March i6, 1899] 



NA TURE 



469 



in Sirabismus." In November of the same year he was 

 elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of 

 Edinburgh. Two years later, the same College granted 

 him a licence to teach anatomy in the Edinburgh extra- 

 mural School of Medicine, and from that time to his re- 

 tirement in 1889, he was continuously engaged in 

 teaching anatomy by lectures and in the dissecting 

 room. 



In 1863, on the death of Prof. Alexander Lizars, he 

 was appointed by the Crown to the chair of Anatomy in 

 the University of Aberdeen, an office which he held for 

 twenty-six years. 



During the early years of his teaching in Edinburgh, 

 where he was preparing himself for the professorial 

 position which he subsequently attained, he proved to be 

 a hard-working and laborious teacher. Although for a 

 time he held a surgical appointment in the Royal 

 Infirmary, his heart was in anatomical work, and he 

 found that to preserve his position in the School it 

 became necessary to give his whole time to the anat- 

 omical class. The chair of Anatomy in the University 

 during the period when Dr. .Struthers was lecturing in 

 the extra-mural School, was filled by Prof. John Goodsir, 

 a great philosophical anatomist and original investigator. 

 By a strict attention to his duties, by the mastery of 

 detail and a faculty of lucid exposition, Struthers ob- 

 tained a reputation which attracted students ; so that his 

 class became satisfactory as regarded numbers, and his 

 position as a teacher was so well assured, that during 

 Goodsir's illness in the session 1S53-54, Struthers was 

 appointed to undertake the duties of the chair of 

 Anatomy. 



On his appointment to the chair of Anatomy in 

 Aberdeen in 1863, he found the arrangements for 

 anatomical teaching in that University to be in a crude 

 and backward condition. With the energy and power of 

 steady application, which were so characteristic of the 

 man, he at once set himself to develop the methods of 

 teaching, and to make them worthy of a University 

 course, so that the reputation of the chair was greatly 

 increased, and the number of the students attending the 

 •class was more than doubled. He employed both his 

 voice and pen in promoting the raising of funds for the 

 construction of new buildings, in which not only his 

 own, but the other branches of medical study could be 

 properly taught, and he contributed in a very material 

 manner to the prosperity which attended medical and 

 scientific education in the University of Aberdeen. 



There can be no doubt that, in carrying out the reforms 

 which he was so instrumental in procuring, he had many 

 hard battles to fight against the prejudices and imperfect 

 conceptions of what was required in the modern teach- 

 ing of medicine, held by many of his colleagues, more 

 especially in the faculties of arts and theology. It 

 required a man of great determination of character, 

 who knew what was wanted, and would not readily 

 acccept a defeat, to raise to their proper level, and in 

 accordance with the needs of the time, the buildings and 

 materials required for medical and scientific teaching. 

 Although much in addition has been done during the 

 ten years that have elapsed since Struthers retired from 

 the chair, the spirit of improvement which he had been 

 so largely instrumental in developing has continued to 

 grow under the direction of his later colleagues and 

 successors. 



This is scarcelythe place to dwell on the attention which 

 Sir John Struthers gave to the public relations of his 

 profession. One cannot, however, overlook the fact that 

 he took a great practical interest in the efforts which 

 were made between 1830 and 1886 to promote medical 

 legislation, and to provide for the service of the public 

 a medical practitioner possessing a higher standard than 

 formerly of general and professional education. As 

 representing his University for some years on the 



NO. 1533, VOL. 59] 



General Medical Council, he was most active in the 

 discussions which led to the period of medical education 

 being raised from four to five years before a diploma 

 could be obtained. When, on his retirement from the 

 Aberdeen chair, he went to reside in Edinburgh, he 

 became a manager of the Royal Infirmary in that city, 

 and did good service in developing the means afforded 

 by that great hospital for imparting clinical instruction, 

 more especially in the special departments of medical 

 and surgical practice. 



The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh recog- 

 nised his professional services and his attachment to the 

 College which had granted him, in his early life, his 

 licence to teach, by making him from 1895 to 1897 its 

 president. During this period he devoted much of his 

 time to the reorganisation of the museum of the Col- 

 lege, and he contributed to it many valuable anatomical 

 specimens. 



Sir John Struthers was a voluminous writer on several 

 branches of anatomical science, although, as he often 

 used to say, the time which he required to devote to 

 teaching, to University business and to the consideration 

 of the public relations of his profession greatly curtailed 

 the hours which he was able to give to research. His 

 most noteworthy investigations, those which probably 

 more than any other of his contributions to science will 

 give him a permanent position in anatomical literature, 

 were his memoirs on the anatomy of the Cetacea, more 

 especially on the Whalebone whales. They were for the 

 most part, if not entirely, printed in the Journal of 

 Anatomy and Physiolos,y, and his memoir on the 

 anatomy of the Hump-backed whale, which gives the 

 most detailed account of its skeleton that has yet been 

 published, was subsequently reproduced in a separate 

 volume. 



The chief characteristic of his anatomical writings was 

 the minute attention paid to detail. He seemed to spare 

 neither time nor labour in striving to give accuracy to 

 his descriptions, a quality which to an anatomical writer 

 is of fundamental importance. He, however, carried out 

 his love of minute accuracy to such an extent that when 

 he began to record variations in the weight of the 

 clavicle, and expressed in fractions of an inch the dia- 

 meters of the bodies and processes of the large vertebrre 

 of a great whale, it is not an unfair criticism to make, 

 that so ample a supply of detail is apt to obscure the 

 essential characters of an object. The memoranda 

 which he prepared, and the reports which he wrote on 

 University and other public questions in which he was 

 interested, displayed the same quality of laborious detail ; 

 so that we may say of Sir John .Struthers, that he 

 possessed an infinite capacity for taking trouble, and that 

 he did work in his day and for his generation. 



NOTES. 



Dr. Helmert, professor of geodesy in the University of 

 Berlin, and director of the Prussian Geodetic Institute, has been 

 elected a correspondant of the section of geography and navi- 

 gation of the Paris Academy of Sciences, in succession to Sir 

 G. H. Richards. 



A MONUMENT to Pasteur is to be unveiled at Lille on 

 Sunday, April 9. On the same day the Pasteur Institute of 

 Lille will be formally opened. M. Viger, Minister of Agri- 

 culture, and M. Guillain, Minister for the Colonies, will preside 

 at the ceremonies. 



We much regret to announce that Sir Douglas Gallon, 

 K.C.B., F.R.S., died on Friday last, at seventy-seven years of 

 age. 



Sir William Turner, F.R.S., professor of anatomy in the 

 University of Edinburgh, has been elected president of the 

 British Association for the Bradford meeting next year. 



