iii 



disease with a degree of cirrhosis which had almost destroyed the 

 structure of the liver.* 



In 1848 Dr. Budd succeeded Sir Thomas Watson as Professor of 

 Medicine in King's College, and was appointed Physician to its Hos- 

 pital. He held this office for more than twenty years, and was actively 

 engaged in teaching and with increasing private practice. He was a 

 clear, emphatic, and persuasive lecturer, and in his clinical work, in 

 both private and hospital practice, showed excellent examples of 

 patient, exacting, and complete inquiry, and of careful study. 



In 1866, with failing health, he retired from active life, and, from 

 that time to his death, in March, 1882, lived quietly and studiously 

 among his friends in Devonshire. The influence of his admirable 

 personal character, and of his constancy in the patient, thoughtful 

 striving for exact knowledge, will long survive among his many 

 friends and pupils. In the history of medical science be will worthily 

 rank with his brother, William Budd, a distinguished Fellow of the 

 Society, to whom we owe, among many other good works, the first and 

 best observations on the transmission of the typhoid infection in the 

 intestinal excreta, and on the analogy between tuberculosis and 

 infective fevers. — J. P. 



Joseph Decaisne, though so long a prominent figure in the French 

 scientific world, was by birth a Belgian, having been born in Brussels, 

 March 11, 1807. His brother, who survives him, is Honorary Inspector- 

 General of the Belgian Army Medical Service. Decaisne entered the 

 Jardin des Plantes, where the whole of his subsequent life was to be 

 spent, as a gardener, at the early age of seventeen. He made his first 

 contribution to botanical literature in 1831, in a paper on the characters 

 of the French species of Herniaria; in 1840 he was attached to the 

 Herbarium as aide naturaliste, finally returning to the Garden as Pro- 

 fesseur de Culture and Directeur in succession to Mirbel. The half- 

 century from Mirbel to the present day covers our whole modern know- 

 ledge of the histology and morphology of plants. The demonstrations 

 of our class-rooms already seem a little commonplace ; yet they deal 

 with structures and phenomena which, when Decaisne first began to 

 work, were things undreamt of. 



In 1837 he published a memoir on the anatomy and physiology of 

 the madder-plant and the development of its colonring matter. This 

 was an excellent piece of work, remarkable at its time as an example 

 of detailed study of the structure and life-history of an individual 

 plant. At a very early period he turned his attention to the serious 

 study of Algce, and it is perhaps in connexion with this group that he 



* Besides the above-named works Dr. Budd published in journals, chiefly in the 

 " Medical Gazette," several short papers and lectures, including the Grulstonian and 

 Croonian Lectures delivered at the College of Physicians in 1843 and 1847. 



VOL. XXXIV. b 



