38 



Memorial Number. 



He came to this country in 1883 with an admirable training 

 in medicine but with his interests centered in experimental physi- 

 ology and particularly in that field of experimental physiology 

 represented by Kronecker. Although a pupil in the DuBois 

 laboratory, it can hardly be said that the character of DuBois' 

 work was the one in which Meltzer was trained or which especially 

 attracted him. He arrived here with a letter from Kronecker and 

 appeared in the little laboratory where I had been for four or 

 five years after my return from Germany — first one room, then 

 finally three rooms in the old Bellevue Hospital Medical College. 

 I was delighted to have him. I recall that about that time Dr. 

 Lange, the surgeon, was working in the laboratory before he had 

 established himself in practice, and I could not give Meltzer a 

 separate room. He had merely a corner in the laboratory and he 

 was a faithful attendant there. He came every day as I recall it, 

 usually in the afternoons, and there we undertook and published 

 together a little piece of research, Meltzer's independent work 

 practically. I never quite followed him in some of the broader 

 views he subsequently elaborated and based upon that work as to 

 the importance of vibratory movements in living matter. In that 

 apparently detached kind of study he had a breadth of view some- 

 what philosophically tempered. 



That association which was a great delight to me lasted one 

 year. He then moved to Dr. Prudden's laboratory. Dr. Prudden 

 and I had started our laboratories at about the same time. Those 

 laboratories were then practically the only ones in New York where 

 anyone who desired to do any kind of biological or medical labora- 

 tory work, could come. There can be no greater contrast than the 

 conditions in those very modest little laboratories and the splendid 

 equipment of today. This is possibly a good illustration of the 

 "lowlands" of those days as compared to the "heights" of today, 

 and no small influence in bringing this about was that of Meltzer's. 

 But although working for a time in the laboratory of the College of 

 Physicians and Surgeons, most of his research was done in his own 

 little house, often late at night. 



I would like to emphasize what I think is the marvel of Melt- 

 zer's life and work, that remarkable and almost unique combina- 

 tion of active medical practice with the cultivation of a particular 



