During the summer of 1857 Engels was unwell and determined that visiting seaside locations would help.
He went first to Waterloo, Liverpool where Marx offered him this advice:
[London,] 15 August 1857
Dear Frederick,
I am delighted to hear that the sea is doing you good, as was to be expected. As soon as you are fit enough to bathe, It will take effect even more quickly.
The sea itself is, of course, the principal remedy. However, some medicaments ought to be taken internally, partly preventive, partly curative, so as to introduce into the blood those substances it lacks. As opposed to your assumptions in your letter to my wife and basing myself on the most recent French, English and German literature, which 1 have been reading on the subject of your illness, I put forward the following, which you may submit to the scrutiny of any college of physicians or pharmacists:
1. Whereas cod-liver oil requires 3 months to take effect, iron does so in 3 weeks.
2. Cod-liver oil and iron are not mutually exclusive but complement each other during treatment.
3. A temporary iron shortage in the blood is the primary characteristic of your disease. Besides bathing in the sea, you must take iron, even should there no longer be any outward sign of the disease.
4. In your case the therapeutic element in cod – liver oil is iodine, since the oil’s fattening properties are of no moment to you. Hence iodide of iron combines both the elements you need, one of which you would obtain from cod-liver oil. At the same time, it would spare your stomach the extra ballast inevitable in the case of cod-liver oil.
Voilà mes theses, and I hope you will give them your serious consideration so that, once cured, you do not suffer subsequent relapses which are said to be exceedingly disagreeable.
However as the following extract from a history of Jersey indicates Engels did not recover and headed south:
Engels obediently took iron iodide (and cod liver oil) but only felt worse, though he did find that taking baths reduced the inflammation. He thought of going to a ‘vigorous’ bathing station like the Isle of Man and then moving on to the Isle of Wight. Marx replied that the Isle of Man was distinguished only by its smell and that Engels should go to the best place in England for his complaint, Hastings.
The Isle of Wight almost cured Engels, but he wrote to Marx from Ryde to invite him to join him in Brighton to cross to Jersey. Why did Engels choose Jersey? No doubt because an ailing acquaintance, Conrad Schramm, who had gone there on 20 September, recommended the climate. Marx said he might come to Brighton, and Engels replied that he would go to Brighton on 28 September at the latest and to Jersey on the 29th. In fact, as the passenger lists show, “Engels and friend” arrived in Jersey on 1 October on the Brighton from Kingston. The friend must surely have been Marx.
Engels and, presumably, Marx found lodgings in Saint Helier at 3 Edward Place in The Parade. Marx saw Schramm but must have left Jersey by about 5 October when Engels went alone to Schramm’s and renewed acquaintance with George Julian Harney. Marx and Engels had known Harney as a revolutionary in London, “one of the best of the English popular speakers”. as Marx put it. After the failure of Chartism and his newspapers, Harney had come to Jersey and, in July 1856, had accepted editorship of the Jersey Independent.
How much Engels would have fancied bathing in the sea around the coast of Britain 165 years on and whether it would have helped his health must be highly questionable
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