June 26, 1913] 



NATURE 



429 



sible for national health insurance consents to the 

 adoption of the plans of the Research Committee 

 they will be subjected to examination and criticism 

 by the Advisory Council, which is a large and 

 representative body including most of the mem- 

 bers of the Departmental Committee. It was 

 appointed by Mr. Lloyd George after receiving 

 suggestions for suitable names from each of the 

 universities of the United Kingdom, from the 

 Royal Colleges of Physicians and of Surgeons, 

 from the Royal Society, and from other public 

 bodies interested in the question. It includes 

 medical representatives of the four National Health 

 Insurance Commissions, and the other Government 

 departments concerned in medical work. 



SIR JONATHAN HUTCHINSON, F.R.S. 



WHEN the history of modern medicine comes 

 to be written it is certain that Sir Jonathan 

 Hutchinson, who died in his eighty-fifth year at 

 Haslemere on June 23, will occupy a more 

 prominent position than that usually assigned to 

 him by his contemporaries. He had the mis- 

 fortune to be at work when Pasteur and Lister 

 opened up new, attractive, and practical fields of 

 research, carrying with them all the eager intellects 

 of a younger generation, and leaving the subject 

 of this notice to explore the inexhaustible fields 

 of clinical medicine. From the year 1844, when 

 he was apprenticed to Dr. Caleb Williams, of 

 York, at the age of sixteen, until the day of his 

 death, within a month of finishing his eighty-fifth 

 year, he never ceased to study the manifestations 

 of health and disease, and to place his observa- 

 tions and inferences on record. 



Sir Jonathan Hutchinson was an inductive 

 philosopher who patiently and accurately collected 

 facts to provide a sure basis for the principles 

 of scientific medicine. The monument he leaves 

 behind him is seen in the volumes of the " Archives 

 of Surgery," "Atlas of Illustrations of Clinical 

 Surgery," and the hundreds of clinical records 

 which are to be found in medical literature of the 

 last fifty years. He leaves behind him no brilliant 

 discovery to fix his name in the public memory, 

 and yet it may be claimed for him that he did 

 more than any man of his time to solidify the 

 foundations of the surgeon's art. 



He was a self-made surgeon, neither the 

 follower nor the leader of any school. It is true 

 that after coming to London in 1850, at the age 

 of twenty-two, he came under the influence of 

 Lawrence and of Paget at St. Bartholomew's 

 Hospital for a few months, but the spirit which 

 dominated him when he ultimately settled in 

 London was the quiet inquiring and observing 

 mood which he acquired in the seclusion of his 

 Quaker home in Selby. Before he was in his 

 thirtieth year he was on the staff of the leading 

 eye hospital (Moorfields), Blackfriars Hospital for 

 Diseases of the Skin, the Metropolitan and the 

 London Hospitals, where he had to deal with all 

 the problems of general surgery. 



With those great and varied clinical fields at 

 NO. 2278, VOL. 91] 



his disposal he was able, in less than ten years 

 from the time he settled in London, to produce 

 convincing proof that a host of conditions which 

 were regarded as separate diseases were really the 

 remote manifestations of syphilis, and amenable 

 to specific remedies. 



The varied and puzzling diseases to which the 

 skin was liable had a special attraction for Sir 

 Jonathan Hutchinson, and it was at an early stage 

 of his career that he began a systematic investiga- 

 tion of the cause and nature of leprosy. In 1859 

 he came to the conclusion that it was due to 

 eating imperfectly preserved fish, and that the 

 disease was therefore non-contagious and prevent- 

 able. Fifty years later found him still searching 

 in various parts of the earth for evidence to 

 support his original contention. 



The persistency which he applied to the study 

 of leprosy he gave to all the various lines of 

 research he took up. He was a student of 

 growth ; he never ceased recording facts and 

 cases which were likely to reveal the principles 

 which regulate the growth and development of 

 the animal body. His lectures at the Royal 

 College of Surgeons in 1881 on the pedigree of 

 disease are happy illustrations of the methods by 

 which he sought to advance this kind of know- 

 ledge. He was a surgeon who made a reputa- 

 tion not by the use of the operating knife, but by 

 the application of his intellect to the understand- 

 ing and cure of disease. He operated with suc- 

 cess ; he introduced new procedures, but he recog- 

 nised that recourse to operation was necessitated 

 by the imperfections of the healer's art. 



He was an educationist, believing that all 

 teaching should be objective. He did much as 

 chairman of the Museum Committee and as presi- 

 dent of the College of Surgeons for the great 

 museum founded by John Hunter; he established 

 and furnished three museums in the Polyclinic 

 (Medical Graduates' College) in Chenies Street, 

 in his native town of Selby, and in Haslemere, 

 where he latterly made his home. 



NOTES. 

 We heartily congratulate Dr. A. F. R. Wollaston 

 on his return from a successful visit to the Ingkipulu 

 Mountains (Nassau range), Netherlands New Guinea. 

 Last year Dr. Wollaston gave an account of 

 the unlucky attempt of the British Ornitho- 

 logists' Union Expedition in "Pygmies and 

 Papuans," and quite recently Capt. C. G. Raw- 

 ling has published another book on the same 

 expedition, "The Land of the New Guinea 

 Pygmies." On the present occasion Mr. C. B. Kloss, 

 curator of the Kuala Lumpur Museum, accompanied 

 Dr. Wollaston, and, in addition to an engineer and 

 five native collectors, they took with them seventy- 

 five " Dyaks," and a la-ge escort was provided by 

 the Netherlands Government. Four and a half 

 months were occupied in reaching the mountains from 

 the coast. The geographical results cannot be worked 

 out for some time. Extensive zoological collections 

 were made which comprise many new species ; among 



