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“I am quite well and idling to perfection” are not words you’d associate with
Michael Faraday in his sixties. He was often sick, and many of the letters in
this, the fourth volume of The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, are
to and from friends who are ailing—the kind of correspondents who should
under no circumstances be asked how they are for they will tell you in far too
much detail. Faraday lists putrid abscesses among the ailments of his wife and
himself. But do persist, for other letters also appear: on his work for the
Royal Institution, on magnetism…