264 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



emotion liow, in the numerous and warm competitions in which, 

 we were engaged with one another, Vulpian was always a loyal, 

 generous, and chivalrous rival. 



"Although he performed high administrative functions, par- 

 ticularly as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, he met but few 

 enemies, and these, I helieve, belonged to that class of unfortunates 

 who can not come in contact with superiority of heart and mind 

 without having a kind of feeling of irritation and despite. But 

 we may let them pass. 



" During the last few years, the condition of Vulpian's health 

 had gradually changed. Then I heard him repeat what he had 

 said to me thirty years before, just after the death of his brother, 

 of whom he was very fond, ' I hope to restore myself by work, a 

 remedy which we are fortunate to have.' Yes, work — always 

 work — was his supreme refuge. The last struggle was one to 

 which he was unequal, but yet we observed him making most cou- 

 rageous efforts to keep himself in the ascendant. He came to the 

 Faculty of Medicine daily with the same order and punctuality 

 that had marked the earlier part of his career, to take up and carry 

 on, as long as his strength permitted him, the lectures which he 

 had conscientiously prepared. At the Institute he performed his 

 difficult duties with that scrupulous zeal and distinction which we 

 have all been pleased to recognize." 



M. Vulpian earnestly supported M. Pasteur in his late re- 

 searches concerning the microbes of infection, and particularly in 

 his investigations and exjDeriments concerning hydrophobia ; and 

 when it fell to him to defend the daring inoculator and his inten- 

 sive system of treatment against attack, he did it in the Academy 

 of Medicine and the Academy of Sciences with a vigor that evoked 

 the applause of the members of both bodies, and silenced M. Pas- 

 teur's adversaries for the time. Nevertheless, the intensive treat- 

 ment has prudently been suspended. 



We have been favored with the following grateful reminis- 

 cence of Prof. Vulpian by one of his former students, W. W. 

 Skinner, M. D. (Paris), of New York : " It was seven years ago when 

 the pursuit of my medical studies first brought me into contact 

 with this truly great medical teacher. He was then Dean of the 

 Ecole de Mddecine of Paris, a position only obtained by the wisest 

 and most learned of the great corps of professors in that school, 

 and which confers upon the incumbent the highest honor that his 

 colleagues can bestow upon him. At the same time, he was Pro- 

 fessor of Experimental and Comparative Pathology; and his 

 demonstrations of the pharmacodynamic actions of the most act- 

 ive substances of the materia medica brought a roomful of inter- 

 ested students to his laboratory three times weekly during the 

 summer semester. 



