AT THE PHYSICO-TECHNICAL INSTITUTE 429 



as I interpret the statutes, preclude the allotting to him of the 

 prize, and his life was prolonged into this year. 



' If you agree with this proposition, which seems to remove 

 a reproach from our nation, inasmuch as during his lifetime 

 Hertz was much less honoured by the German people than 

 by other countries, we can make the award by a brief com- 

 munication in writing/ 



On July ii (the day on which he wrote) he accompanied his 

 daughter and her children in the evening to the train which 

 was to take them to Holland for the vacation. 



1 On the morning of the i2th,' writes Wachsmuth, ' I was 

 summoned from the Reichsanstalt. Helmholtz had crossed 

 the vestibule, but suddenly became incapable of going farther ; 

 the servant sprang forward, led him back into his room, 

 and put him on the sofa. The paralysis, due no doubt / 

 to some increasing cerebral haemorrhage, crept on slowly. 

 In the forenoon he was still able to talk calmly about all 

 necessary arrangements, and I wrote a number of letters at his 

 dictation. The first physician who came was Bardeleben, 

 followed by Gerhardt and Leyden, but Helmholtz himself 

 knew too much about medicine not to grasp the situation fully. 

 Then came a time of wandering and lucid intervals, with anxious 

 nursing, reminiscences of America and the Falls of Niagara, 

 lastly a decided improvement/ 



On July 18, Frau von Helmholtz writes to her sister: ' His 

 thoughts ramble on confusedly, real life and dream life, time 

 and scene, all float mistily by in his brain for the most part he 

 does not know where he is thinks himself travelling in 

 America on the ship, and so on. I was obliged to bring him 

 the pictures of Niagara. It is as if his soul were far, far away, 

 in a beautiful ideal world, swayed only by science and the 

 eternal laws. Then his surroundings jar on him, and he gets 

 confused and wanders/ 



His birthday, on Aug. 31, could be kept with a spark of hope; 

 'he rejoiced in the more cheerful spirit which pervaded his 

 home on this last day of comparative brightness, though the 

 pressure of the coming calamity was already heavy on all who 

 left or entered the house/ Even on the next day he was feebler, 

 talked anxiously of being compelled to resign, and was only 

 calmed when his wife told him that the Under Secretary of 



