Annual Report of the Council. 



xlix. 



Du Bois-Reymond was placed in the latter, and at the 

 same time made director of the Royal Physiological Labo- 

 ratory. He remained the Professor of Physiology until his 

 death, and the small physiological laboratory with which 

 he began the duties of his chair increasing in usefulness 

 under his fostering care, was in 1877 replaced by the 

 present palatial Physiological Institut. In 1869 he was 

 made Rector of the University ; and having joined the 

 Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1 851, he became its per- 

 petual secretary in 1867. 



He visited England more than once: in 1852, in 1855, 

 when he lectured at the Royal Institution in London, in 

 1866, and again in 1882, when he attended a meeting of 

 the British Association for the Advancement of Science at 

 Southampton. Among the many honours which fell to his 

 lot, may be mentioned the Foreign Membership of the 

 Royal Society in 1877, and that of the Literary and 

 Philosophical Society of Manchester in 1892. 



In attempting to estimate the value of Du Bois- 

 Reymond's scientific work, it should be remembered that 

 he was a pupil of Johannes Miiller. That great man is 

 often spoken of as a "Vitalist," and in a certain sense he 

 was ; no one, however, recognised more clearly than he did 

 the importance of pushing as far as possible the chemical 

 and physical analysis of the phenomena of living beings. 

 And it was largely upon his encouragement that the young 

 Du Bois-Reymond devoted himself to the study of animal 

 electricity. When he began, though Matteucci in Italy was 

 working at the subject, it may be said that very little was 

 known about it. And if at the present day it can be said 

 that these phenomena have been subjected to a more exact 

 and successful analysis than most of the phenomena 

 exhibited by living beings, the exactitude and success are 

 in a very large measure due to Du Bois-Reymond's labours. 



Much of his work lay in devising adequate instruments 

 for properly observing the phenomena. In no part of 

 physiology, perhaps, is a greater use made of instruments, 



