1110 Journal of Applied Microscopy 



Moses C. White. 



Moses Clark White, born in Paris, Oneida county, N. Y., July 24, 1819, 

 died in New Haven, October 24, 1900. It will be seen from this brief sum- 

 mary that Dr. White was in his eighty-second year. His life is one pleasant to 

 reflect upon. Like the career of so many Americans, it was full, and showed 

 the vitality of this new world. In 1840 he went to the Cazenovia Seminary — 

 the seminary which has given a start to so many noble men and women in the 

 central part of New York State. Here he prepared for college and entered 

 Wesleyan, graduating with the class of 1845. For the next two years he 

 studied medicine and theology at Yale, and in 1847 went as a medical mission- 

 ary to Foo Chow, China. Here he took charge of a public dispensary, and 

 gained the confidence of all classes of the people. Owing to illness in his fam- 

 ily he was compelled to return to America in 1853. He settled as a physician 

 in New Haven, Ct., and in 1857 became a teacher in the Yale Medical School, 

 and at the time of his death still held an honored place in the faculty. His 

 work in this school, dealing with the microscopic structure and pathology of the 

 body, naturally made him one of the ardent advocates of the microscope in 

 medicine, and his work outside the college had much dependence on the micro- 

 scope as the instrument of research or demonstration. Thus from 18G9 to 

 1875 we find him giving lectures in his alma mater, Wesleyan, on the micro- 

 scopic structure of animals and plants. He was naturally led to consider 

 various medico-legal questions in which the microscope played a principal role. 

 When the great Reference Hand-Book of the Medical Sciences appeared some 

 ten years ago, one of its most accomplished articles was the one on " Blood- 

 Stains," by Dr. White. Since that time he has written one or more monographs 

 on blood and the determination of the corpuscles of different animals. He 

 has also presented papers before the American Microscopical Society on various 

 topics, in which especially difficult phases of the subject were handled with rare 

 skill and success. Even at the last meeting of the society in New York he pre- 

 sented a paper which gave in the clearest manner the difticulties of photograph- 

 ing absorption bands in certain parts of the spectrum. His exposition was an 

 inspiration to the younger members, for it showed how the human mind could 

 triumph over difiiculties by intelligent persistence. Not only has he presented 

 admirable papers before the Microscopical Society, but his discussion of the 

 papers of his fellow members was always full of interest and sympathy, and it 

 was rare that he did not add some exceedingly good suggestion which helped 

 the writer of the paper and impressed all with the fertility of his mind and its 

 thorough grounding in experience as well as in fundamental principles. 



The men who built the foundations of American science are fast passing 

 away. Dr. White has an honorable share in that relating to microscopy. " He 

 assisted largely in the preparation and publication of Silliman's Physics, and 

 wrote the chapter on optics." His efforts to make clear to classes the micro- 

 scopic structure of organisms led him naturally to try to so improve the projec- 

 tion niicroscope that all could see at once, and the teacher be able to point out 



