124 NATURE [ JANUARY 27, 1923 
Obituary. 
BH this being the case, it was in the later part of his life 
Pror. J. B. Haycrart. : that his vision was crystallised in the development of 
PP. JOHN BERRY HAYCRAFT, who died | the Welsh National School of Medicine, and in the 
suddenly on December 30, was a figure better | Physiology Institute at Cardiff, which will be his chief 
known to the older than to the younger generation of 
British physiologists. _A serious illness, which fell upon 
him (as it fell upon Pasteur) in middle age, affected 
his scientific work ; and the promise and fulfilment 
of his earlier period have to a certain extent been 
dimmed. 
Haycraft devoted his life to physiology. Throughout 
it—in spite of ill-health—he held before him the ideal 
of scientific research. After graduation at Edinburgh 
he studied abroad in Leipzig. Then, while demon- 
strator in the physiology laboratory at Edinburgh 
with Rutherford, professor at the Mason College in 
Birmingham, interim professor during Rutherford’s 
illness at Edinburgh, and finally professor of physiology 
at Cardiff, he steadfastly pursued his scientific in- 
vestigations. 
Hay craft’s best-known works to-day are perhaps his 
contributions on animal mechanics and on the senses 
of taste and of smell in Sir Edward Sharpey Schafer’s 
“Text-book of Physiology”; and his best-known 
original contribution to physiology is probably his paper 
on the cross-striation of skeletal muscle (1891). In this 
latter work he used the ingenious method of taking 
casts of muscle fibre upon collodion. The impression 
of the fibre upon the collodion showed the same cross- 
striated appearance as the original muscle fibre, and 
Haycraft inferred that the cross-striation is an optical 
phenomenon due to the varicose shape of the muscle 
fibrils, which gives different refraction effects in the 
globular and in the restricted portions of the fibril. 
But Haycraft’s range of investigation was a wide 
one: the results of temperature variation (1879) ; the 
chemistry of the blood, its coagulation, etc. (1879, 1882, 
1884, 1888, 1891); special sense physiology—vision, 
taste, smell (1883, 1884, 1885, 1887, 1893, 1897, 1910) ; 
various contributions to chemical physiology (1889, 
1891, 1894); contributions to histology (1879, 1880, 
1889, 1890), and to development (1891, 1893, 1895) ; 
a theory of amceboid movement (1880) ; the ‘‘ muscle 
sound ” (1890); voluntary movements (1890, 1898) ; 
the scratch-reflex (1890) ; elasticity of animal tissues 
(1904). 
Haycraft’s chief interest was, however, the physiology 
of the heart. He published a series of papers in this 
field: the cause of the first sound (1890) ; the move- 
ments of the heart within the chest (1891) ; the time 
of contraction of the papillary muscles (1896) ; and the 
changes in shape of the heart during the cardiac cycle 
(1896)—the two latter papers in collaboration with 
Paterson. When he resigned his chair in 1920 it was 
with the intention of continuing his researches on the 
circulation, and up to the time of his death he applied 
himself to problems of the pulse-waye in the physio- 
logical laboratory at Cambridge. 
‘Haycraft’s illness left behind it an impairment of 
speech which made the expression of his thoughts some- 
times a matter of difficulty. This defect in the mechan- 
ism of expression was a severe handicap, but did not 
dim the clearness of his vision and ideals. So far from 
No. 2778, VOL. I11] 
monument. 
In his long tenure of the chair at Cardifi—from 1894 
to 1920—Haycraft saw and guided the development of 
the medical school there until it became the Welsh 
National School just after his retirement. The modern > 
organisation of that school on the basis of a compulsory 
degree in science for all its medical graduates, a six 
years’ course of study, and whole-time professors in 
the clinical subjects, owes to Haycraft more than is 
commonly realised. 
Haycraft insisted that physiology must be the basis 
of medical education, and fought long for the establish- 
ment of a modern laboratory in Cardiff. He was 
exceptionally fortunate in finding a munificent patron 
in Sir William James Thomas, Bt., and an enthusiastic 
architect in the late Col. Bruce Vaughan. The result 
of this collaboration was the building of the magnificent 
Physiology Institute in spite of endless discouragement 
and delay. That Institute, even in its incomplete form 
one of the largest in the country, carries evidence of his 
foresight in its detail and arrangement ; it is one of 
the most modern and best planned of physiology 
laboratories. 
His friends will remember Haycraft for his deter- 
mination in face of opposition, for his vision, and for 
his high ideal of science ; but most perhaps for this, 
that in spite of all the difficulties which he had to face, 
he did no mean thing. He was a gentleman, and the 
magnificent institute which was his vision is his fitting 
memorial. TiG: 

Str Joun GAvey. 
Str Joun Gavey, who died on January 1, at the age 
of eighty, was one of the most notable telegraphic and 
telephonic engineers in this country. He was born at 
St. Helier in Jersey and began his career in the Post 
Office in 1870. In 1902 he became Engineer-in-Chief 
and Electrician to the General Post Office. He was 
made a Companion of the Bath in 1goz, and on his 
retirement in 1907 a knighthood was conferred upon 
him. 
In his early days at the Post Office, Gavey originated 
many improvements which greatly increased the speed 
of automatic telegraphy, and in 1881 he opened the 
first telephone trunk line connecting two British towns, 
namely, Newport and Cardiff. In 1894 he succeeded 
in establishing communication between the opposite 
sides of Loch Ness, a distance of four miles, by means 
of the electromagnetic induction between two parallel 
wires stretched along the banks. This method was 
subsequently used for establishing communication 
between lighthouses and the mainland. Gavey was 
responsible for the organisation of the complete tele- 
phone trunk system for Great Britain, and he 
organised the Post Office telephone exchange system | 
for London. He joined the Institution of Electrical 
Engineers in 1872, the year after it was founded, and 
communicated several valuable papers to it. In 1905 
