xxu 



Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 



'Paralyses: Cerebral, Bulbar, Spinal,' 1886; 'Hysterical and Functional 

 Paralysis,' 1893; 'Aphasia and other Speech Defects,' 1898. These books 

 are perhaps not read as inueh as they might be, but to neurologists they are 

 a mine of wealth, not only on account of the clinico-anatomical observations 

 made by Dr. Bastian himself, but also on account of the care with which he 

 has selected cases published by others in support of his views, which are set 

 forth with precision of detail, philosophic insight, and literary skill. The 

 author made difficult subjects comprehensible to his readers ; and " the forest 

 is never lost in the wood." 



The recent war experience of gunshot injuries to the spine causing con- 

 cussion of the spinal cord proves the truth of the valuable observation of 

 Bastian, who was the first to show that the knee jerks are abolished in total 

 transverse lesions of the cervical spinal cord. No one has set forth more 

 clearly than this author the doctrine of aphasia, and his views on the subject 

 are widely accepted. Although schematic, they seem best to fit in with the 

 facts of cerebral localisation as determined by clinico-anatomical observa- 

 tions. The name of Charlton Bastian will live, with that of two other 

 distinguished Fellows, Hughlings Jackson and Gowers, as founders of 

 Neurological Science in this country. 



Dr. Bastian would not himself have accorded to his neurological work the 

 importance that his former pupils and followers have, but would have said 

 that his life work was that upon Abiogenesis. 



In 1872 Bastian published 'The Beginnings of Life,' which led to a great 

 and memorable controversy in which Pasteur, Tyndall, and Huxley took 

 part. Bastian's views were not accepted by the scientific world. Still, his 

 experiments showed that some scientific beliefs of his adversaries were not 

 true ; it was claimed that boiling would kill all germs, and that if organisms 

 appeared in Bastian's flasks after boiling it was due to faulty methods of 

 technique ; but it was subsequently found by Pasteur that desiccated germs in 

 the form of spores could resist boiling. Moreover, Bastian showed that germs 

 can exist in the living body, which we now know to be true ; although the 

 inference that they arose by spontaneous generation or by heterogenesis is both 

 unnecessary and unlikely. Dr. Bastian always, however, held an impregnable 

 position when he maintained that living matter must at one time have 

 originated on the earth from non-living matter, and there is no logical 

 reason why this process should not be continuing. 



In 1893 Dr. Bastian gave up the Chair of Medicine at University College, 

 London, which he had held for six years, and in 1897 he gave up his post of 

 Physician to University College Hospital, which gave him the leisure he 

 needed to renew his experiments and observations on his life work of 

 abiogenesis and heterogenesis. He learnt the technique of photo-micrography 

 in order that he might represent faithfully his observations and thus convert 

 the biologists to a belief in them, or at any rate to give heed to his experi- 

 ments and observations, which he published in four volumes of ' Studies in 

 Heterogenesis,' illustrated by 805 photo-micrographs — -1905 and onwards. 



