November io, 192 i] 



NATURE 



345 



example to us all. His honours included the 

 F.R.C.P. and F.R.S. 



Instead of attempting- to g-ive a list of Prof. 

 Bainbridge's published researches, I will quote 

 from a document drawn up by Prof. Starling 

 which admirably gives the main features of his 

 work ; he has allowed me to use it : — 



" A very large proportion of Prof. Bainbridge's 

 work represents important additions to knowledge 

 which have found a permanent place in the record 



I of scientific discovery. In pathology his most 

 important work was in the differentiation of the 

 different types of para-typhoid bacilli, a study 

 which has been carried very far in later years. 

 It was, however, on the physiological side that 

 his work was of most importance. In his re- 

 searches on lymph formation he took up the ques- 

 tion of the tissue lymph and defined for the first 



i time the part plaved in lymph formation bv the 

 metabolism of cells. Working on the sub-maxil- 

 lary gland and the liver, he pointed out the 

 defects in the secretory theorv and showed that 

 all the results obtained might be explained as 

 due to the production of metabolites in the cells 

 and the consequent rise of osmotic tension in the 

 tissue fluid which had the effect of attracting fluid 

 from the blood vessels and adding to the lymph 

 flow from the part. The question of the 

 mechanism of urinary secretion was one which 

 occupied him frequently through his scientific 

 career. His earliest work, carried out with Bed- 

 dard, consisted in a repetition of Xussbaum's ex- 

 periments, avoiding many of the sources of fal- 

 lacy which these contained. .At first he was in- 

 clined to ascribe a secretorv function both to 

 glomeruli and to tubules, but later, in experi- 

 ments carried out at Newcastle, he was led to 

 adopt Cushny's view, in the support of which he 

 brought forward many new and ingenious experi- 

 ments. His work with Evans on the functions 

 of the mammalian kidney fed with blood from a 

 heart-lung preparation was, unfortunately, only 

 in the nature of a preliminary communication, but 

 the method promises to be of considerable value 

 for the elucidation of manv problems connected 

 with urinary secretion. His work on the gall- 

 bladder with Dale was a useful contribution to a 

 department of physiology in which knowledge is 

 very deficient. 



"Most interest, however, attaches to his latest 

 work on the circulation, and especiallv to the dis- 

 covery of the relationship which holds between 

 pressure on the venous side of the heart and the 

 rate of the heart beat. Many attempts had been 

 made to explain the acceleration of the pulse 

 which occurs in exercise. The pace-maker itself 

 is unaffected by the pressure in the auricular 

 cavity, though a quickening- of the pulse is one of 

 the methods adopted by the organism for enabling 

 the heart to deal with the greater inflow of blood 

 into this organ which accompanies muscular exer- 

 cise. Bainbridge showed that anv rise of pres- 

 sure on the venous side of the heart caused a 

 quickening of the beat, partly by inhibition of the 

 NO. 2715, VOL. 108] 



vagal tone, partly by reflex excitation of the 

 accelerator mechanism. This condition is the 

 converse of that which is expressed as Marey's 

 law, a rise of pressure on the ventricular side 

 tending to cause reflex slowing of the heart, and it 

 is therefore described as * Bainbridge's law.' The 

 review of the whole subject of the physiology of ex- 

 ercise, which he undertook in writing a comprehen- 

 sive monograph on the subject, sugg-ested many 

 new problems for work on the circulation, and he 

 was making plans to attack these problems, partly 

 alone, partly in conjunction with other phvsiolo- 

 gists, when his work was brought to a sudden 

 and premature close ; but he was happy in his 

 work and in the planning of new researches, and 

 he would be content that others should build on 

 the foundations which he has laid down." 



Prof. Bainbridge married in 1905 Hilda Wini- 

 fred, daughter of the Rev. E. Thornton Smith. In 

 his wife he found a companion keenly interested in 

 his work, who, by her constant co-operation and 

 care, enabled him to utilise his talents to the full, 

 in spite of the disabilitv of ill-health from which 

 he suffered. ' W. D. H. 



Dr. W. S. Bruce. 



The untimely death on October 29, at the 

 age of fifty-four, of William Speirs Bruce 

 removes a leading oceanographer and the 

 foremost British authority of his time on 

 Polar regions. From the age' of twenty-five 

 Bruce had devoted practically his whole life 

 to the exploration of Polar lands and seas, 

 and had to his credit no less than twelve 

 Arctic and two Antarctic expeditions. On the 

 eve of completing his medical course at Edin- 

 burgh he sailed for the Antarctic in the Dundee 

 whaler Balaena in 1892. The visit of this and 

 other whalers was of course a commercial venture, 

 and though Bruce was mainly occupied in assist- 

 ing the crew in sealing, he found time to make 

 many valuable observations in the north-western 

 part of the \\'eddell Sea, the first scientific 

 observations made in those regions for half 

 a century. Returning home the following 

 year, he became an assistant in the Challenger 

 office, and later was in charge of the observatory 

 on the summit of Ben Nevis until 1896, w^hen at 

 a few hours' notice he sailed in the Windward 

 to Franz Josef Land with the Jackson-Harmsworth 

 Polar expedition. For a year he assisted in the 

 survey of the archipelago and made valuable 

 collections, and he was present at the historic 

 meeting with Dr. F. Nansen on his return from 

 the Polar ocean. In 1898 Bruce sailed with Major 

 A. Coats to Novaya Zemlya. Kolguev, and Hc^e 

 Island, and later in the same summer with the 

 Prince of Monaco to Spitsbergen. This was the 

 first of many cruises with the Prince of Monaco, 

 and laid the foundation of Bruce 's wide and 

 authoritative knowledge of Spitsbergen and its 

 natural history. 



Since his return from the Antarctic Bruce had 



