ix 



weakness, his mind remained self-controlled, unclouded, and peaceful to 

 the end. He departed on the last day of the departing year (1868), up- 

 held by humble faith in Him to whom long since he had committed him- 

 self." 



Professor Forbes was a Vice-President of the Royal Society of Edin- 

 burgh, and a Corresponding Member of the French Institute. His elec- 

 tion into the Royal Society is dated June 7, 1832. 



Johann Evangelist a Purkinje was born in the town of Libochowitz, 

 near Leitmeritz, in Bohemia, on the 17th of December, 1 787. He obtained 

 the first rudiments of education in the school of Libochowitz. He then went 

 to Nicholsburg in Moravia, where he passed through the normal school and 

 Gymnasium with credit, and entered the Order of the Piarists with the in- 

 tention of becoming a teacher. After a noviciate of one year at Kaltwasser 

 in Moravia, he was sent to Straznic in Hungary as teacher in the Gymna- 

 sium of that place. In 1805 he began to study French and Italian, and 

 also the language and literature of Bohemia. In the following year, while 

 officiating as teacher in the normal school at Leutomischlin in Bohemia, he 

 turned his attention to the writings of the German philosophers, and espe- 

 cially to those of Fichte. These pursuits opened out to him the prospect of 

 a higher intellectual culture, which he felt to be within his reach. He 

 accordingly quitted the school and became a student in the University of 

 Prague, and supported himself by taking pupils. After some hesitation, 

 he adopted the career of medicine. For two years he pursued his studies 

 in the Anatomical Institute under Dr. Ug, and for two more in the surgical 

 division of the hospital under Dr. Fritz, by whom he was greatly esteemed. 

 During this time he derived the means of living from the family of Baron 

 Hildeprandt, to whose son he had been tutor. In 1818 he graduated as 

 M.D., the title of his inaugural dissertation being, " Contributions to our 

 Knowledge of Subjective Yision." In this dissertation he explained how 

 some properties, and even some structural relations of the eye, can be in- 

 vestigated by means partly psychological, partly physiological, which 

 otherwise require for their discovery the most minute microscopical exami- 

 nation. This essay decided his line of research ; it opened a new world to 

 his fellow-labourers, and won for himself the approbation of Gothe, who 

 was engaged in similar pursuits. Shortly afterwards he became assistant 

 to the Professors of Anatomy and Physiology, Ilg and Rottenberger. In 

 1820 Purkinje published in the * Medicinische Jahrbiicher des osterreich- 

 ischen Staates/ a paper on Vertigo, from observations made upon himself. 

 In 1822 he was appointed to the Professorship of Physiology in the Univer- 

 sity of Breslaw, on the recommendation of Dr. Rust, of Berlin. At Easter 

 in 1823 he entered upon his duties at Breslaw. In consequence of preju- 

 dice against Austrians on the part of the Medical Faculty, and a desire for 

 the appointment of another person, he was not well received at first, but in 

 the course of two years he overcame all dislike by the extent of his acquire- 

 ments, and his urbane and unassuming demeanour. The inaugural disser- 



