January, 1897. OBITUARY. 63 



researches on the action of amyl nitrite were Hkewise of importance. 

 From a humanitarian point of view the most striking outcome of his 

 experiments has been the ' lethal chamber ' now employed at 

 Battersea for the painless destruction of superfluous dogs and other 

 domestic animals. As the result of his investigations on the action of 

 alcohol on human beings, he became a total abstainer, and in 1874 

 delivered the Cantor lectures at the Society of Arts on the subject of 

 alcohol. He was Physician to the Temperance Hospital, and his 

 influence in the promotion of temperance was wide and far-reaching, 

 based, as it was, on sincere conviction and actual experiment. 



He was deeply interested in questions of public health, and in 

 1862 he started the Journal of PuUic Health and Sanitary Review, and 

 edited it for four years : to this he contributed some valuable papers, 

 especially one on the hygienic treatment of phthisis. Later he 

 inaugurated the short-lived Social Science Revieiv, to which he con- 

 tributed several poems and plays. His most important literary effort 

 was, however. The Asclepiad, a quarterly periodical which for twelve 

 years he produced — single-handed. Few men of his profession have 

 been more widely known to the public, but this arose less from his 

 actual professional abilities, great though these were, than from the 

 part he took in allied questions, and especially those of hygiene and 

 temperance reform. He was knighted in 1893, mainly in recognition 

 of his services to the humanitarian cause. 



We regret to record the following deaths : — On November 20, 

 David Robertson, the Naturalist of Cumbrae, of whom a longer 

 notice will appear in our next; Arthur Dowsett, President of the 

 Reading Natural History Society, and the owner of valuable 

 ornithological and entomological collections, on November 6 ; Dr. G. 

 W. Child, lecturer on botany in St. George's Hospital Medical 

 School, on December i ; the mycologist and florist. Th. King, in 

 Fochabers, N.B., aged 62 ; W. F. Ainsworth, explorer, well-known 

 for his researches in Asia Minor ; Dr. J. A. Moloney, African explorer, 

 aged 38, at Surbiton ; J. W. Retgers, known for his work on 

 Isomorphism, on August 9, aged 39 ; Dr. E. Wenzel, Associate 

 Professor of Anatomy at Leipzig, on October 25, aged 56 ; Dr. Fritz 

 Westhoff, zoological assistant at the Kgl. Akademie, Munster ; 

 in Munich, J. Feser, Professor of Pharmacology in the Veterinary 

 College, aged 56 ; Professor E. von Wolff, author of the celebrated 

 work " Landwirtschaftliche Fiitterungslehre," and for forty-two years 

 Professor of Agricultural Chemistry at Hohenheim, aged 78 ; Dr. A. 

 H. Post, author of " Grundriss der ethnologischen Jurisprudenz," at 

 Bremen; Dr. E. Baumann, Professor of Physiological Chemistry in the 

 University of Freiburg i. B., noted for his researches on metabolism 

 and cystin, and the discoverer of iodine in the thyroid gland, on 

 November 2, aged 49. 



