I 



Annual Report of the Council. xxvii 



blood corpuscles, and after graduating as M.D. in 185 1 he weret to 

 Paris to study chemistry under Wurtz, and physiology under the 

 stimulating guidance of Claude Bernard and Magendie. In the 

 following year Sanderson began practising as a physician, and 

 became attached to St. Mary's Hospital, London, as registrar, 

 lecturer in botany and in medical jurisprudence. 



As a pathologist Burdon-Sanderson will be chiefly remembered 

 for his admirable services to the Paddington district, which he 

 served as medical officer of health for eleven years, and for his 

 report as Inspector to the medical department of the Privy 

 Council (i 856-1 863). From 1870 Burdon-Sanderson's work 

 took a more definitely physiological turn, and his application of 

 physiological methods to pathology marked him out as an 

 investigator of the first rank. Official recognition of his scientific 

 ability was shewn in appointments and honours. From 1874 to 

 1882 Burdon-Sanderson held the Jodrell Professorship of 

 Physiology at University College, London ; the Waynflete Chair 

 of Physiology at Oxford from 1882 to 1894; and the Regius 

 Professorship of Medicine at the same University for the last 

 nine years of his life. 



Burdon-Sanderson's name is permanently associated with the 

 advance of the study of physiology and pathology in this country 

 during the last thirty years, from a retrograde position to one in 

 the van of scientific progress. His skill in experimental method, 

 his striving to render biological experiment exact with the 

 exactitude of chemistry and physics, and his insight at once 

 broad and deep into the physiology of organs and organisms, 

 contributed to this result. Before Pasteur, Burdon-Sanderson 

 discovered the mode of attenuating the virus of anthrax, and 

 suggested the use of the attenuated virus as a means of protection 

 against the disease. His Privy Council reports on Tuberculosis, 

 Pyaemia and Septicaemia were in advance of general medical 

 knowledge. His novel experimental methods are now the common- 

 place of every good physiological department: and the discoveries 

 he made on the electromotive phenomena of the beating heart, 

 of the Dionaea plant, of voluntary muscle, and of the electric organ 



