August 5, 1920] 



NATURE 



21 



Obit 



Prof. J. C. F. Guyon. 

 ^pHE death of Prof. Jean Casmir Felix Guyon, 

 ■- at the end of his eighty-ninth year, removes 

 the last of three famous Paris specialists in 

 genito-urinary surgery ; of these Civiale was much 

 the senior, whereas Albarran (i860- 191 2) was 

 Guyon 's brilliant pupil and succeeded him in the 

 professorial chair so far back as 1896. Guyon, 

 though naturally little known to the younger 

 generation of British surgeons, ranks with the 

 late Sir Henry Thompson {1820-1904), with whom 

 professionally he may be compared. Both these 

 pioneers adopted and improved the eminent Ameri- 

 can surgeon Bigelow's practice of litholapaxy, 

 or the complete removal of all the fragments 

 of a crushed calculus from the urinary bladder at 

 one sitting. Guyon was recognised as a great 

 teacher in his speciality, and for years attracted 

 students from all parts of the world to his clinic at 

 the Xecker Hospital. 



Guyon was born on July 21, 1831, at St. Denis, 

 in the island of Reunion, and it may be mentioned 

 as a rather, curious coincidence that his famous 

 successor, Joaquin Albarran, was also born abroad, 

 namely, in Cuba. Guyon worked first at Nantes 

 and then at Paris, where he was interne in 1854 

 and prosector to the faculty in 1858. His 

 graduation thesis, on " Fibroid Tumours of the 

 Uterus," bears the date i860; in 1862 he 

 became surgeon to the Paris hospitals, in 1863 

 agrege, and professor in 1877. His two chief 

 works, " Lecons cliniques sur les maladies des 

 voies urinaires " (1881) — which passed into a 



uary. 



and into Russian. Though famous as a genito- 

 urinary specialist, Guyon took a broad view of sur- 

 I gery, adopted Lister's methods as early as 1876, 

 and was the author of a work of 672 pages on 

 general surgery, dealing with diagnosis and 

 operations in general, entitled " Elements de 

 chirurgie clinique." Although now somewhat 

 forgotten from his great age and the interval of 

 almost a quarter of a century since he quitted the 

 chair of genito-urinary surgery, Guyon received 

 the honours due to his work and position ; he was 

 a Commander of the Legion of Honour, a member 

 of the Institute (Academy of Sciences) and of the 

 Academy of Medicine, and on August 3, 1900, his 

 former pupils, of whom Lucas-Championni^re was 

 the senior, presented him with a medal executed 

 by Bottle as a mark of their affection and admira- 

 tion. 



second edition in il 



and a third in two volumes 



in 1894-96 — and " Le9ons cliniques sur les affec- 

 tions chirurgicales de la vessie et de la prostate " 

 (1886) — edited by his former resident, Dr. F. P. 

 Guiard — embodied his teaching at the Necker 

 Hospital, and were both translated into German 



Mr. Alexander James Montgomerie Bell, 

 who died on July 3, aged seventy-four, was a 

 fellow of the Geological Society who devoted his 

 leisure for many years to the study of the deposits 

 in southern England in which palaeolithic flint 

 implements occur. His researches on the gravels 

 and associated deposits at Wolvercote, near 

 Oxford, were especially valuable, and were de- 

 scribed in a paper published in the Geological 

 Society's Journal in 1904. He regarded certain 

 disturbed layers as "ice-drifts," and emphasised 

 the importance of distinguishing " rainwash-drifts" 

 from regular deposits. From an examination of 

 the fossil remains of plants and beetles, he con- 

 cluded that in late Pleistocene times the climate of 

 the Thames valley was more continental than it is 

 at. present. It is understood that Mr. Bell left 

 a general summary of the results of his researches 

 in a manuscript, which we hope may be found in 

 a form suitable for publication. 



Notes. 



Dr. G. C. Simpson, F.R.S., Meteorologist to the 

 Government of India, has been appointed Director of 

 the Meteorological Office as successor to Sir Napier 

 Shaw, who retires on reaching the age-limit after 

 brilliant pioneer service, Dr, Simpson was meteoro- 

 logist and physicist to the British Antarctic Expedi- 

 tion, 1910-13, and served on the Indian Munitions 

 Board from 1917 to 1919. In 1905 he was appointed 

 a Scientific Assistant in the Meteorological Office, and 

 in 1906 joined the staff of the Indian Meteorological 

 Department. He is the author of a number of papers 

 of scientific importance, including one on the elec- 

 tricity of rain and its origin in thunderstorms, pub- 

 lished in the Phil. Trans, in 1909. Only last year 

 Dr. Simpson completed an elaborate discussion of the 

 meteorological work of the British Antarctic Expedi- 

 tion, 1910-13. As successor to Sir Napier Shaw his 

 appointment promises a continuation of progress along 

 lines which will advance meteorological science and 

 NO. 2649, VOL. 105] 



maintain the high position which the British Meteoro- 

 logical Office now occupies through its work in recent 

 years. 



Dr. L. V. King has been appointed Macdonald 

 professor of physics at the Macdonald Physics Build- 

 ing, McGill University. The chair has been held in 

 succession by Prof. H. L. Callendar, Sir Ernest 

 Rutherford, Dr. H. T, Barnes, Prof, H. A, Wilson, 

 and by the present director, Dr, A. S. Eve. Prof, 

 King was born at Toronto, Ontario, in 1886. In 

 1905 he graduated B.A. at McGill University with 

 first-class honours and gold medal in mathematics and 

 physics. He was elected scholar of Christ's College, 

 Cambridg'e, in 1906, and appointed lecturer in physics 

 at McGill University in 1910, assistant professor in 

 1912, and associate professor in 1915, when he also 

 was awarded the D.Sc. degree of McGill University. 

 In J915 Prof. King began investigations on sub- 



