104 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of the Buffalo Medical Journal, which was founded by his father in 

 1846, and ultimately transferred to New York and merged in the 

 American Medical Monthly. 



In 1858 Dr. Flint was appointed one of the attending surgeons of 

 the Buffalo City Hospital. The same year he became Professor of 

 Physiology in the Medical School of Buffalo. In 1859 he removed 

 with his lather, and was appointed Professor of Physiology in the 

 New York Medical College, delivering a course of lectures in 1859-'60. 

 In 1860 he received the appointment of Professor of Physiology in 

 the New Orleans School of Medicine, delivered a course of instruc- 

 tions in 1860-61, and resigned the position at the breaking out of 

 the war. While in New Orleans he experimented on alligators, 

 and developed some important points with reference to the influ- 

 ence of the pneumogastric nerves upon the heart. He also made 

 some experiments there upon the recurrent sensibility of the anterior 

 roots of the spinal nerves. He was the first physiologist in this 

 country to operate upon the spinal cord and the spinal nerves in liv- 

 ing animals. 



In the spring of 1861 Dr. Flint went to Europe, and studied sev- 

 eral months with Charles Robin and Claude Bernard, with the former 

 of whom he had close friendly and scientific relations, and maintained 

 a frequent correspondence. Prof. Robin presented his memoir, " Sur 

 une nouvelle fonction au foie " (" On a New Function of the Liver"), 

 to the French Academy of Sciences for the Month yon prize without 

 the knowledge of the author. In 1863 Dr. Flint made some important 

 experiments upon the blood, employing a new mode of analysis for its 

 nitrogenized constituents. He was one of the founders of the Bellevue 

 Hospital Medical College, in 1861, and has been from the first, as he 

 still is, Professor of Physiology and Secretary and Treasurer of the 

 Faculty. He was also for eight years Professor and Lecturer on 

 Physiology in the Long Island College Hospital of Brooklyn. 



In 1862 Dr. Flint made some remarkable observations on the ex- 

 cretory function of the liver, published in the American Journal of 

 the Medical Sciences, in October, 1S63; translated into French, and 

 presented by Robin to the French Academy of Sciences for the " Con- 

 cours Monthyon" and which received honorable mention and a recom- 

 pense to the author of 1,500 francs in 1869. The important discovery 

 put forth in this memoir was the production of cholesterine in the 

 physiological wear of the brain and nervous tissue, the elimination 

 of cholesterine by the liver, and its discharge in the form of stercorine 

 in the faces. It was established that the new substance (stercorine) 

 results from ihe transformation of cholesterine in the faces. The dis- 

 eased condition caused by the retention of cholesterine in the blood 

 (cholesteraemia) is now recognized as a very important pathological 

 fact. Dr. Flint's laborious researches and interesting conclusions upon 

 this subject have been lately confirmed in Germany by experiments 



