58 



NA TURE 



[May 19, 1904 



methods was the invention of the sphygmograph, of 

 which the original form (1863) has not undergone 

 any important modification. From the arteries he 

 proceeded to the heart, and for this associated himself 

 with Chauveau, with whom his early friendship per- 

 sisted unbroken to the end. It was to this association 

 of two able men, one of whom was at that time the 

 most skilful of living experimenters, while the other 

 possessed an equally exceptional faculty of mechanical 

 invention, that we may attribute the splendid re- 

 searches on which our present knowledge of the 

 motion of the heart is founded. 



TTie results of these investigations were communi- 

 cated to the Academy of Sciences in the early 'sixties, 

 and soon after published in Marey's first book 

 (" Physiologie IVWdicale de la Circulation du Sang ") 

 in iS6j. This work was followed by others, of which 

 were the " Travaux du Laboratoire," published an- 

 nually by M. Marey after he had succeeded Bernard 

 as professor in the College de France. In these he 

 completed the development of the " graphic method " 

 in its relation to the circulation, and extended its 

 application to other bodily movements, particularly to 

 those of locomotion, including the flight of birds. It 

 thus happens that the " kinematographic " method, 

 which in later times has not only been vulgarised for 

 public entertainment, but has served a higher purpose 

 as a guide in the artistic representation of animal 

 motion, was in the first instance devised by Marey 

 for the purpose of physiological research. 



It would be difficult to over-estimate the value of 

 Marey's work to the science to which, for the last 

 half-century, he has devoted himself. Full of original 

 ideas and fruitful in resources for carrying them into 

 effect, his ingenious methods have not only served his 

 own purposes, but have been made available by other 

 workers in all investigations relating to the mechanical 

 functions of the animal body. It would be difficult tq 

 find. a single instance of a research in the carrying out 

 of which these methods have not been employed. 



PROF. WILHELM HIS. 

 pROF. WILHELM HIS, whose death was an- 

 -*• nounced from Leipzig on May i, at the age 

 of seventy-three, altered and extended our knowledge 

 of human anatomy more than any man of his time. 

 He discovered and wrote the history of the human 

 body during the first and second months of concep- 

 tion, and thus filled in what, until his time, was 

 almost a blank. He introduced more accurate methods 

 of studying the form and relationships of the various 

 organs of the body. Pupils went to him from all 

 parts of the earth and carried back to their native 

 universities the. quiet, honest spirit of investigation, 

 the complete methods and the accurate technique His 

 had introduced in his laboratory at Leipzig. His 

 influence to-day is world-wide; it is especially evident 

 in the remarkable progress in embryological research 

 made recently in the United States. 



As His entered to lecture one was struck by the 

 absence of those bodily features one expects in a 

 German professor. He was a Swiss by birth and 

 education, having been born at Basel in 1831 ; in ap- 

 pearance he might have been an Englishman. His 

 narrow, longish head, black hair, regular profile, long 

 sallow face, and nervous temperament indicated his 

 descent from a Celtic stock. He taught quietly, 

 clearly, and concisely, illustrating his subject as he 

 spoke by marvellous drawing on "the blackboard. He 

 relegated lady-students to the back-bench. Long after 

 the university doors were shut, a light could be seen 

 NO. 1803, VOL. 70] 



in the window of his private room, for to him work 

 was also amusement. 



His career as a medical student is interesting. It 

 began at the University of Basel when he was 

 eighteen, and finished there in 1854 when he was 

 in his twenty-third year, but during that period he 

 visited and worked at the Universities of Bern, Berlin, 

 Wiirzburg, Vienna, and Prague, selecting what was 

 best at each place. After graduating he studied in 

 Paris. In 1857, then twenty-six, he succeeded Meissner 

 as professor of anatomy and physiology in Basel, and 

 commenced his life's work. 



It is always a matter of the utmost interest to know 

 the circumstances that determine the direction of a 

 successful line of research. His, in his student days, 

 while working at VViirzburg with Virchow, then a 

 young enthusiast, commenced and afterwards finished 

 an investigation into the structure of the cornea of 

 the eye, and in the early years of his professorship 

 published, with Billroth, a research into the structure 

 of lymphatic glands and allied bodies. A lecture which 

 he heard Remak give in Berlin on the developments of 

 glands was really the starting point of his embry- 

 ological work The point which struck him as mar- 

 vellous was the development of a gland such as the 

 liver from two of the three primary layers of the 

 embryo. He commenced to investigate the origin 

 and the part which each of these three primary layers 

 played (ectoderm, mesoderm, and hypoderm) in the 

 development of each part of the body, first in fowls 

 and lower, vertebrates, and subsequently in the then 

 almost unknown early human embryo. 



Every advance in science rests on the introduction 

 of a new method. By the methods he employed His 

 succeeded where other men had failed. The early 

 human embryo is minute and jelly like ; it has to be 

 hardened and stained before it can be cut in micro- 

 scopic sections ; it has to be stained to differentiate its 

 various constituent layers ; it has to be cut with a 

 mathematical regularity in order that each section 

 may be magnified and modelled in wax so that, by 

 placing these wax magnifications together, a recon- 

 struction of the embryo may be obtained. Although 

 His did not invent any one of these details, yet he 

 improved each of them and applied them to the study 

 of embryos with an accuracy that never has and 

 never will be' surpassed. Duplicates of the models 

 thus constructed are to be seen in all anatomical 

 museums, and are of the greatest service to those who 

 teach as well as 'to those who pursue embryological 

 research. 



The work of Prof. His is not marked by brilliant 

 generalisations or discoveries, nor can his outlook on 

 the kingdom of living things be said to be a wide 

 one. He represented most realistically what he saw, 

 but his power of interpreting embryological facts was 

 limited by his neglect of comparative anatomy. Per^ 

 haps the greatest of his discoveries was the manner 

 in which nerve fibres are developed. He was the first 

 to see that they were processes produced by nervd 

 cells. If his limitations are mentioned, it must alsO 

 be admitted that most of what we know of the early 

 development of all the systems of the human body we 

 owe to him. 



Ludwig, who made Leipzig the Mecca of physi- 

 ologists, early recognised the ability of the young' 

 Swiss anatomist, and was instrumental, in 1872, in 

 having him appointed director and professor of 

 anatomy in the Lhiiversity of Leipzig. During the 

 thirty-two years he laboured there, the younger 

 anatomists flocked to him, and by placing his time, 

 advice, and encouragement freely at their disposal, he 

 rendered them deeply his debtors. 



