FRANCISCUS CORNELIUS DONDERS. 467 



pages. Rousiug emulation in others, he disarmed jealousy hy his 

 candid and cordial recognition of their meritorious work. Hoarding 

 none of his own acquisitions, he added to the joys of discovery the 

 pleasures of disclosure. As a teacher, he was radiant; he seemed 

 superb in the lucidity, conciseness, elegance, and adaptiveness of 

 his style of explanations, — which he often made, in several ver- 

 naculars, where he saw that he was not understood by an intelligent 

 disciple. Donders himself says : " To teach is as great a joy as to 

 learn. Acquired knowledge is as a hidden treasure, which slumbers 

 useless until it is disclosed in teaching." His instruction was most 

 suggestive, for himself as well as for his hearers, — opening as it 

 were new horizons of thought. Kuel says of his manner of teaching, 

 " Few have equalled, none surpassed him." And Moleschott, in his 

 address of greeting on his seventieth birthday, says of him, " Donders 

 has remained at Utrecht, but all the world has come to him." 



We find him, at the age of twenty-four, giving, as Professor, eigh- 

 teen lectures weekly for forty-six weeks of the year, on anatomy, 

 histology, and physiology, and yet finding time for a vast amount of 

 original investigations. In his modest address on the occasion of his 

 jubilee, last year, he thus expresses his appreciation of the favorable 

 circumstances by which he had been surrounded : " No other period 

 has been comparable with this for great discoveries in so many fields 

 of biological science. Von Baer had discovered the ovule of the 

 mammif'ers ; Bischoff had demonstrated that the embryo is built up 

 exclusively by means of segmentation of cells; Schwann found in 

 the cell the origin of all the fundamental forms of life ; Ilenle had 

 created, in his k 'Anatomie Generale," an organon of histology. At the 

 same epoch appeared the Physiology of Jean Muller. It was in sucli 

 a world I had the good fortune to have place; every circumstance 

 seemed to be adapted to render my life and my work prolific." 



In 1847 Donders hecarue Professor Extraordinarius at the Univer- 

 sity of Utrecht, giving courses on Legal Medicine, Hygiene, Anthro- 

 pology, and Ophthalmology. " After a time,'" he says, "m\ teaching 

 of Ophthalmology gave a new direction to my life." Two distin- 

 guished men from Edinburgh were one day among his auditors, and 

 urged him to visit the great eye hospitals of England al the time of 

 the International Exhibition in 1851. At London he saw Bowman, 

 equally renowned as physiologist and ophthalmologist, and also \ on 

 Jaeger of Vienna and Yon Grade of Berlin. These friends became 

 to him " t.he most precious treasure of my whole career." He could 

 announce to them the recent discovery, by his compatriot Cramer 



