PROFESSOR AT KONIGSBERG 125 



that the reviewers had no conception of the scientific point of 

 view. The general trend of education in Germany is still quite 

 aloof from natural science/ 



The summer of 1854 brought Helmholtz many pleasant 

 distractions : the best of all being a long-projected four weeks' 

 visit from his father, whose dearest wish had been to see 

 his son in his home life, and the distinguished scientist in 

 the learned circles of Konigsberg. With the latter the father 

 also hoped to enter into relations, since he had been greatly 

 pleased to learn from his son that the chief librarian and 

 Orientalist Olshausen had come upon his treatise on Arabic 

 literature in the library, and was much pleased with it, as 

 he had long been engaged upon a similar subject. The King, 

 too, came to the old Coronation city, and Helmholtz, as Dean 

 of the Medical Faculty, had to appear ' three days running 

 at Court in a scarlet mantle : at the reception, the banquet, 

 and the departure'; while lastly, the second marriage of his 

 widowed sister-in-law Betty took place at his house, so that 

 during the summer months his time was fully occupied. 

 Despite these interruptions he pursued his experiments on 

 the excitatory process in nerve, together with some difficult 

 optical problems, during the summer, and on July 3 sent 

 du Bois a short notice for the Academy, ' On the Rate of 

 Certain Processes in Muscle and Nerve/ recorded with his 

 frog-tracing apparatus, or as he 'will pompously term it in 

 future', the Myographion. The instrument, however, made its 

 way slowly, and was little used in the physiological institutes ; 

 even du Bois did not venture, on account of its high price, 

 to suggest to Joh. Miiller to purchase one for the Anatomical 

 Institute. Helmholtz had also constructed new appliances for 

 time-measurements on man as early as the winter of 1853-4, 

 but owing to the removal of the laboratory in the summer 

 of 1854 to the anatomical buildings, was as yet unable to make 

 any such experiments, using his spare time instead 'for some 

 miscellaneous experiments in physiological optics, which have 

 the advantage of not exceeding the comprehension of the scien- 

 tific public, so that these worthies may perhaps be inclined to 

 believe in my time-measurements, even if they cannot under- 

 stand them '. After recalling the definition he had previously 

 given in which the period of latent excitation is that in which 



