TRANSACTIONS OF SUCTION D. — DEPT. ANATOMY AND PHTSIOLOGT. 597* 



Mildred phenomena, similar in mechanism, and, in fact, often passing into each 

 other so gradually that it is impossible to say where the normal terminates and the 

 morbid begins. It is hardly possible to conceive any kind of research which bears 

 more closely than these upon the various maladies that flesh is heir to. 



Some hard-hearted individuals, however, in these countries, confounding their 

 own selfish feelings with true humanity, who, I would venture to say, have rarely 

 spent days or nights of their lives watching at the bedside of real suffering, 



" Who live 

 In mere mock knowledge of their fellow's woe, 

 Thinking their smiles may heal it," 



who fancy themselves too humane to seek a remedy for human agony in an experi- 

 ment which it would be painful to themselves to conduct— such persons have 

 heaped much obloquy on the name of Bernard. Let me pass by these in sileuce. 

 There are others who, admitting the greatness of his achievements and his power 

 of kindling an enthusiasm for research among his pupils, think that these same 

 results might have been attained by a less amount of repetition of experiment. 

 Them I would truly respect. Most earnestly would I urge those physiologists who, 

 either as original inqmrers or as teachers, may follow in the footsteps of Claude 

 Bernard, while they admire him as a sincere, zealous, patient searcher after truth, 

 to imitate him in that, and avoid what they believe to have been his errors. 



Bernard's discoveries, in truth, tell but a small part of the tale of all that he 

 accomplished during his lifetime. He was one of those truly great teachers who 

 exercise a great and expanding influence over the miuds of their pupils. He pos- 

 sessed a gentle, mild, and thoroughly infectious enthusiasm. A conscientious worker, 

 a sincere lover of truth, a marvellously dexterous experimenter, he possessed the 

 power of expressing himself with great precision and great simplicity. His pupils 

 in every part of the civilized world will indeed account him as one 



" Of those immortal dead who live again 

 In minds made better by their presence : live 

 In pulses stirred to generosity, 

 In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 

 For miserable aims that end with self, 

 In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, 

 And, with their mild persistence, urge man's search 

 To vaster issues." 



The following Papers were read : — 



1. Observations on some Points in the Osteology of an Infantile Gorilla 

 Skeleton. By Allen Thomson, M.D., LL.D., F.R.S. 



Dr. Allen Thomson exhibited the skeleton of an infantile female Gorilla, which 

 be had prepared from a specimen sent him some time ago, and which is now placed 

 in the Hunterian Museum of Glasgow University. 



The first dentition had been recently completed, and the age of the animal was 

 estimated to be from eighteen months to two years. It had been shot through the 

 head and had sustained a fracture of the thigh, but had lived long enough after the 

 injuries to allow a healing process to be set up round the two apertures by which 

 the lead pellet had passed through the opposite parietal bones of the cranium, and 

 the fractured femur to be reunited by bone. 



The author reserved for another opportunity the fuller account of the state of 

 ossification of the bones of the skeleton, and limited his remarks for the present to 

 several points in the osteology of the skull, vertebral column, ribs, and sternum. 



In instituting a comparison between the skull of the infantile gorilla and that of 

 the adult or of other animals, the author pointed out the importance of adopting a 

 reliable standard position in which the skulls submitted to observation should be 

 placed so as to secure uniform results; and, following Professor Flower, gave 

 the preference to that recommended by Broca, in which the horizontal plane of 

 the skull is made to coincide with that of the visual or orbital axes ; and he showed, 



