130 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [Vou. VIII. 
wife was a daughter of the aged Bishop Balsley, and helped him very 
faithfully in his great work, and he was a devoted husband and father. 
He had three children, the eldest about nine years old and the youngest 
about two. He was a staunch friend; his intense devotion to his favorite 
pursuit, his constant struggle against his physical disabilities, with such 
rare courage, his unusual modesty, and his total absence of self-seeking 
endeared him to all who came in contact with him. 
When the Nobel prize in medicine was awarded to him by the Nor- 
wegian Parliament in December 1903, he said laughingly, ‘‘They gave it to 
me this year because next year would have been too late.’’ He seemed to 
actually dislike money, perhaps as a friend of his has said, because he 
wished his son to be able to say in the words of the charming Danish poet, 
Holge- Drachmann, ‘‘I thank thee, my father, thou wert not a wealthy 
man.”** And so when the prize came, he at once wished to hand the 
whole amount, 100,000 crowns (about £8,000) over to his beloved Lys- 
institut, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that his friends were 
able to persuade him to allow one-half the amount to be placed at interest 
for the benefit of his family, the remainder going to the Institute to carry on 
the work he initiated. But his old friends M. Hagemann and M. Jorgen- 
sen comforted him immediately by presenting the Institute with an ad- 
ditional 100,000 crowns. 
“*#insen was very fond of music, but did not play any instrument himself; 
he was also much interested in art, and used to paint a little when too ill to 
go on with his researches. 
His devotion to his work was so intense that his friends despaired 
constantly; he scarcely took time to sleep or eat, and his death was 
doubtless hastened by overwork aggravating the diseases from which he 
had suffered since manhood. 
The Copenhagen Daily Vort Land paid this tribute! ‘‘ According to 
ordinary human reckoning, Finsen’s life was too short, yet he was given 
time to accomplish great things and to prepare the way for his followers. 
The universal judgment of him will sound like a universal thanksgiving— 
thanks from the land whose honored son he was, thanks from the scientific 
world for which he opened up new avenues of achievement, thanks from 
the unfortunates from whom he lifted the heavy burdens of disease. 
‘‘Himself an invalid since early youth, his first and last thoughts 
and desires were to aid others. What he has accomplished has been in- 
dorsed by all civilized countries, and more than twenty great sanatoriums 
in as many cities throughout the world stand today as lasting monuments 
* Brocher. ‘‘ Pall Mall Magazine.’’ 
