so 



NATURE 



[March ii, 1920 



We much regret to sec the announcement of the 

 death on March 9 of M. Lucien Poincar^, Vice-Rector 

 of the University of Paris, at fifty-eight years of 

 age. 



Dr. Samuel Hatch West, who died on March 2 

 at the age of seventy-one, was well known in London 

 as a consulting physician. He was trained at Oxford 

 under Rolleston and Acland, and as Radcliffe travel- 

 ling fellow he studied in Vienna and Berlin. He was 

 physician to the Royal Free Hospital and to the (^ity 

 of London Hospital for Diseases of the Chest, but 

 his life's work was carried out at St. Bartholomew's 

 Hospital, where he received his medical education, 

 and held successive medical appointments until he be- 

 came full physician. Dr. West was a successful clinical 

 teacher, and many generations of students will be 

 grateful to him for the thorough manner in which he 

 taught them to examine a patient, system by system,^ 

 so that no important organ could be overlooked. Dr. 

 West deserved his high reputation as a careful clinical 

 observer. Diseases of the lungs were his particular 

 study, and on this subject he produced a monograph 

 in two volumes which is a monument of industry 

 and a veritable mine of information. He delivered 

 the Lettsomian lectures at the Medical Society of 

 London in 1900, taking as his subject "Granular 

 Kidney," but it is by his teaching and his work on 

 diseases of the lungs that he will best be remembered. 



A correspondent, "G. P. B.," writes: — "All 

 zoologists who have ever worked at the ' Stazione 

 Zoologica ' of Naples will be grieved to read of the 

 death of Prof. Eisig, whose obituary notice by Prof. 

 R. Dohrn appears in the Zurich Zeitung of 

 February 19. Hugo Eisig was born in Baden in 

 1847. When Anton Dohrn, aged thirty-one, decided to 

 sink his whole fortune in the building of the Naples 

 station, knowing that it would suffice to rear up only 

 the ground story, his friend Kleinenberg went with 

 him ; Eisig, seven years their junior, offered himself 

 also, and was accepted. Many years of great difificulty 

 followed, and then many years of very great success. 

 Through all Eisig continued the career which he 

 had chosen as part and . parcel of the Stazione 

 Zoologica. His contribution to zoology is not to be 

 measured by his published work, even though it in- 

 cludes his great ' Monograph of the Capitellidae.' To 

 all of us who w^orked at Naples he was a friend, 

 loyal, sympathetic, unselfish, and gentle; In 1907 

 Eisig retired on a pension from his administrative 

 post in the Zoological Station, but continued his own 

 zoological work. Two years later Anton Dohrn died, 

 and w^as succeeded by his able son, but in 19 15 Prof. 

 Reinhard Dohrn, with Eisig and others of the staff, 

 had to leave Naples for the hospitality of the Zurich 

 Zoological Museum and Swiss territory. There Eisig 

 died on February 10 last from the after-effects of. an 

 operation which appeared to have been successful. 

 He died in exile from his home of forty-four years, 

 but in the warm memory of many friends all over the 

 world." 



NO. 2628. VOL. 105] 



Notes. 



A MEETING convened by the Chancellor of the Uni- 

 versity of Cambridge and the president of the Royal 

 Society was held on Thursday, March 4, at the rooms 

 of the Royal Society, to consider the question of a 

 memorial to the memory of Lord Rayleigh. After 

 a preliminary statement by the president of the Royal 

 Society announcing the purpose of the meeting, 

 speeches in favour of the proposal to erect a memorial 

 were made by Mr. A. J. Balfour, Sir Charles Parsons, 

 Dr. • P. Giles (Vice-Chancellor of the I'niversitv of 

 Cambridge), Sir Arthur Schuster, Sir Richard ('A:v/a- 

 brook, and Sir Joseph Larmor. It was agreed that 

 a fund should be raised for the purpose of placing a 

 memorial, preferably a window, in Westminster 

 Abbey. A general committee was appointed, as well 

 as an executive committee, to consider details, and 

 also the further question of raising a fund in memorv 

 of Lord Rayleigh, to be used for the promotion of 

 research in some branch of science in which Lord 

 Rayleigh was specially interested. 



A PUBLIC meeting was held in the Universit\- 

 Museum, Oxford, on March 6, to initiate a memorial 

 to the late Sir William Osier, Bart., Regius professor 

 of medicine in the University for the past fifteen 

 years. The Vice-Chancellor presided. Sir Clifford 

 Allbutt, who introduced the proposal, paid a feeling 

 an3r eloquent tribute to the memory of Sir Vvilliani 

 Osier, to the wide range of his intellect, and to the 

 singular charm of his character. He referred to his 

 international reputation and to the binding influence 

 he had on the medical profession in many lands, 

 to his love of peace and g-oodwill, and to the extra- 

 ordinary power he exerted in diffusing without 

 diluting friendship. The president of Magdalen, Sir 

 Herbert Warren, mentioned the many-sidedness of 

 Osier's interests and activities, the breadth and 

 accuracy of his scholarship, and the clear and 

 steady optimism with which he regarded life and its 

 progress in all ages. Sir William Church, who 

 introduced the specific proposal that the memorial 

 should take the form of an Osier Institute of General 

 Pathology and Preventive Medicine, stated that such 

 a memorial as that suggested would be a singularlv 

 appropriate tribute to the outlook and ideals that 

 Osier had kept before him in his life-work. Prof. 

 Thomson emphasised the need of new laboratorv 

 accommodation in Oxford for teaching and research. 

 The Dean of Christ Church and Sir Archibald Garrod 

 also spoke. It was announced that the hon. secre- 

 tary. Prof. Gunn, had received expressions of sym- 

 pathy with the proposed memorial from a large 

 number of people representing many interests, and 

 that a collateral committee had been formed in 

 America to aid in raising the memorial. 



A MOVEMENT has been started to commemorate the 

 life and w-ork of the late Sir James Mackenzie David- 

 son by an appropriate memorial. The proposal is 

 that steps should be taken to found a Mackenzie 

 Davidson chair of radiology at some university, but, 

 whereas nothing could be more fitting as a memorial 

 to the w'ork of one who devoted a large part of his 



