Tributes 



I well remember taking a photograph on board Alex Forbes' schooner, 

 the Black Duck, off the coast of Maine after the Physiological Congress 

 in 1929 which shows J. B. in his element. With that in mind I should 

 like to quote a few lines, which I am sure you know very well, from 

 the preface of the first edition of The Respiratory Function of the 

 Blood : — ' At one time, which seems too long ago, most of my leisure 

 was spent in boats. In them I learned what little I know of research, 

 not of technique or of physiology, but of the qualities essential to 

 those who would venture beyond the visible horizon. The story of 

 my physiological " ventures " will be found in the following pages. 

 Sometimes I have sailed single handed, sometimes I have been one of 

 a crew, sometimes I have sent the ship's boat on some expedition 

 without me. I should like to have called the book what it frankly 

 is — a log.' He goes on to speak of his friends. ' The pleasantest 

 memories of a cruise are those of the men with whom one has sailed. 

 The debt which I owe to my colleagues, whether older or younger 

 than myself, will be evident enough to any reader of the book ; it 

 leaves me well-nigh bankrupt — a condition well known to most 

 sailors. ' All of us who have adventured with J. B., whether in boats 

 or in research, beyond the visible horizon, will recognize that the 

 bankruptcy of which he speaks is mutual ; and that J. B. should be 

 bankrupt was inevitable in view of the extraordinary generosity which 

 all of us have experienced who worked with him. 



My first memory of J. B. was about 1908 or 1909. I had read of 

 the work which he had done, or was doing, on blood and on the 

 salivary gland and I remember asking him — I was a little astonished to 

 find that this work, already so famous, was done by one so friendly 

 and so young — I remember asking him whether he really was the 

 author of those works and receiving his smiling confirmation. There- 

 after I saw him continually in that old laboratory behind the green 

 baize curtain, to which Sir Henry Dale referred, and I remember another 

 accident that befell there, in addition to the one to Sir Henry Dale's 

 trousers. This accident happened to an apparatus laboriously built up. 

 Carelessness by another brought it all crashing to the floor. Instead of 

 using sailor's language J. B. looked at it quietly and said : ' Oh, well, 

 we'll just put it up again.' That was characteristic of the patience of 

 his work. I witnessed in those days that unique capacity of his, to 

 which others have referred, for getting other people on to a useful job 

 of work — a capacity which remained with him all his life and was found 

 in whatever he undertook. I well remember outside that green baize 

 curtain various of his colleagues and pupils shaking blood gas apparatus 

 endlessly in baths in the chemical laboratory just down the passage. 

 The one I remember best was Camis, because of his short legs : these 



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