Sir John Scott Burdon-Sanderson, Bart. ix 



he said : " The question whether this fact, like the analogous one of the 

 mitigation of human small -pox by transmission, can be directly applied to 

 a practical purpose, I leave to be determined by future inquiry." Three 

 years afterwards Pasteur elaborated his system of protective inoculation 

 against anthrax. 



All this time Burdon-Sanderson still retained his hold upon that wide 

 field of human experience which is offered to every practising physician. 

 He was Assistant Physician to the Brompton Hospital for Consumption 

 from 1859 to 1867, and full physician to the same hospital from 1867 to 

 1871. At the Middlesex Hospital he was Assistant Physician from 1863 

 to 1870, and he had, in addition, a certain amount of private practice, 

 although his time for this was necessarily much encroached upon by his 

 •scientific occupations. In 1870, however, he definitely gave up clinical 

 practice and all his hospital appointments in order to devote more energy 

 and time to scientific pathology and physiology. The summer of this year 

 is the second great landmark in his career, for, in this, the forty-second 

 year of his life, he succeeded Michael Foster as Professor of Practical 

 Physiology and Histology at University College, London, and, when 

 Professor Sharpey retired in April, 1874, he was appointed Jodrell 

 Professor of Human Physiology, the two chairs being for this purpose 

 merged into one. In order to strengthen the teaching staff, Schafer, who 

 for several years had been the actual teacher of practical histology, was 

 jnade Assistant Professor, and entrusted with the histological part of the 

 work, to which was subsequently added elementary physiology. 



Burdon-Sanderson held the Jodrell Professorship until 1883, when he went 

 'to Oxford as the first Waynflete Professor of Physiology, under a scheme 

 which had been recommended by the University Commission. 



The twelve years of his professorial life in London, from 1870 to 1883, 

 were of great fertility from many points of view. As already indicated, 

 <his long-continued investigations in subjects connected with public health, 

 led him to forecast that protective treatment, by means of modified sera, 

 ■which has now become of such great importance ; but the duties of a purely 

 physiological chair naturally concentrated his attention more and more 

 •upon the phenomena exhibited by normal tissues. He regarded these 

 phenomena as being capable of exact presentation, only in so far as they 

 •could be described in the terminology of physics and chemistry ; for this 

 purpose it was necessary to utilise the precise methods employed in these 

 .sciences, and he spent much thought as to the best way of modifying 

 chemical and physical procedures so as to adapt them for the special 

 purpose of physiological investigation. Even in connection with his previous 

 •clinical work, this point of view had come to the front, as is evidenced by 

 his careful investigation of the pulse, for which he made certain modifica- 

 tions in Marey's sphygmograph, and obtained an extraordinary number of 

 ■sphygmographic records taken in health and in disease. It is also shown by 

 ■•the exact methods he used for determining the amplitude of the respiratory 



