306 Britain's Heritage of Science 



pain, not only of our poor suffering humanity, but of the 

 animal creation. Edward Jenner (1749-1823) led the way 

 with vaccines and for the first time introduced the practice 

 of preventive innoculations. Sir Charles Bell (1774-1842) 

 cleared up the relations between the functions of the anterior 

 and posterior roots of the spinal column, and made numerous 

 other discoveries on the nervous system; and Lord Lister, 

 whose father had almost re-invented the compound micro- 

 scope, made many discoveries, by far the most important 

 of which was his definite discovery of the part played by 

 micro-organisms in wounds. The antiseptic principle in 

 the practice of surgery dates from him and from his time, as 

 Dr. F. H. Garrison says, " when his body was laid to rest 

 in Westminster, England had buried her greatest surgeon." 



It is impossible to deal with more than but a very few 

 of the distinguished physiologists who were working at the 

 close of the last century. One of these, however, must be : 

 Charles Smart Roy (1854-1897), who was educated at 

 St. Andrews and the University of Edinburgh. He fought 

 through the Turco-Serbian War, and whilst in Epirus 

 invented his frog cardiometer. For a time he was assistant 

 at Strassburg University, and here it was that he invented 

 the instrument which is best known in connexion with his 

 name, the Renal Oncometer, for the study of the variations 

 of the blood-flow through the kidney. Later, as George 

 Henry Lewes Student, he worked with Foster at Cambridge, 

 and in 1884 was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, 

 and shortly afterwards was appointed first Professor of 

 Pathology in the University of Cambridge. 



Hampered by ill-health and by want of accommodation 

 at the laboratory, he nevertheless produced work of great 

 value, and he succeeded in training a number of students 

 of great eminence, amongst whom J. G. Adami, W. Hunter, 

 Alfred Kanthack, Lorrain Smith, W. Westbrook, and Lewis 

 Cobbett, deserve record. 



With Adami he carried out a long series of researches on 

 the mammalian heart, which involved the invention of the 

 cardiac -plethysmograph and the cardio-myograph, which 

 greatly helped to overcome the mechanical difficulties of the 

 subject. But he by no means confined his attention to this 



