348 



HELMHOLTZ, HERMANN LUDWIG FERDINAND VON. 



Prince in 1893 was 188 steamers, of 274,791 tons, 

 and 79 sailing vessels, of 22,225 tons. 



Revolutionary Attempts. Gen. Francois 

 Manigat, who had planned to head an insurrec- 

 tion against Gen. Hippolyte, purchased through 

 his agents in the United States the steam yacht 

 " Natalie," and had her loaded with arms and 

 ammunition at Savannah. The vessel was ex- 

 pected to arrive off Kingston, Jamaica, where 

 Manigat was living in exile, and just as the 

 revolutionary leader was leaving to board the 

 steam yacht he was arrested by the British au- 

 thorities, Jan. 29, 1894. President Hippolyte 

 used extraordinary precautions to prevent com- 

 munication between the exiles in Kingston and 

 their friends in Hayti. The practice of search- 

 ing the persons as well as the baggage of all 

 who arrived in Port-au-Prince, on representa- 

 tions from Minister Durham, was renewed, and 

 drew fresh protests from the new American 

 minister. Hippolyte erected fortifications at the 

 entra'nces to the palace and mounted a dozen 

 new guns. The Kingston authorities released 

 Manigat, but he heard nothing of the ' Natalie " 

 until she had put into Nassau, New Providence, 

 under stress of weather, Feb. 4. Shortly after- 

 ward, betrayed, perhaps, by her navigator, she 

 was captured at sea by a Ilaytian gunboat. In 

 July, President Hippolyte shut off all direct 

 communication with Jamaica and ordered a 

 careful scrutiny of the mails. He changed his 

 ministers, and strengthened the army by the 

 conscription of all youths over twelve years of 

 age. An attempt was made upon his life, and 

 another upon the life of his daughter, for sus- 

 pected complicity in which 7 persons were sum- 

 marily shot. On Sept. 8 an uprising occurred at 

 Port-au-Prince. An armed mob surrounded the 

 palace with the intention of shooting the Presi- 

 dent if he appeared. His daughter was fired at, 

 whereupon the guards opened fire and advanced 

 and put the insurgents to flight. Some of the 

 revolutionists were captured, and many were 

 killed or wounded before they made a stand in 

 the market place. Innocent people also were 

 killed by the reckless volleys and random shots 

 of the guards. The firing was renewed after 

 dark. The people of the town fled in panic into 

 the country. The uprising was finally sup- 

 pressed, and 10 captured leaders were shot. On 

 Oct. 18 Haytian frontier guards attacked an 

 armed force that invaded Haytian territory 

 from Santo Domingo. The matter was ar- 

 ranged by the two Presidents, and President 

 Heuraux promised that he would not allow Gen. 

 Manigat to enter Santo Domingo or any more 

 revolutionary enterprises to be set on foot there 



HELMHOLT/, HERMANN LUDWIG 

 FERDINAND VON, a German physicist, born 

 in Potsdam, Germany, Aug. 31, 1821 ; died in 

 Berlin, Germany, Sept. 8, 1894. He was the son 

 of Frederick Helmholtz, a teacher in the gym- 

 nasium in Potsdam" and of Caroline Penn, daugh- 

 ter of a Hanoverian artillery officer, who was 

 of the same ancestry as William Penn. His 

 early education was received at the public schools 

 in Potsdam, where he developed a fondness for 

 physics. Thence he passed to the University of 

 Herlin, but was unable to afford an education in 

 that institution, and turned to medicine, a course 

 that was rendered easy for him by the liberal 



arrangements of the Frederick William Insti- 

 tute for the education of military surgeons. Of 

 the value of this training he said in after life : " I 

 consider the study of medicine to have been the 

 school that taught me, as no other could have 



HERMANN VON HELMHOLTZ. 



done, the eternal laws that are the basis of 

 scientific work." At that time scientific ap- 

 paratus was expensive, working laboratories were 

 not common, and even microscopes were luxu- 

 ries. Of this condition he wrote : " I myself 

 succeeded in becoming possessed of one [a micro- 

 scope] by falling ill of typhus fever during the 

 autumn holidays of 1841, when, being as a pupil 

 gratuitously treated in the Charite, I found my- 

 self on recovery in possession of that part of my 

 small income that had accumulated during my 

 illness. The instrument was not beautiful, yet 

 by its aid I was able to recognize the nervous 

 processes of the ganglion cells of invertebrates, 

 which I described in my dissertation, as well as 

 the vibrios referred to in my work on putrefac- 

 tion and fermentation." His thesis entitled 

 " De Fabrica Systematis Nervosi Evertebratum," 

 bearfng the date of Nov. 11, 1842, gave the re- 

 sults of numerous examinations of the delicate 

 nerve fibers of bugs, spiders, crabs, and many 

 lower animals. After graduation he served for 

 a while on the staff of the Charite Hospital in 

 Berlin, and then settled in Potsdam as an army 

 surgeon, where he remained until 1848. Mean- 

 while he was busy with his studies, and in 1843 

 he published his paper "On the Nature of Pu- 

 trefaction and Fermentation," in which he 

 showed that oxygen was not the cause of putre- 

 faction, but that " from these researches it ap- 

 pears that putrefaction may originate independ- 

 ently of vital processes." He wrote in 1845, iVi- 

 the Berlin ' Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Medical 

 Sciences," an essay on "Animal Heat," which 

 even to-day may serve as a model. In 1847 his 

 able pamphlet on " The Conservation of Energy "" 



