35 o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



recognized the advantages of the American system, and he was the 

 first in Europe to have a large hospital built on the plan of barracks. 

 In the Jacob's Hospital, which was built according to his directions, 

 there are a great number of long-shaped buildings in a park, so dis- 

 tributed that the two long sides of each are free, and having at one 

 end an airy veranda, into which beds may be pushed at any time. 

 Air and light, these two " unpaid but invaluable assistant physi- 

 cians," as Thiersch said, have free access to every patient. The 

 system proved so excellent that in the course of years more and more 

 barracks have been added, and the Jacob's Hospital has long been 

 regarded far and wide as a model of such an institution. "When, 

 soon after the opening of the hospital in 1871, Lister's beneficent 

 methods of surgical treatment were made public, it was again 

 Thiersch who at once recognized their enormous significance, and 

 advocated them with all his power. This beautiful hospital offered 

 him the best possible conditions for the carrying out and further de- 

 velopment of the newly acquired methods, as well as for their intro- 

 duction in the education of the younger medical generation. There 

 he worked during the past twenty-four years, not only as a teacher 

 revered by all, but also as a faithful physician; and he so loved his 

 hospital that even during his time of suffering he occupied himself 

 ceaselessly with it, and one of the last wishes he expressed was that 

 he might be able to return there once more. 



Carl Thiersch, when he came to Leipsic, had occupied the chair 

 of surgery in Erlangen since 1854, before which he had for six years 

 been prosector in the Pathological- Anatomical Institute in Munich. 

 He seems to have acquired his tendency toward surgery in 1850, dur- 

 ing the second Schleswig-Holstein War, in which he served as volun- 

 teer physician under Stromeyer. 



It is much more difficult to appreciate Thiersch's works in their 

 connection than Ludwig's. In the case of the latter, when as a 

 young man he came before the public, we have to do with an intel- 

 lectual force of great intensity, and of a scientifically well-defined 

 tendency. His whole life was given to the accomplishment of cer- 

 tain objects which he had placed before himself in the beginning of 

 his career, and in following the coarse that was to lead him to his aim, 

 he persistently sought, in all his work, to attract intelligent young 

 men to his scientific researches. 



Thiersch's development was of a different nature, and in order 

 to understand what he accomplished it is necessary first of all to 

 study his personality. Descended from a well-known scientific 

 family, Thiersch brought with him the taste for thorough knowledge 

 and for delicate intellectual understanding. He possessed the strict 

 desire for truth and the independent disposition of the true scientist. 



