BUFFALO MEDICAL AND SURGICAL JOURNAL

A MONTHLY REVIEW OF MEDICINE AND SURGERY.

EDITORS:

THOMAS LOTHROP, M. D.

WM. WARREN POTTER, M. D.

All communications, whether of a literary or business nature, should be addressed to the managing editor: 284 FRANKLIN STREET, BUFFALO, N. Y.

VOL. XXXIV.

NOVEMBER, 1894.

No. 4.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

THE most distinguished American physician has passed to his immortality, and it is fitting that the JOURNAL should take more than ordinary cognizance of an event that is and must be common to us all. Oliver Wendell Holmes died at his home at Beverly Farm, at noon, on Sunday, October 7, 1894, without pain and without warning excepting such admonition as must always come with advancing years.

Dr. Holmes's life was a remarkable one from several view points. He was born on commencement day at Cambridge, August 29, 1809, and was, therefore, at the time of his death, just past eighty-five years of age. His father was a clergyman of the Presbyterian church, and his mother, for whom his second name was given, was of Dutch descent.

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He was educated first at Cambridge, then at Phillips's Academy, and finally entered Harvard College in 1825, whence he graduated years later. He entered Harvard Law School in 1830, but soon abandoned law for medicine and took his medical degree from Harvard in 1836. Before this time he began to develop literary ability of an unusual order, and had already made a name in the poetical field through a poem before the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He also won several of the Boylston prizes offered for medical dissertations about this period of his life.

He was appointed professor of anatomy and physiology in Dartmouth College in 1838, a chair that he held for two years. He married Miss Amelia Lee Jackson, daughter of Hon. Charles Jackson, June 16, 1840, and three children were born of this marriage. Oliver Wendell Holmes, now a justice of Massachusetts

Supreme Court, the elder son, alone survives. A son and a daughter are dead.

Dr. Holmes was appointed Parkman professor of anatomy and physiology in Harvard Medical School in 1847. He taught anatomy for thirty-five years, retiring from the chair in 1882. He made his lectures attractive, no doubt largely through his literary attainments, which had now become known throughout the world as of a high order. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table was introduced to the reading public through the columns of the Atlantic Monthly in 1857, and it is largely due to Dr. Holmes's contributions to that periodical that it became one of the best read magazines in the country. From the moment that he assumed the editorship of the Atlantic, Dr. Holmes began to be recognized throughout the world as a man of letters, and literature now claimed his attention more than medicine.

His essay, however, on Puerperal Fever, though published in an early day, long before the germ theory of disease was understood, is often quoted for its clearness and scientific reasoning and is one of the medical classics of the period. Who, too, has not been delighted with the charming literary merit of the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table and that delightful medicated novel, Elsie Venner?

While Dr. Holmes's fame in prose is world-wide, yet it is as a poet that his greatest literary merit is recognized and must endure. Since Dr. Holmes's retirement from active duties of life, which may properly date from 1882, when he resigned his chair of anatomy at Harvard, he has been the recipient of many honors. Dinners have been given and other public ceremonies have been held commemorative of the esteem his fellow-countrymen hold him in, and he has been ever ready to respond with his pen to any reasonable demand that could be made upon him. Poems, essays, obituary notices and letters have been written without number, and he has received at his own house and entertained, in the most delightful fashion, visitors without limit, including literary men and women, savants, civilians, as well as callers from mere curiosity.

No man has contributed to the esprit de corps of the profession of medicine to a greater degree that has Dr. Holmes, for this certainly has been the trend even of his non-professional writings.

He leaves a legacy rich in prose and verse that will make his memory green during all the coming centuries, wherever science is known and literature is appreciated.

PROFESSOR HELMHOLTZ.

BARON Herman Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz, better known in the scientific world as Professor Helmholtz, died in Berlin, September 8, 1894, aged seventy-three years. This event not only threw Germany into mourning, but throughout the scientific world, wherever science is known, there was sympathetic sadness. The cause of his death was a paralytic stroke, which

From a photograph furnished the Literary Digest by Dr. Herman Knapp.

-occurred September 5th, consecutive to an initial stroke which he received early in July.

Professor Helmholtz was born at Potsdam, August 31, 1821, (his father being German and his mother English,) where he received his preliminary education and became a medical student, but took his final degree at the University of Berlin. After a brief service in the army in 1848 he was appointed professor of anatomy in the Academy of Fine Arts, and at the age of twentyseven years he became professor of physiology in the University of Königsburg. It was during this period of his life that he

turned his attention to physiological optics, and in 1851, at the age of thirty, he published a little treatise, entited Beschreibung eines Augen-Spiegels zur Untersuchung der Netzhaut im Lebenden Auge, in which he described the ophthalmoscope and the principles of its use. Could all else that Helmholtz ever did have been wiped out, this alone would have immortalized him. This instrument marked an epoch in ophthalmology, and has been the means of bringing about an immense advance in this department of medicine, and, too, has rendered great service in the study of nervous diseases.

But Helmholtz did not stop with the ophthalmoscope. Soon afterward he invented the ophthalmometer, out of which has developed the various ophthalmometers of today used in measuring the curvatures of the cornea. He also made many other contributions to the optical properties and physiology of the eye, including the action of the ciliary muscle, the changes of curvature of the crystalline lens during such action, the theory of colors and the like. His work on physiological optics was a wondrous production, and will forever remain a classic of our time. The career of Helmholtz from the time he wrote that remarkable essay on conservation of energy at the age of 26, till after his visit to the electrical exposition of our World's Fair at Chicago in 1893, was one of constant teaching, investigating and writing. His contributions, too numerous to mention here, were one continuous enrichment to abstract and mathematical science, to physics and to physiology.

At the time of his death, Helmholtz was professor of physical science in the University of Berlin, having occupied this chair since 1871. His academic services had before this been given to the University of Königsburg (1849), University of Bonn (1855), and University of Heidelberg (1865).

What a loss to the world when such a mind becomes entombed! It is no wonder that Germany is thrown into mourning for one of her greatest sons, and that the whole scientific world mourns with her, for the two hemispheres claimed this great man, and this sense of loss is not limited by territorial boundaries.

His funeral took place on September 12th, at Charlottenburg, and was attended by representatives of many universities and scientific societies, by Dr. Lucanias on behalf of the Emperor, and by Major-General Von Pfuhlstein on behalf of the Empress Frederick.