NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



shared with Galileo, with Copernicus, with Kepler, with Locke, and 

 with Mill. 



In all his literary work Dr. Draper's methods were always of the 

 same high character as those which distinguished his scientific in- 

 vestigations. He showed alike in both the same close and impartial 

 scrutiny of the facts, the same careful and minute examination of 

 all the conditions which they involved, the same conscientious and 

 exact record of the results obtained. After passing the ordeal of 

 his severe criticism his work had little to fear from outside attack. 

 All that he did was pervaded by the high moral tone which char- 

 acterized the man. If he was scrupulously accurate in observing 

 and testing his facts and in drawing inferences from them, if he 

 was ingenious in devising and skillful in applying crucial tests to 

 detect error or misconception, he was equally honest in placing his 

 observations and conclusions on record and in according to his con- 

 temporaries and co-workers the full share of praise to which they 

 were entitled. 



It is not easy to estimate the value of Dr. Draper's services as a 

 teacher. From the time of his appointment to the professorship in 

 Hampden Sidney College in 1836 until the year before his death 

 a period of forty-five years he was constantly occupied in the 

 work of instruction. Of the facilities at his disposal when he first 

 went to New York he thus speaks : " Our laboratory was then in a 

 little dark back room without ventilation. The morning sun strug- 

 gled almost in vain to see what we were doing, for the window- 

 panes were covered with an incongruous arrangement of Venetian 

 blinds and Gothic mullions. A hole in the ceiling led up to the 

 chapel above, to the pulpit of which the material for the daily 

 lecture was carried in a tea-tray. I called it a pulpit, because they 

 used to preach out of it. A clergyman, who also statedly occupied 

 it, regarded it as a pneumatic trough, because I experimented in it. 

 And this, I think, it really was, for, recalling the Greek etymology 

 of that epithet, it plainly indicates the double function, spiritual 

 as well as chemical. Our laboratory work commenced at seven in 

 the morning and continued uninterruptedly till after midnight, and, 

 as might have been leadily foreseen, what, with the impure air and 

 mental application, the individual chiefly engaged twice contracted 

 a fever and narrowly escaped with his life." Dnring the ten years 

 from 1840 to 1850 he gave a series of introductory lectures to the 

 medical classes in the university, which are among the best popular 



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