Writings of the late Professor Blumenbach. 233 



merit to these men than as an incitement to subsequent 

 teachers to emulation. 



He often did homage to the memory of distinguished indi- 

 viduals, and chiefly in his " Medical Library,"* a journal 

 which can hardly be excelled ; but also as secretary of our 

 society, where the mournful duty was ably performed by him 

 of delivering addresses on occasion of the deaths of Richter 

 (1812), Crell (1816), Osiander (1822),- Bouterwek (1828), 

 Mayer (1831), Mende (1832), and Stromeyer (1835). 



His tribute to the memory of Regimental-Surgeon Johann 

 Ernst Wreden+ is so far of importance for the history of me- 

 dicine, because that long-forgotten practitioner was the first 

 who introduced inoculation on the Continent, and he did so in 

 Hanover. His account of the Meibomic collection of medical 

 manuscripts! in the Gottingen library ought not to escape the 

 attention of those interested in the literary history of medi- 

 cine. 



What has been already stated would have been amply suf- 

 ficient to place the services and talents of Blumenbach in a 

 proper light ; but we have still left unnoticed his chief merits, 

 and it will become evident from what I shall mention, that in 

 this single individual were united many qualifications of such 

 a nature, that any one of them would have been enough to 

 secure celebrity for its possessor. 



Physiology and comparative anatomy are the two subjects in 

 which Blumenbach's name is most pre-eminently conspicuous. 

 What he has done for these departments by his writings and 

 lectures, will assuredly so much the less easily be forgotten by 

 his native country, since it was through him chiefly that foreign 

 countries first acquired a taste for these studies, and rendered 

 gratitude not merely to him, but generally to German science. 

 The obscure doctrines of generation, nourishment, and repro- 

 duction, received from him light and critical explanation. Al- 

 though since the period when he first began with such vigour 

 of intellect to examine the then existing materials, and to 



* Vol. i-iii. 1783-1795. 



t Annalcn der Braunschw. Liineb. Churlandc 1789. Year 3, No. 2, 

 p. 889-396. 

 t In his « Medical Library." Vol. i. p. 3C8-377. 



