128 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [Vov. VIII. 
and is now one of the foremost anatomists of Europe, Finsen stayed in 
Copenhagen to conduct his researches in its foggy and cold atmosphere. 
For the first three years after his graduation, up to 1893, as has already 
been said, Finsen had to content himself with the humble post of prosector 
in anatomy to his University; but with the publication of his first paper 
on the action of light upon small-pox he became famous, and after 1893 
he was relieved of the necessity of teaching, and enabled to devote all his 
attention and energy when health permitted to his investigations in the 
nature and properties of light, and its applications to the treatment of 
various diseases. Wealth and a life of ease had no charms for him, he de- 
clined to make money out of his discoveries, or to patent any part of his 
apparatus, and was well-content with his modest salary from the Danish 
Government of $1,200 a year.* 
The result of his self-sacrifice we have already seen. A fellow-coun- 
tryman of his, Jacob A. Riis, says of him as he met him in 1899, while re- 
covering from a fever: ‘‘I would sit in his little office down in the corner 
of the hospital grounds by the lake and watch the patients who had come 
in pain and gloom, go away, carrying in their faces the sunshine which 
had given them back their life. And I came to look with a kind of reveren- 
tial awe upon this patient, silent man, whose every thought was for his 
suffering fellows, while he calmly counted the hours to his own relief from 
racking pain. I learned from his own lips the story of his great temptation ; 
how when he found what he sought he lay awake one whole long night, 
debating with himself whether to turn it to account in private practice— 
Finsen is a poor man—or to give it and his life to the world. He chose 
poverty, and the world is the richer for his sacrifice; how much we can 
hardly realize under our brighter American skies, where the disease with 
the ravening name (/upus—a wolf) is comparatively rare.” . . ‘‘Cradled 
in the island of storms and wintry night, he loved the sun. His eye 
lighted up when he spoke of it: ‘Let it break through suddenly on a cloudy 
day.’ he said, ‘and see the change. Insects that were drowsy wake up 
and take wing; lizards and snakes come out to sun themselves; the 
birds burst into song. We ourselves feel as if a burden were lifted. 
In our daily life we give to the sunlight the place that belongs to it, 
without question. The housewife ‘‘suns’”’ her clothes. We shun dark 
rooms, especially bedrooms.’ . . With the spirit of the true investi- 
gator he went back to nature and considered the ant and the lizard, and 
their ways.’’T 
Another writer, Cleveland Moffett, says of him! ‘‘It is fitting that a 
* Moffett, “‘McClure.” 
+ Jacob A. Riis, ‘‘A Word About The Man,” (‘‘ McClure’s Magazine ’’) 
