72 NATURE 
layers, detached regions should be more often 
present than absent. 
In the second chapter Mr. Fujiwhara compares 
his theoretical investigations with the results of 
sixty-five explosions during the years 1912 
and 1913, for the most part those of the 
Asama-yama, in Central Japan. These show 
that the axis of the region of audibility may 
or may not agree with the direction of the 
wind at a moderate height; that in some 
cases the regions of audibility are triangular 
or spiral in form; that detached regions may 
occur on the same side of the source, while some- 
times a very large detached region may be found 
in company with a very small one at the source; 
and, lastly, that detached regions of audibility and 
a silent region may appear in any direction and 
at any distance according to the prevailing con- 
dition of the weather. In Japan the monsoon 
exercises a powerful influence on the propagation 
of sound-waves in the atmosphere, and_ this 
accounts for the observed differences in summer 
and winter. In summer the formation of the 
detached region of audibility is rather common, 
and takes place towards the west or south-west 
of the source, while in winter the phenomenon 
occurs more rarely and is then caused by an 
approaching cyclone. C. Davison. 
SIR LAUDER BRUNTON, BT., F.R.S. 
Cy the 16th of the month this distin- 
guished physician passed away after a 
long illness, borne with rare fortitude. Although 
retired from private practice, Brunton was far 
indeed from retirement in respect of those 
public causes to which, with the pious tenacity 
of his race, he devoted much of his life, and a 
fervour almost religious in its depth and con- 
stancy. Some weeks before his death the pre- 
sent writer had visited Lauder Brunton, and 
witnessed both the . distress under which he 
laboured and the ingenious methods he had de- 
vised for keeping the evil at bay; not in the desire 
of a mere prolongation of life, though this indeed 
were no unworthy intention, but in order to 
cherish the fire of its last embers for those 
humane ends which he had so ardently at heart. 
It was therefore with admiration that, about three 
weeks before his decease, the writer received from 
his friend now silent a long and important letter 
covering certain documents and proposals on the 
subject of physical education, a movement to 
which, in his later years, Brunton had given no 
little energy and guidance, especially for the sake 
of children and young people, and which he was 
pressing forward almost with his latest breath. 
Fortunately, he has worked with comrades and 
assistants who will not fail to keep his lamp 
alight, nor let any of his last counsels be forgotten. 
_At St. Bartholomew’s Brunton proved to be not 
only a distinguished man of science, but also of 
much accomplishment and success in the practice 
of his art. Like James Goodhart of Guy’s, who 
died but a short while before him, he won the 
faith and attachment of a large clientéle by merit 
NO. 2448, VoL. 98] 
[SEPTEMBER 28, 1916 
pure of all self-seeking. Although these great 
teachers were not quite alike in the ways of their 
medical observation, yet to the particular skill 
of each were added kindliness of heart and an ~ 
earnest sympathy which won the confidence of 
the sufferers who sought their aid. If Brunton 
had not the imposing personal presence of cer- 
tain eminent physicians of the past, no one could 
speak with him without being affected by his 
gentle, persuasive enthusiasm, and that faith in 
his art and in mankind which engendered alike 
faith and hope in those who only too often sorely 
needed these blessings. 
Lauder Brunton was one of. the first 
ef the scientific practising physicians who 
used no empirical remedies without  seek- 
ing to discover their mode of action, and 
by pharmacological and other research en- 
deavoured to add to their number. Bence Jones, 
Golding Bird, Pavy, were of the generation before 
him, it is true; but few physicians whose in- 
terests before all else were, and still remained, 
clinical, had likewise followed scientific investiga- 
tion so systematically and in so disinterested a 
spirit. Moreover, in his particular departments 
of science Brunton was a pioneer, especially in 
pharmacology and in the physics of the circula- 
tion. With a mind strengthened by the serious- 
ness and philosophical temper of his great uni- 
versity of Edinburgh, Brunton, after graduation, 
spent two or three years in foreign study, for 
the most part in Germany; and no British physi- 
cian had a better knowledve than he of German 
teachers, German industry, and of that necessary 
condition—the German tongue. Thus for him 
the war was full of sadness. 
In this brief tribute no attempt can be made 
even to indicate the character and extent of 
Brunton’s scientific work, pharmacological, clini- 
cal, and hygienic. His contributions are only 
partially presented, indeed, in the two or three 
portly octavos in which many of them were re- 
cently reprinted. But if to the chief or to the 
more familiar of his works some allusion may 
be made, it would be to his researches with 
Fayrer into venoms—a successful attempt to 
clarify a very ancient and chequered story, as the 
historian of medicine well knows; to his part as 
one of the Commission which reported on Pas- 
teur’s treatment of hydrophobia; to his services 
on the Hyderabad Commission on the effects of 
chloroform, by which, if its results were doubted 
in some quarters and in others enlarged, never- 
theless the whole problem was raised to the plane 
of its infinite importance; to his work on tuber- 
culosis, which was informed by the spirit of a 
social prophet; and to his researches on the 
dynamics of the circulation. | Herein he made 
the beneficent discovery of the nitrites as 
palliative, or better than palliative, in that awful 
malady angina pectoris, a discovery deserving to 
rank with that of Peruvian bark in the cure of 
ague. If, as the present writer has remarked 
elsewhere,! the discovery arose accidentally from 
1 ‘* Diseases of the Arteries,” rors. 
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