Dear Cyndy,

Thank you for your letter.

Unless you think Ned doesn't want his surgery mentioned 
at all, please convey to him my best wishes. As for your
own medical problems, I agree that "cellulitis" is not 
"lymphedema", and that concomitant "lymphedema", vomiting 
and joint pain are presumably attributable to "something 
else", a single "cause", conventionally called an 
"immunological" disorder. Has anyone considered that your 
"Henoch Schönlein" purpura and the lymphedema, vomiting, 
joint pain complex might be expressions of one and the 
same as yet unidentified and perhaps even unnamed disease?

The nomenclature of "diseases", indeed the definition of
"disease" as opposed to "good health", - "wellness" is the
fashion word du jour - all these are invitations to speculate
about "knowledge", and to invent theories about what knowledge
is and is not. Possibly an unrewarding, useless enterprise,
at least Goethe thought so. He attributed his success to his
refusal to think about thinking. He boasted "ich habe nie über
das Denken gedacht". (I never thought about thought.)

The foregoing a preface to the theory of knowledge I've been 
toying with, which has led me to conclude that "thinking" is
an inward reflection of speaking, and that "knowledge" is never
anything more than, and can best be understood as, an expression
of language. The idea is so simple, and in some respects so naive,
that I've decided to give Charlotte the first chance to articulate
it. Joachim can then demonstrate his academic mettle, by
reconciling Charlotte's "discovery", with the classic English 
epistemologic criterion of "common sense", with Kant's mysterious 
postulate of "Verstand" as opposed to "Vernunft" (reason), and 
perhaps most persuasively with the readily demonstrable 
circumstance that language is the universal common currency 
in which "knowledge" is peddled. Such are the ruminations of
an "author" who has abandoned all expectations that his "novels"
will ever find even a single reader.

By the same token, you must admit that there's at hand no other 
explantion for Henoch Schönlein-lymphedema-cellulitis-emesis-arthritis 
than Charlotte Graupe's theory of knowledge.

Good night. Best wishes to both of you, and as even a somewhat
sceptical Dickensian must say: "God bless us everyone."

Jochen