348 JOHN BARNARD SWETT JACKSON. 



had overlooked, and showing it with a delight which illuminated every 

 feature of his refined and delicate countenance. 



His vacations were seasons of work, but work was his chief pleasure. 

 In 1851, he spent six months in Europe, visiting all the principal 

 museums. He has left a large volume of notes of the rarest and most 

 interesting specimens he saw, to the uumber of seventeen hundred and 

 ninety-two. These he arranged and catalogued under suitable heads 

 in 1858. 



He went to Rarbadoes in the spring of 1 867, stayed only a few days, 

 and after his return wrote an account of the diseases of the island. 

 He had several intervals of this kind of idleness, which most men 

 would have called industry. In January, he spent several weeks in 

 Washington, and it was at that time that he studied the Esquimaux 

 skulls, and made, as he thought, some original observations upon them. 



In his last voyage to Europe, in 1874, he had a remarkable escape 

 from a disaster which was every thing but shipwreck, the vessel having 

 been abandoned, and afterwards picked up and carried into port. I 

 do not remember his ever speaking of it ; but, from the account his son 

 who was with him gave, the immediate risk must have been very great, 

 and the danger, as well as the suffering from exposure and hunger, 

 enough to try the stoutest at the lustiest period of life. A slight ex- 

 posure, if indeed such were the active cause of his disease, brought on 

 the consequences which cold and wet, and the smothering forecastle of 

 the vessel which rescued the passengers drifting in their open boat, 

 had failed to produce. 



On Monday afternoon and evening, December 30th, he was at work 

 at the College. He came home, felt very weary by half past eight, 

 lay down on his bed, and never after that voluntarily lifted his head 

 from his pillow, and quietly passed away on the 6th of January, 1879, 

 the Monday following that when he was taken with the first symptoms 

 of his disease, which was pneumonia. 



This sketch may be concluded with some extracts from a notice 

 of Dr. Jackson furnished by the writer to the Boston Medical and 

 Surgical Journal for January 9, 1879 : — 



The death of Dr. Jackson comes upon us as a loss we had little 

 contemplated and for which we were quite unprepared. Age had not 

 left him unchanged, but it had never subdued his elastic and almost 

 youthful nature. A sudden and brief illness, attended with less of 

 suffering than that which we are too often called to witness, ended in 

 a few hours of unconsciousness, followed by a quiet release. 



