of Edinburgh, Session 1881 - 82 . 
337 
that his students had the opportunities and guidance necessary for 
securing an ample basis of demonstrated fact, on which, in due 
time, a superstructure of pathological science might be erected ; and 
his latest as well as his earliest work bears testimony to the promi- 
nence in his mind of that essentially pure love of scientific truth for 
its own sake, which has been in all ages the guiding star of truly 
great practitioners of medicine Even amid the pressing calls 
of consulting practice, and amid distractions of a yet graver kind, 
.... he never forget the ladder by which he rose to fame, the 
only true ladder, it may be added, by which any man ought to rise 
on whom the training of the younger medical mind in any large 
degree depends ; and no doubt it may be said of him that the con- 
fidence reposed in him by a wide circle was largely founded on the 
belief that he had so gained his eminence, and that a position attained 
by only the most legitimate scientific methods would never be abused 
to lower and baser ends.” 
The graver distractions referred to by the writer of this quotation 
were the evidences of decaying health, which first manifested them- 
selves in January 1874, or little more than four years after Dr. 
Sanders was appointed a professor. In their first manifestations 
they caused the gravest anxiety to his friends, unfortunately 
but too clearly confirmed when, after several intervals of apparent 
restoration to health, during which he resumed for a time his 
duties as a teacher and physician, a sudden attack of hemiplegia 
of the right side, with nearly complete aphasia, occurred on the 8th 
of September 1880. He remained in this condition, with occasion- 
ally some improvement in the paralytic symptoms, and with an 
intellect apparently unclouded, until February of the following 
year, when a second attack occurred, attended on this occasion with 
loss of consciousness, and in less than twenty-four hours afterwards 
he expired on the 18th of February 1881, the day following the 
anniversary of his fifty-third birth-day. 
Cut off in the prime of his life, Dr. Sanders’ loss is lamented by 
a widow and a family of two sons and three daughters. It is 
lamented also by a wide circle of friends. The universal respect 
entertained for him was exhibited by the large gathering that 
took place at his funeral on the 23rd of February — a gathering 
which comprised representatives of all classes of society, and in 
