OBITUARY. 
CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON. 
CuRISTOPHER JoHNsoN, Member of the Microscopical Society of 
London,was born at Lancaster July 23rd, 1782,and died at Lancaster 
June 21st, 1866. His father, a surgeon in practice at Lancaster, con- 
tributed several communications on medical and surgical subjects 
to the London medical journals near the close of the last century. 
When a young man, Mr. Johnson devoted himself laboriously to 
the study of chemical and electrical science. He graduated at 
Edinburgh, after a three years’ course of medical instruction at 
the Royal Infirmary. He then commenced practice in Settle, in 
Yorkshire, where he remained till 1808, when he returned to 
Lancaster. In 1813 he published a translation of an essay on 
‘Child Murder,’ by Dr. P. A. O. Mahn, of Paris. In 1817 he 
translated the whole of ‘Orlando Furioso’ into prose. In 1832 
he contributed in the local press a series of sanitary papers with 
reference to the impending cholera. He contributed a manual 
called ‘The Nurse’ to a series edited by Martin Doyle, 1842. 
In 1841 he published several articles on agricultural chemistry 
in the local papers. About ten years later, he published others 
under the signature of “ A Fireside Farmer,” in which he ex- 
plained the views of Dumas and Boussingault, and other physio- 
logical chemists. In 1848 he commenced the study of diatoms, 
which he followed with unwearied diligence till within a brief 
period of his death. In 1849 he translated Menighini’s work 
on the animal nature of the Diatomacez, which was published by 
the Ray Society. In 1865 he published some papers on the dis- 
infecting properties of carbolic acid, the last of which was printed 
in the ‘ Lancaster Gazette’ in November, 1865. He was one of 
those quiet workers with the microscope who did much for diffusing 
a taste for the investigation of minute organisms by his continuous 
work at the forms of Diatomacee. 
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