Dear Ms. Loxton.

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Laura Recarte

Year 10B

3 Denton Street

Paddington Hospital

U.S.A

2nd  October, 1970.

Dear Ms. Loxton,

        I have been quite busy lately and I had no chance to reply to your letter earlier. First of all, I’d like to make clear that it was your own nephew, Leonard Lowe, who encouraged me to perform my experiments upon him and the rest of the post-encephalitic patients of this hospital. One Tuesday night, about two weeks before the patients were given the drug, I was studying Leonard; I was trying to make him spell out his name using a ouija board. Instead of writing his name, your nephew spell out this: ‘Rilke’s Panther’. I researched this and found a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke about an encaged panther. It described how the panther was trapped behind numerous bars and was willing to come out. However, it was the last stanza the one that made me realise how Leonard felt:

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“Rarely does the pupils' heavy curtain lift.
Silently allowing an image to enter,
penetrating this void carried by wearied limbs
quickly it is lost within his heart.”  

 Maybe you should read the rest of that poem, Ms. Loxton, and perhaps only then you’ll understand how your nephew Leonard Lowe felt while he was trapped in his own body for thirty years. Only at that moment, will you understand why I did what I did. Nevertheless, you can be in no doubt that I had Mrs. Lowe’s consent to give the drug to her son.

   Perhaps you are right ...

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