In the first letter, dated 25 August 1930, Kipling thanks Sir John for his invitation to a dinner of the College on 18 October and confirms that he would like to attend; in the second, fully autograph letter, dated 4 September 1930, Kipling apologises profusely that he cannot after all accept the invitation. The "College" mentioned in the letters is likely to be the Royal College of Physicians, of which Bradford was president from 1926 to 1931. Plagued by pain from an undiagnosed duodenal ulcer, Kipling had become a critic of conventional medicine, going so far as to lecture on what would now be called "complementary medicine" before several professional bodies in the late 1920s. Kipling may have made Bradford's acquaintance during the First World War, when Bradford was consulting physician to the British expeditionary force, with the rank of major-general, Army Medical Service. Kipling was then using all his considerable influence to discover the fate of his son John (Jack), who had been commissioned in the Irish Guards at the outset of the war, had gone to France in August 1915 and was reported wounded and missing in the battle of Loos a month later.
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