740 HENRY PICKERING BOWDITCH. 



1864, he was honorably discharged ; but almost immediately he joined 

 the service again, as major in the Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry (colored), 

 and with that regiment entered Richmond April 3, 1865. 



Major Henry- L. Higginson has recorded his memory of Captain 

 Bowditch as he then appeared, — a handsome, refined, and home- 

 bred looking youth, often reserved and even unbending in his man- 

 ner, but unflagging in his faithfulness and unflinching in his 

 courage. 



Except for the end to be sought, however, service in the army was 

 unpleasant to him, and on June 3, 1865, soon after the close of the 

 War, he resigned his command. 



In the autumn of 1865, he resumed his studies at the Lawrence 

 Scientific School and came under the inspiring influence of Professor 

 Jefi"ries Wyman. Although later that fall he entered the Harvard 

 Medical School, he continued to receive the stimulus of Professor 

 Wyman's instruction by pursuing between terms under that famous 

 teacher's direction the subject of comparative anatomy. In 1866 he 

 received the A. M. degree, and in 1868 was graduated from the Medi- 

 cal School. 



On receiving his medical degree Dr. Bowditch went abroad to study 

 physiology. He was fortunate in coming into relations with two of the 

 foremost physiologists in the last century, — Claude Bernard, in Paris, 

 and Carl Ludwig, in Leipzig. Bernard did not influence him nearly so 

 much as did Ludwig, who, besides being an enthusiastic investigator, 

 was a most warm-hearted and lovable character. In the Leipzig lab- 

 oratory at that time and shortly afterwards was a remarkable group of 

 young men, including Mosso, Kronecker, Cyon, Brunton, and Lankester. 

 These men who, as the years passed, took high positions in Switzer- 

 land, Italy, France and England, maintained throughout their lives the 

 close friendships established by the delightful days in Leipzig. 



Under Ludwig's leadership Dr. Bowditch experienced for the first 

 time the joy and the thrill of scientific search and discovery. As a 

 result he published two papers, one of them, on peculiarities of the 

 activity of cardiac muscle, destined to be famous. In that paper he 

 reported that cardiac muscle diff'ers from other muscle in contracting 

 each time with its full force or not at all — following the " all-or-nothing " 

 law, as it has been called, — and further, that repeated uniform stimu- 

 lation causes a " treppe " effect, an increasing vigor of contraction, so 

 that the record of the response rises like a stair. The generalization 

 that activity of an organ is favorable to further activity has grown out 

 of this observation on the heart, made forty years ago. 



In September, 1871, Dr. Bowditch returned to Boston from Leipzig, 



