l v i i i I N T R O D U C T I O N T O V O L U M E 1 6 to work on his new unified field theory. Tongue in cheek, Einstein blessed the illness that had granted him “such a gift” (Doc. 224). Yet even in Scharbeutz, he could not entirely escape his erstwhile quotidian commitments—he only had “as much quiet as the Berliners will allow” (Doc. 242). By mid-August, Elsa reported that Einstein was enjoying life “without responsibilities.” She wanted to “preserve the illness, possibly forever, officially. He’s already been forgotten to some extent, there is not much mail. He hasn’t participated in anything for half a year. In reality, he’s doing much better. He’s taking short walks of half an hour” (Abs. 648). Einstein seemed both quite wary of a potential relapse and fairly invested in uti- lizing his illness to avoid an unnecessarily speedy return to his stressful life in Berlin. Even though he himself admitted that his heart no longer exhibited symp- toms, he still had to refrain from exerting himself. As for the future, he remained rather pessimistic about his prognosis. Einstein did not think he “would ever be all right again” or be able to travel as extensively as before (Doc. 253). Elsa concurred: “he would never be a muscleman, as before” (Abs. 648). But improved health did result in his being less cautious about following his doctors’ orders to rest. By mid- September, Elsa reported a temporary setback—after taking up sailing again, he suffered from exhaustion, elevated pulse, and high blood pressure. After three days of bed rest and adhering again to his prescribed diet, the symptoms quickly abated (Doc. 265). In the past, Einstein’s challenging experiences with his own ailments and those of his family members had led him to express profound ambivalence toward the medical profession and its practitioners. The fact that during the course of his pro- tracted illness he was treated by four different physicians did little to mitigate this mistrust. Commenting on the respective difficulties of his Berlin doctors—János Plesch and Rudolf Ehrmann—in decreasing his elevated pulse, Einstein remarked that the specialists were resorting “to methods that could be effective only among believers” (Doc. 236) His relocation to Scharbeutz had gone against his doctors’ express wishes. In his opinion, they “are the successors to the clerics who rule over us in the name of our corpses” (Doc. 252). By late July, he seemingly had escaped from their control: “At least I’m left in peace by the doctors. These are like the priests and sorcerers of old, but they base their power even more directly on the stu- pidity of other people” (Doc. 242). Nevertheless, both Einstein and Elsa, who, in the meantime, was also suffering from a heart ailment, were eventually treated in Scharbeutz by two prominent visiting physicians: the Hamburg hospital director Leopold Lichtwitz and New York professor of medicine Emanuel Libman. Einstein credited the former with curing Elsa and almost healing him, too (Doc. 268).