DR. PAVY AND DIABETES 



By F. GOWLAND HOPKINS, M.A., M.B., D.Sc, F.R.S. 



The death of Frederick William Pavy at the age of eighty-two 

 closed a remarkable career. It is not often that an exceedingly 

 busy professional man retains unimpaired, throughout a long 

 life, a vivid interest in the purely theoretical side of the problems 

 of his profession ; more usually intellectual relief is sought in 

 other fields. An eminent physician is rarely found busy at 

 once in practice and in the laboratory ; less often still are such 

 combined activities exercised over considerably more than half 

 a century; and it is, I think, even more rarely that a scientific 

 worker, of any sort, is found content in his old age to struggle 

 with just those elusive and somewhat limited issues which 

 occupied him at the beginning of his career. The scientific 

 veteran usually comes to crave a more extensive area of action ; 

 if he have not left science for philosophy or affairs, his interests 

 are usually concerned with the wider aspects of his subject. 

 But Pavy, with fourscore years behind him and still a busy 

 consultant ever remained an active laboratory worker, faithful 

 to his original quest and as keen an inquirer as in his youth. 



A few months before his death, he wrote to Prof. Armstrong 

 in the optimistic spirit which was characteristic of him. " My 

 great object, before life comes to an end," he says, " is to elicit 

 all the useful knowledge I can bearing upon Diabetes " ; and he 

 speaks of his faith in the reality of the progress being made. 

 His latest colleague in research, Mr. Godden, tells me that, 

 to the very end, he would seize available moments between the 

 morning visits of his patients to enter his laboratory and watch 

 the progress of experiments. His afternoons were spent in 

 continuous experimental work at the physiological laboratories 

 of the London University and this routine was continued to 

 within a week of his last vacation, from which he returned with 

 but nine days of life left to him. 



Pavy was born in 1829. Educated at the Merchant Taylors' 

 School, he entered as a student of Guy's Hospital in 1847. In 



13 



