4 o 4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



These views, while commending themselves to naturalists like 

 Humboldt, Donders, Van Deen, Emil Rossmassler, Otto Ule, and 

 Hermann Burmeister, and scholars like Strauss and Renan, gave 

 great offense not only to the orthodox clergy but also to conserva- 

 tives of every sort, to whom the cremation of the human body 

 seemed as sacrilegious as its dissection did to the contemporaries 

 of Vesalius three centuries before. As the result of a solemn con- 

 clave held by the senate of the Heidelberg University, the rector 

 of that institution warned Moleschott that, unless he ceased to 

 corrupt youth by his "immoral" and "frivolous" teachings, the 

 venia docendi, or right to lecture, would be revoked. The sole 

 fitting answer to such an ill-advised and impertinent admonition 

 was given at once by Moleschott, who wrote to the Baden minis- 

 try severing his connection with a university in which liberty of 

 instruction existed only in name. This decisive step was evidently 

 an unpleasant surprise to those who had provoked it, and thereby 

 raised a storm of indignation in scientific circles and in the press 

 which they were wholly unprepared to meet. The young men 

 who had just attended Moleschott's courses of lectures on anthro- 

 pology and organology published with their several signatures an 

 address to the ministry, in which they vigorously repelled these 

 accusations and vindicated Moleschott's character as a man and 

 teacher. In their daily intercourse with him they declared that 

 they had never detected the slightest justification of the charges 

 brought against him. In the communication of the results of his 

 scientific researches there was not the faintest trace of the spirit 

 of proselytism, but every one was left free to form an independent 

 judgment in accordance with the facts. 



Although no longer an academical teacher, Moleschott contin- 

 ued to reside in Heidelberg, working in his private laboratory, to 

 which he also freely admitted all who wished to make experiments 

 under his direction, and keeping his head financially above water 

 by literary labor. Thanks to his calumniators, public attention 

 was called to his books, and the sale of them greatly increased. 

 He also founded a scientific journal entitled Untersuchungen zur 

 Naturlehre des Menschen und der Thiere, which began to appear in 

 1855 at irregular intervals, and numbered among its contributors 

 some of the most distinguished European men of science. Mole- 

 schott edited the first fifteen volumes of this periodical, or year- 

 book, as it might more properly be called ; since 1892 it has been 

 continued by G. Colasanti and S. Fesbini (Giessen : Emil Roth). He 

 also published an exceedingly interesting monograph, Georg For- 

 ster, der Naturforscher des Volks, issued November 26, 1854, on the 

 hundredth anniversary of the birth of this most remarkable man. 



In the spring of 1856 Moleschott was appointed to the chair of 

 Physiology in the University of Zurich as the successor of Karl 



