Tributes 



remarkable power of forging ahead all the time. I will not take up time 

 in emphasizing what you know already, but I would like to say one 

 thing. When he retired from the Chair of Physiology in 1937 he was 

 sixty-five but still at the height of his powers as an investigator. It was 

 quite unthinkable that he should not go on in the laboratory as before, 

 but as you know it is not always an easy matter for an Emeritus and 

 an acting Professor to work together in complete harmony, and I 

 should like to put it on record that his presence here, besides being an 

 immense asset to our research strength, was never anything but a great 

 comfort and encouragement to his successor. Of course, I never 

 thought it would have been otherwise. Barcroft was a very wise and 

 kindly man as well as a great physiologist. 



I have only one other thing to add and that is that when he retired 

 from the Chair here, we thought we should like some record of him 

 which would give a little more information than the ordinary portrait 

 or photograph, so we asked him to let us make a film showing him 

 doing an experiment on haemoglobin. It was made by Professor 

 Winton and by John Freeman, our expert photographer, and although 

 we had no sound equipment, we did the best we could by making some 

 gramophone records of his voice to add as a commentary. If there is 

 time at the end of the meeting, I think we might show that film. 



Sir Henry Dale 



I have been asked to speak of our friend Barcroft's work up to about 

 1909-10. My friendship with him had begun nearly twenty years 

 earlier, when we were boys together at the Leys School. At that first 

 encounter I looked up to him with a certain awe, for he was a prefect, 

 my senior by nearly three years, and I was a callow newcomer. By 

 the time we came together again in the University, however, he was 

 only a year ahead of me in academic ranking, since he had taken, under 

 medical advice, a prolonged rest between school and university. The 

 need for this was probably due to overwork in his last year at school, 

 in which he had achieved the unusual feat, for a schoolboy, of graduat- 

 ing B.Sc. by examination at the University of London, then only an 

 examining and degree-giving body. Whatever had been amiss, the 

 medical advice seems to have been good, for Barcroft, when he had 

 once begun the life of research, kept to it with unflagging energy and 

 continued success right up to the day of his sudden death at an age 



