Tributes 



* If I could only repeat at will the rectangular hyperbola dissociation 

 curve that Roberts and I found in 1909, I would gladly order my 

 coffin tomorrow '. Secondly, during World War II I wrote him from 

 U.S.A. of our work with carbon monoxide which seemed to show that 

 inhaled carbon monoxide not only combined with haemoglobin in 

 the blood, but also migrated into the tissues and lingered there a long 

 time. He at once wrote back : * I wonder whether you have found the 

 explanation of Haldane and Douglas' results on Pike's Peak in 1912.' 



It would be easy to fill a whole volume with such incidents but space 

 is limited, so we must now come to that last memorable morning of 

 his life on the first day of spring, 1947. Once more there was, as in 

 1920, a meeting on the stone stairs at the entrance to this laboratory. 

 This time, however, the great man was waiting for me, as he knew my 

 usual time of arrival in the lab. (10.15 a.m.) was at least an hour later 

 than his own. ' I've been waiting to waylay you about three things — 

 (a) I want to settle with you about some research apparatus, which you 

 may or may not be taking with you to your new lab., when you move 

 at the end of the month, (b) I want to talk to you about the newly 

 elected Fellows of the Royal Society of London, (c) I want to hear 

 about the experiments you have been doing with the blood I've lately 

 been giving you from my pregnant ewes.' After some amicable haggling 

 in the dark room upstairs about the final destiny of old but useful 

 apparatus which he and I had bought with personal grants before 1931, 

 we got on to the Royal Society questions. He had just finished a two 

 or three year term of office as Chairman of the Selection Committee 

 in Physiology and Medical Sciences, and was full of the exploits of 

 those who had just been chosen from this field, and likewise of the 

 prospects of those who had not succeeded in 1947. I cannot, of course, 

 go into any of the details of the extremely intimate personal comments 

 he made. I would, however, like to tell you that on the last morning of 

 his life, he was every bit as interested in all his younger colleagues — 

 some as much as forty years younger, as if he had been one of them 

 himself, and just as eager that full justice should be done to their claims. 



' Now let's hear what you've been doing with my ewe blood, and 

 why I have not heard about it already.' ' The only reason for the latter,' 

 I replied, * is that you have lately told me you have so much to do, and 

 so little time to do it in, that I have not wanted to bother you with 

 anything half-baked. Now I think it is definite enough not to waste 

 your time.' So we went along to my old laboratory where my mathe- 

 matical colleague Mrs. Nicolson, my experimental colleague Mr. 

 Legge, and our assistant Alan Seeker, were all busy preparing for the 

 day's experiment. We showed and discussed with him a number of 

 curves of the rate of carbon monoxide uptake by red blood corpuscles 



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