18 Professor Burdon Sanderson [Jan. 24, 



relation to tlie real authorship of the Leipzig work are exceptional. 

 The well-informed reader does not need to be told that Mosso or 

 Schmidt, Brunton or Gaskell, Stirling or Wooldridge were the 

 authors of their papers in a sense very different from that in which 

 the term could be applied to some others of Ludwig's pupils. On 

 the whole the plan must be judged of by the results. It was by 

 working with scholars that Ludwig trained them to work afterwards 

 by themselves ; and thereby accomplished so much more than other 

 great teachers have done. 



I do not think that any of Ludwig's contemporaries could be com- 

 pared to him in respect of the wide range of his researches. In a 

 science distinguished from others by the variety of its aims, he was 

 equally at home in all branches, and was equally master of all 

 methods, for he recognised that the most profound biological question 

 can only be solved by combining anatomical, physical and chemical 

 inquiries. It was this consideration which led him in j^lanning the 

 Leipzig Institute to divide it into three parts, experimental (in the 

 more restricted sense), chemical and histological. Well aware that 

 it was impossible for a man who is otherwise occupied, to maintain 

 his familiarity with the technical details of Histology and Physio- 

 logical Chemistry, he placed these departments under the charge 

 of younger men capable of keeping them up to the rapidly ad- 

 vancing standard of the time, his relations with liis coadjutors 

 being such that he had no difficulty in retaining his hold of the 

 threads of the investigation to which these special lines of inquiry 

 were contributory. 



It is scarcely necessary to say that as an experimenter Ludwig 

 was unapproachable. The skill with which he carried out difficult 

 and complicated operations, the care with which he worked, his 

 quickness of eye and certainty of hand were qualities which he had 

 in common with great surgeons. In employing animals for exj)eriment 

 he strongly objected to rough and ready methods, comparing them 

 to " firing a pistol into a clock to see how it works." Every 

 experiment ought, he said, to be carefully planned and meditated on 

 beforehand, so as to accomplish its scientific purpose and avoid the 

 infliction of pain. To ensure this he performed all operations 

 himself, only rarely committing the work to a skilled coadjutor. 



His skill in anatomical work was equally remarkable. It had 

 been acquired in early days, and appeared throughout his life to 

 have given him very great j^leasure, for Mosso tells how, when 

 occupying the room adjoining that in which Ludwig was working, 

 as he usually did, by himself, he heard the outbursts of glee which 

 accompanied each successful step in some difficult anatomical in- 

 vestigation. 



Let us now examine more fully the part which Ludwig played in 

 the evolution of ideas as to the nature of vital processes which, 

 as we have seen, took place in the middle of the present century. 



Although, as we shall see afterwards, there were many men who. 



