of English
and German cities, the invasion of Normandy ... to throw it all out would
be to abandon years of my life to oblivion.

Here's my e-mail to Klemens on the subject:

"Thank you for your prompt response to my inquiry
about the various items I considered throwing out.
Of course, I'll keep the medical books. The diathermy
and ultraviolet machines I will also hold onto, if
only because they are too heavy for me to toss into a
5 ft high dumpster without assistance.

The diathermy machine now in the basement is a Raytheon
product dating from about 1950. It most likely contains
electronic devices long since superseded; I haven't
investigated. The original "Kurzwellenapparat",  which
my parents discarded when they acquired the Raytheon machine,
was a museum piece. Like the original Marconi transmitters,
it generated radio waves from high voltage spark gaps.
The ensuing electrical arcs produced a broad spectrum of
electromagnetic waves, disrupting radio-reception in 
radius of hundreds, - perhaps thousands of feet. Some
of the radio energy was conducted by means of cables to
flexible metal screens of various sizes, enclosed in rubber
envelopes, covered with immaculate white pillow cases. 
These "electrodes" were strapped with broad rubber tapes to
the limbs or to the trunk of the patient, never to the head.
When the machine was turned on, the spraks made loud hissing
noises, the odor of ozone permeated the room and the patient
experienced a feeling of deep warmth in the part of the body
being irradiated. It was latter day Mesmerism. The theory,
that heat dilated blood vessels, improved perfusion and
metabolism and helped fight the germs which lurk everywhere.
For the patients it was a pleasant experience, not at all
painful, good for "arthritis", "fibromyalgia", "rheumatism",
or other non-descript aches and pains. For the doctor, a
reliable source of cash flow. The Raytheon machine generated,
no longer by spark gaps, but by means of a specially designed
electrical oscillator called, if I remember correctly, a
"magnetron", - offspring of the WW II radar transmitter, -
a narrow spectrum of electromagnetic radiation which was
directed to the body part to be treated by means of microwave
reflectors positioned some inches from the skin, much inferior
to the physical contact of electrodes strapped to the body.
The Raytheon medical radar reflectors are devices which you 
will see when you're next in Konnarock.

"Die Hoehensonnenlampe" was an achievement of pre-war German
electronic technology. At its base, a huge transformer to what
I assume is low voltage, very high amperage current which
is fed into an exquisitely designed quartz electrode in which
there is formed an arc so bright that all persons in the room,
not only the patient, must wear protective glasses. The patient,
undressed, reclines on the couch about 1 meter below the arc,
which produces in untanned skin an ultraviolet burn within a
minute or two. Treatments, given once or twice weekly, are 
progressively lengthened and may be repeated until the body
is deeply tanned. Much less expensive than a month auf Sylt,
and probably quite effective in preventing rickets in city
children whose life-style precludes exposure to the sun.
Probably in part because of the southern latitude, ultraviolet
therapy never did catch on in Konnarock where sunlight was not
in so short supply as in North Germany.

==============

All that should be enough - more than enough reading material
for you for now, perhaps so much as to make you wish you had
stayed on the Farm.

==============
==============
May 13, 2011 

I make a distinction between my role as a physician in which I 
prescribe to my patients what I advise them to do, and my role
as a human being - it's ironic that the distinction should be
necessary - which requires me to tell those who are dear to me
what I would do if I were in their position. I am much aware of
how different we are from each other and that the "right" course
of action (or inaction) for me, might quite possibly be the
"wrong" course of (in)action for you. That's a decision which only
you can make. If I had (the disease) I would do nothing unless and
until the disease disabled me. What, if anything, I would do then
would depend on the symptoms, signs, and laboratory findings. As
for "gold standards", in medicine they almost always turn out to
be pyrite.

In addition to meditating on (the disease) and installing more
basement light fixtures, I've been corresponding with Caner Cetinkaya,
the Braunschweig physician who grew up in the house in which I was born.
I am about to post this correspondence on my website in publically
inaccesible files, and when I have done so, will e-mail you the URL,
in case you're curious or need entertainment.

Last evening, while looking through some of my parents' art books,
I disovered by chance a 25 page long story about life in Nazi
Germany. I was stunned, because I had no memory at all of having 
written it and was unable to identify the author. Finally, after
finding numerous corrections in my handwriting, I could no longer
deny that I was the guilty one. Even more compelling were astute and
sensitive corrections in my mother's handwriting, the first evidence
ever that she read anything I wrote other than my letters. The date of 
composition, probably 1947 or 1948. I used an American typewriter and 
backspaced to the " to print Umlaute. There are two differing versions 
which I did not take time to collate; but I scanned them both into pdf
files which aggregate 10 megabytes and are too long to e-mail,
especially from Konnarock. I have started to translate the pdf
files into the much smaller text (txt) files, which in due time
I expect to put on my website. You can then explore my mind at
age 18, if you care to.