WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



shortly after he had begun those brilliant investigations 

 which have rendered him immortal, he remained affected 

 by partial paralysis until the end of his life. His friends 

 had reason to fear that this attack, even if he should sur- 

 vive it, would weaken or extinguish his spirit of initiative, 

 if it did not make further work entirely impossible. But 

 this was far from the case. For a quarter of a century he 

 continued with unabated activity those marvelous labors 

 which are forever associated with his name. And it was 

 after, not before, his misfortune that he made his most 

 famous discoveries in the domain of microbian life, and 

 placed in the hands of physicians and surgeons those in- 

 fallible means of combatting disease which have made him 

 one of the greatest benefactors of suffering humanity. The 

 complete separation of the intellectual from the motor 

 faculties was never more clearly exhibited than in this case, 

 nor was it ever more completely demonstrated by an ex- 

 periment, whose validity no one could question, that power 

 of mind does not necessarily depend on strength or health 

 of body. It proved, also, in the most telling manner that 

 it is not muscular but psychic force which avails most, 

 whether to the individual or to society. And it showed, at 

 the same time, the utter absurdity of those theories which 

 would fatally connect intellectual with physical debility in 

 woman, and would forever adjudge the physically weaker 

 sex to be of hopeless inferiority in all things of the mind. 

 What has been said of men achieving renown, notwith- 

 standing ill health, may likewise be affirmed of women. 

 The case of Elizabeth Barrett Browning is scarcely less 

 remarkable than that of Darwin. In spite of being a 

 chronic invalid the greater part of her life, she attained a 

 position in letters reached by but few of her contempo- 

 raries. The same almost may be said of the three Bronte 

 sisters. The deadly seeds of consumption were sown in 

 their systems in early youth, but, although fully aware that 

 life had "passed them by with averted head/' they were, 



