( 36 ) 



Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, when telling us the story of Redi and 

 his researches on flies, and the simple method adopted by Redi to 

 prevent putrefaction in meat. 



Looking back on the old story, it is plain that the early 

 naturalists held the key of the situation and did not know it — Redi, 

 Spallanzani. Then came Schwann and Pasteur. Their biological 

 life-work culminates in a simple issue — so simple, indeed, that all 

 alike were working towards a common goal, a goal where stood 

 fortunately one — trained in all the most modern methods of investiga- 

 tion, the pupil of Sharpey and Syme — who, from the fact of his 

 physiological training, was enabled, as from a modern Pisgah, to see 

 the riches of the land — not only the riches, but to see how all these 

 converging lines of thought, experimentation, and whatnot, concen- 

 trated themselves in one practical issue — first as antiseptic, and now 

 as aseptic surgery. There is no more picturesque story in the whole 

 annals of surgery. What is, or ought to be, scientific surgery and 

 medicine but applied physiology ? 



NEHEMIAH GREW. 



i628(?)-i 7 ii. 



THE Author — Physician and Botanist — of The Anatomy of Plants, 

 tvith an Idea of a philosophical history of Plants (1682), was 

 born at Coventry about 1628. His original paper was 

 presented to the Royal Society at the same time as a similar work by 

 Malpighi in 1671. His Anatomy of Plants is illustrated by magnifi- 

 cent plates, and was published by the Royal Society. It contains the 

 idea of cells or " bladders." In honour of Malpighi — who, while in 

 Messina, was led to the study of plant structure by seeing the vascular 

 bundles hanging from a broken leaf of a chestnut — I have reproduced 

 N. Crew's figure of what he calls the " Aer-vessels unrooved in a 



THE AER-VESSELS, I.e., VASCULAR BUNDLES, UNROOVED IN A VINE. 



vine leaf." In dedicating his work to Charles II. he states that 

 " there are terns incognitos in philosophy as well as in geography." 



