Obituary. 531 



supposition that the deterioration of his health was due to the 

 poisonous influence of ether vapour which induced him to try for 

 a substitute for the wet collodion, and led to the invention of the 

 gelatino-bromide dry-plate method. 



Throughout his life he was devoted to scientific pursuits, and 

 in the early part of his career was much occupied with electricity, 

 but afterwards abandoned this for photography, and still later 

 became much interested in the rising fortunes of bacteriology. 



In connection with the gelatino-bromide method he justly 

 gained a great reputation, for he was the principal pioneer of this 

 procedure which has done so much to advance the technique of 

 photography. Of photomicrography he was always much ena- 

 moured and was one of the first to grasp its potentialities for re- 

 producing pictures of microscopical preparations. Even as far back 

 as 1865 Lionel Beale published some of his photomicrographs as the 

 frontispiece to How to Work with the Microscope. His photomicro- 

 graphs are too well known to need more than this passing reference. 



This Society has the credit of being the first prominent body 

 to recognise the scientific claims of Maddox, for in 1871 he was 

 elected Hon. F.E.M.S., on account of his eminence in science and 

 for his valuable contributions to the Transactions of the Society. 



Later, however, he became the recipient of numerous distinc- 

 tions, the most important being, the Gold Medal at the Inventions 

 Exhibition, Dublin, 1885 ; the John Scott Legacy Medal and 

 Premium from the Franklin Institute, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., 1889 ; 

 the Progress Medal of the Eoyal Photographic Society, 1901. 

 The John Scott Medal was awarded on the recommendation of a 

 committee, among the members of which were J. Carbutt and 

 F. E. Ives. Their advisory report, quoted below, sums up most 

 aptly the exact position of Maddox to the " invention which has 

 revolutionised the whole science and practice of photography." 



The committee report that they " have carefully considered the 

 subject and examined into the merits of the invention claimed by 

 Dr. Maddox. They find that although gelatin had been employed 

 photographically in a variety of ways, and although silver haloid 

 salts had been emulsified successfully with collodion in photo- 

 graphic practice prior to the publication by Dr. Maddox of his 

 gelatino-bromide process, nevertheless the successful emulsification 

 by him of silver haloids witli gelatin, and the perfecting of a 

 working process founded upon it, involved so much painstaking 

 experimentation and investigation, and was such a departure from 

 old methods, that it merits recognition on account of its marked 

 influence on the progress of photography, on the enlargement of 

 its practice, and the multiplication of its applications in technical 

 and purely scientific directions. The process, though affording 

 negatives of good quality, was soon improved in regard to the 

 quality and sensitiveness of the plates by different individuals, by 



