Marx-Engels Correspondence 1866
Source: MECW Volume 42, p 331;.
First published: in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Stuttgart, 1913.
Dear Engels,
My best thanks for coming to my aid so quickly and ditto for the port wine. I know your own circumstances exactly, and that makes it doubly painful for me thus to put pressure on you. You know, we really must put an end to this business once and for all, but that will not be possible until I can go to the Continent and act there in person.
Next week the first batch of the manuscript [of the first volume of Capital] will go off to Meissner at last! This summer and autumn it was really not the theory which caused the delay, but my physical and civil condition. It is just 3 years ago now that the first carbuncle was lanced. Since then I have had only short periods of respite from it, and as Gumpert will confirm, of all types of work, theory is the most unsuitable if one has this devil’s brew in one’s blood.
As regards the present fellow, it will be cured in the space of about 14 days. I now know exactly how it has to be treated and I have therefore started taking the arsenic again.
In great haste.
Your
K. Marx