PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 359 



to his physician the nature of his inward disease as a nephritis, 

 which had been insidiously assailing him before it was suspected, 

 and had doubtless been aggravated by his unremitting scientific 

 labors continued as usual through his last summer vacation. Only 

 a month before he died, he thus described the commencement of his 

 malady : *' After an almost uninterrupted period of excellent health 

 for fifty years, I awoke on the 5th of December at my office in the 

 Light-house Depot in Staten Island, finding ray right-hand in a 

 paralytic condition. This was at first referred by the medical 

 adviser to an affection of the brain, but as the paralysis subsided in 

 a considerable degree in the course of two days, this conclusion was 

 doubted, and on a thorough examination through the eye, and by 

 means of auscultation, and chemical analysis, Dr. Weir Mitchell 

 and Dr. J. J. Woodward pronounced the disease an affection of 

 the kidneys."* 



Aware that his illness was fatal, he yet felt lulled by that strange 

 flattery of disease when unattended with a painful wasting, into the 

 thought that he might probably survive the approaching warmer 

 weather; and fully prepared for death, with the sense of life still 

 strong within him, he planned what might yet be accomplished. 



But with occasional alternations of more favorable symptoms, 

 with the uremia steadily increasing, his strength slowly declined : 

 and as he lay at noon of the 13th of last May, [1878,] with grow- 

 ing difficulty of breathing — surrounded by loving and anguished 

 hearts — his last feeble utterance was an inquiry which way the 

 wind came. With intellect clear and unimpaired, calmly that pure 

 and all unselfish spirit passed away — leaving a void none the less 

 real, none the less felt, that the deceased had reached a good old 

 a,ge, and had worthily accomplished his allotted work. 



Great as is the loss we have sustained of "guide, philosopher, 

 and friend," we have yet the mournful satisfaction of reflecting that 

 his influence, powerful as it always has been for good, still survives 

 — in his works, his high example, and his unclouded memory ; — 

 that our community, our country, the world itself, has been bene- 

 fited by his existence here ; and that as time rolls on, its course 

 will be marked by increasing circles of appreciation, reverence, 

 and gratitude, for the teachings of his high and noble life. 



* Opening Address, written for the meeting of the National Academy of 

 Sciences, April 16th, 1878. {Proceed. Nat. Acad. Set., vol. i. part 2, p. 

 127.) 



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