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OBITUARY. 



EMIL DU BOIS-REYMOND. 

 Born November 7, 1818. Died December 26, 1896. 



IN Professor du Bois-Reymond science has lost not only a great 

 physiologist, but the veritable founder of one of the most 

 important branches of physiology. Though not a German by descent 

 he was born in Berlin, lived there nearly all his life, and was 

 absolutely identified with its University and Academy of Sciences. 



His father was originally a watchmaker in Neufchatel, but had 

 moved to Berlin, where he obtained a very good position. His 

 mother was of Huguenot extraction. He began his education at the 

 French College in Berlin, and passed thence to the College of 

 Neufchatel. But at eighteen he matriculated at the University of 

 Berlin in the philosophical faculty, and after a year settled down to 

 those studies which led up to his life's work — his medical curriculum 

 lasting from 1837 to 1843. Johannes Miiller — the grandfather of 

 modern physiology, if such men as Ludwig and Du Bois-Reymond 

 may be regarded as its fathers — then occupied the chair of physiology 

 at Berlin, and to his influence some of the greatness of Du Bois- 

 Reymond's future career may justly be ascribed. Matteucci's essay 

 on the electrical phenomena of animals appeared in 1840, and at 

 Miiller's suggestion, Du Bois-Reymond undertook to repeat the 

 observations which Matteucci had made. Thus began the work to 

 which his life was afterwards devoted, and he chose the subject "Quae 

 apud veteres de piscibus electricis exstant argumenta " for his thesis 

 for the degree of Doctor in Medicine. He became Assistant at the 

 Anatomical Institute in 1844, ^^'^ Privat-docent in 1846. The 

 electrical manifestations of muscle and nerve, to the investigation of 

 which he now applied himself with untiring ardour, constituted an 

 unworked field, and Du Bois-Reymond was well fitted to explore it. 

 His energy was unbounded, his mechanical skill as an experimenter 

 unrivalled, and he displayed the greatest ingenuity in devising the 

 requisite apparatus for his researches. To this day the Du Bois- 

 Reymond induction coil and key and the non-polarizable electrodes 

 which he invented are amongst the earliest apparatus with which the 

 student of the physiology of muscle and nerve is confronted on 

 commencing laboratory work. His discoveries soon brought him into 

 a prominent position among physiological workers, and the publication 

 of his "Researches on Animal Electricity" in 1848 and 1849. 



