194 Obituary notice of Prof. Thomas Henry Huxley. [Dec. 



The principle was first tested practically with fowl-cholera, and 

 then with swine-erjsipelas ; but Pasteur has also applied it to antlirax, 

 and as all are well aware, to rabies. So far-reaching is it that the debt of 

 humanity to Pasteur becomes immense, even should the efficacy of ino- 

 culation treatment yet be considered doubtful in certain cases. But the 

 great bacteriologist's own researches have been cut short, though he has 

 been more fortunate than many in living to see them bear such ample 

 fruit. Though since his paralysis he had enjoyed fairly good health, in 

 1887, he developed symptoms of heart and kidney disease, and four years 

 ago he had inflaenza, resulting in yet further weakness. Last winter 

 work was impossible for him, and though he went for the present summer 

 to Garches, near St. Cloud, still with an eye to his labours, in the early 

 part of September he himself appears to have been conscious of his 

 approaching end, and on September 28tli that end came. 



Of his numerous honours we need only speak here of those our own, 

 countrymen have bestowed upon him. In 1856, he received the Rumford 

 Medal from the Royal Society of London, for his researches on the pola- 

 risation of light, and in 1869 he was made a foreign member of the 

 Society, receiving in 1874 the Copley Medal, which was awarded to 

 Huxley in 1S88. We may congratulate ourselves, as membei*s of the 

 Royal Asiatic Society, on having elected the founder of bacteriology as an 

 Honorary Member of our body during the past year, 



Thomas Henry Huxley was born at Ealing in 1825. His scientific 

 training began at Charing Cross Hospital, where he joined tiie medical 

 school in 1842. Even while heie he distinguished himself by a brief 

 notice in the Medical Times and Gazette of that layer in the root- 

 sheath of hair which has since borne his name. Passing his M. B. 

 Examination in 1845, he took the second place in honours in Anatomy 

 and Physiology, and after practising for some time among the poor in 

 London, he joined the Royal Naval Medical Service. Thus he came to 

 occupy the post of Assistant-Surgeon to H. M. S. Battlesnake then 

 about to start on a surveying voyage to the South Seas. The voyage, 

 during which the Inner route between the Barrier Reef and the East 

 Coast of Australia and New Guinea was surveyed, and the world 

 circumnavigated, occupied four yeai's. So ample was the use that 

 Huxley made of the opportunities thus afforded, that his communications, 

 and the evidence of ability which they furnished, led to his election 

 into the Royal Society in the year after his return. Two years later, 

 Huxley left the naval service, and in 1856 succeeded Edward Forbes 

 as Professor of Natural History in the Royal School of Mines, a post 

 which he continued to hold till his retirement from all official work 



