Tributes 



required that he should stand on a stool by the bath. When I think of 

 blood gas apparatus, the picture of Camis comes back to me. 



About 1912 I went to Carlingford to sail with him in a hired boat. 

 Lady Barcroft may remember it. I think she was with us one day and 

 I know that Henry was, when the weather turned bad on us and much 

 of the tackle gave way. It had to be put right, but J. B. was a very 

 resourceful sailor. We all know how much he was loved and admired 

 in America. I crossed the Atlantic with him three times and witnessed 

 another part of his planned economy — for he was also a great planner, 

 inspired by Lady Barcroft — how he brought his oldest clothes with 

 him, so that he might throw them out through the port-hole and thus 

 save the trouble of collecting them from the laundry. 



There is a picture in existence of J. B. many years ago smoking a 

 pipe — I think at the Physiological Congress at Cambridge. Not many 

 people will remember his smoking, but on those journeys to America 

 he used to smoke one cigar after dinner in the evening. 



One of the privileges of being an officer of the Royal Society — and 

 Sir Henry Dale will confirm this — is the kind and unfailing help one 

 gets from all the Fellows. For the last three years of his life J. B. was 

 Chairman of the Physiological Committee of the Royal Society : he 

 was extremely helpful to all the officers, especially the Biological 

 Secretary. The work of the chairman of such a committee can be very 

 heavy, particularly in connexion with the elections, and J. B. never 

 spared any effort to help the Society and his colleagues there. His 

 loyalty indeed to his friends and his loyalty to the institutions of any 

 kind with which he was connected were among the most charming 

 characteristics of his nature. I remember him — and the Provost of 

 King's may remember also — proposing the toast ' Floreat Etona ' at 

 Founder's Feast one year ; the theme of that speech was that each of 

 us has his own Eton, his own loyalties and affections, that the toast of 

 ' Floreat Etona ' really meant a toast to all those individual loyalties. 



J. B. was quick, extraordinarily quick, in generous and effective 

 repartee, never sarcastic or unkind. I corrected the proofs of the first 

 edition of his book for him, and conceived my duty to J. B. to outweigh 

 my obligation to the public, who might otherwise have been highly 

 delighted had I left in some of the gems which occurred in the original : 

 such phrases as ' The muscle is not a steam engine in which combustion 

 takes place in the boiler ' and ' The chief error in Peters' experiments 

 was the accurate measurement of 2 cc of blood.' When I pointed 

 these out as being more suitable to conversation than to a learned 

 treatise, he at once remarked that the chief virtue of the Irish bull was 

 that it was always pregnant ; but he accepted my corrections. The 

 humorous and tactful phrase is illustrated in a sentence that occurs 



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