AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. | 
[THIRD SERIES.] 
ArT. VIL—HeENRY DRAPER. 
Henry Draper died at his residence in New York City, 
on the 20th of November last. He had entertained the Na- 
tional Academy of Sciences at dinner on the evening of the 
15th and went from the table to his bed with a severe attack 
of pleuritis. Hope alternated with fear until Sunday, when 
pericarditis developed and, in spite of the best medical skill, 
e died about four o’clock on Monday morning. 
Professor Draper's career has been an exceptionally brilliant 
one. He was born in Virginia in 1837, his distinguished father, 
John William Draper, being at the time Professor of Chemistry 
and Physiology in Hampden Sidney College. Though he 
attended in early life the primary and preparatory schools of 
the University of the City of New York (to which place his 
parents removed when he was only two years of age) and sub- 
sequently became an undergraduate student at the same Uni- 
versity, his real education was received in his own home. 
The eminence of his father as a teacher, an author, a philosopher 
and an investigator, created an atmosphere of sciéntific culture 
about him of the highest tone. It could not but happen, that 
enry, breathing constantly such an atmosphere, shoul 
permeated with its spirit and early devote himself to research 
as the highest attainable purpose in life. 
At the age of twenty, and before taking his medical degree, 
he made his first research, which was afterward published as 
his graduating thesis. It was on the function of the spleen and 
Am. Jour. 5 pis Srrizs, VoL, XXV, No. 146.—Frsruary, 1883. 
