804 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 412. 



THE BUXLEY LECTURE ON MECSyT 



STUDIES OF IMMUNITY, WITH SPECIAL 



REFERENCE TO THEIR BEARING 



ON PATHOLOGY* 



Gentlemen,— You will readily believe 

 that with my deep appreciation of the high 

 honor conferred by the invitation to de- 

 liver the fourth Huxley lecture there was 

 joined a sense of great embarrassment in 

 being called vipou to follow in this office 

 three such leaders of world-wide fame as 

 Sir Michael Foster, Professor Virchow and 

 Lord Lister. But the letter of the Commit- 

 tee of the Charing Cross Hospital ]\Iedical 

 School stated that the choice of a successor 

 to these great names was 'a tribute of our 

 admiration for the. great army of scientific 

 workers on the other side of the Atlantic' 

 While I cannot assume to occupy any other 

 place in this army than that of a soldier in 

 the ranks, I felt that if my acceptance of 

 this invitation could be regarded as in any 

 sense an expression of appreciation by 

 American workers in science of the com- 

 mendation and good-will of our British 

 colleagues, of our large indebtednesss to 

 them, of our sense of the common interests, 

 the comradeship and the kinship of the 

 English-speaking peoples on both sides of 

 the ocean, I shoiild not decline, even if sum- 

 moned to occupy a position of danger. 



There was another consideration which 

 I may be permitted here to mention. 

 Through Huxley there is, if not a bond, at 

 least a link, between the Charing Cross 

 Hospital Medical School and the Johns 

 Hopkins University. This lectiireship was 

 founded to commemorate the fact that 

 Huxley received his entire medical educa- 

 tion at the Charing Cross Hospital Medical 

 School. While throughout America the 

 name of Huxley is held in high honor as 

 that of a great discoverer and interpreter 



* Delivered at the opening of the winter session 

 of Charing Cross Hospital Medical School, on 

 October 1, 1902. 



in science, and while the influence which he 

 has exerted upon popular as well as sci- 

 entific opinion through those messages 

 peculiarly fitted to the needs of English 

 thought is not less there than among his 

 own countrymen, we at the Johns Hopkins 

 University have special reasons to acknowl- 

 edge our gratitude to him. He crossed 

 the ocean to deliver the principal address 

 at the opening of this University in 1876, 

 and he then gave utterance to ideas con- 

 cerning university, and especially medical, 

 education which were at the time and have 

 remained an inspiration and a guide to us. 

 Then, too, the Johns Hopkins Univei"sity 

 owes to Huxley and to Michael Foster the 

 accession to its faculty of my lamented 

 colleague, Newell Martin, who by the intro- 

 duction and development of the biological 

 methods and conceptions of his teachers 

 gave such new directions and so great an 

 impvilse to biological study in America that 

 his o-^-sTi work and that of his pupils started 

 for us a new era in this department. 



The first Huxley lecturer has made it 

 unnecessary for his suecessora to dwell 

 \ipon Huxley's studentship at the Charing 

 Cross Hospital, upon the .important in- 

 fluence which this had upon his career, or 

 upon his great ser\'ices to medical science, 

 although his chief title to fame lies outside 

 of the domain of medicine. I should like, 

 however, to quote a passage, although it 

 miist be familiar to you, from Mr. Leonard 

 Huxley's charming 'Life and Letters' of 

 his father, which has appeared since the 

 date of Sir Michael Foster's lecture, for 

 it shows that 'it was at Charing Cross 

 Hospital where Huxley first felt the in- 

 fluence of daily intercourse with a really 

 able teacher.' He sa.ys: 



No doubt it was very largely my own fault, 

 but the only instruction from which I obtained 

 the proper effect of education was that which I 

 received from Mr. Wharton Jones, who was the 

 lecturer ou physiology at the Charing Cross School 

 of Medicine. The extent and precision of his 



