I thank you for your letter with its enclosed cutting of your review published in The Times on Tuesday last. Your comments about my latest work were an unexpected kindness and were no less welcome for being unsolicited. I fear my work must seem dry and uninspiring next to your own for I am a man of science and not a pederast.

I thank you also for the flowers and chocolates that arrived this morning. They are most gracious gifts, although I cannot identify the flowers because I know nothing of flora having devoted myself to a lifelong study of human anatomy.

Your invitation that I should spend a weekend in the country with you and Lord Alfred Douglas is one that I fear I must decline for I seldom leave the house without pressing reason and find speaking aloud in company a stressful experience. Also I cannot swim, having never learned, and therefore do not own the bathing costume you requested I bring.

Please find enclosed some flakes of skin from the calves of my legs. All enclosed samples have been collected (under laboratory conditions and always in the presence of an impartial observer) from the insides of my socks.

Among the many questions such occurrences beg is the principal one I wish to lay before you: if my skin is flaking, and therefore thinning itself, then why is it still thick?

I write to you on the advice of Professor Herbert Montague - who could offer no answers but is familiar with your research on lotions.

No, no, Sir; it will not answer! Notwithstanding its advent in the last century I fear it will not do in this. You need to face your accusers and not be found wanting when called upon to explain your extraordinary behaviour. I suggest that you thank God that you still have a wife at all.

If you are getting no relief then I would suggest a double application. Or even a triple. In fact I would apply the ointment continually until either relief were obtained or the jar emptied. In the latter case you will need to replenish your supply and fresh ointment can be purchased from me at a cost of £1.3s.6d for a small jar, or 5 guineas for a large one. I realise that it is expensive, but this is because it is the only preparation that can bring you relief and this, of course, affects the price at which I decide to sell it.

As demonstrated to you in my surgery, the ointment should be applied with a circular rubbing motion, although not strongly enough to abrade the skin or strain the arm muscles. And it should be applied liberally; even lavishly.