xliv 



THOMAS LAUDER BRUNTON, 1844-1916. 



On September 16, 1916, in London, this distinguished physician passed 

 away after a long illness, borne with rare fortitude. Although retired from 

 private practice, Brunton was far indeed from retirement in respect of those 

 public causes to which, with the pious tenacity of his race, he devoted much 

 of his life, and a fervour almost religious in its depth and constancy. A 

 short time before his death the present writer had visited Lauder Brunton, 

 and witnessed both the distress under which he laboured and the ingenious 

 methods he had devised for keeping the evil at bay ; not in the desire of a 

 mere prolongation of life, though this indeed were no unworthy intention, 

 but in order to cherish the fire of its last embers for those humane ends 

 which he had so ardently at heart. It was therefore with the more admira- 

 tion that, about three weeks before his death, the writer received from his 

 friend, now silent, a long and important letter covering certain documents 

 and proposals on the subject of physical education, a movement to which, in 

 his later years, Brunton had given no little energy and guidance, one which, 

 especially for the sake of children and young people, he was pressing 

 forward almost with his latest breath. Fortunately, he has worked with 

 comrades and assistants who will not fail to keep his lamp alight, nor let any 

 of his last counsels be forgotten. 



Thomas Lauder Brunton was born of pure Scotch lineage at Hiltons Hill, 

 Roxburgh, in 1844, and received his medical training at the University of 

 Edinburgh, where he had a distinguished academic career. 



When we look back upon Lauder Brunton's work as a whole we shall 

 recognise its great merits. As with all other observers, this work was not 

 always up to the high level of his best ; but his best, whether we regard it as 

 pioneer work or in the more absolute sense of permanent values, was very 

 good. We may divide it into three periods : the pioneer work, the work of 

 his early prime, and the work of later years. 



It is scarcely correct to say that pharmacology as an experimental science 

 did not begin till the middle of the nineteenth century, for multitudes of 

 pharmacological experiments, remarkably systematic and precise for their 

 age, were made upon the, venoms of animals and the poisons of plants in the 

 times of Attalus III of Pergamon (died B.C. 133), and of Mithridates Eupator 

 (B.C. 63-31), and by none more assiduously than by those kings themselves. 

 However, dismissing these ancient records, but remembering that modern 

 experimental pharmacology could hardly take form before the separation of 

 the active principles of drugs, as of morphin by Sertiirner in 1816, and 

 coming down to our own day, we find that the first modern pharmacological 

 laboratory, i.e., the first systematic foundation of pharmacology as an aspect 

 of experimental physiology (including pathology), and on similar methods, 



* 



