1 0 Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. [sess. 
Professor William Rutherford was born at Ancrum Craig, 
Roxburghshire, on 20th April 1839. He was educated at Jed- 
burgh Grammar School, and went through the medical course of 
study in the University of Edinburgh. After a distinguished 
career as a student, he graduated with honours in 1863, and 
obtained a gold medal for his thesis. He taught Anatomy for a 
year in Surgeons’ Hall under Dr Struthers. Thereafter he studied 
at the great Medical Schools of Berlin, Leipzig, Vienna and Paris. 
In 1865, at the age of twenty-six, he was appointed University 
Assistant to Professor John Hughes Bennett. In 1869, when only 
thirty years old, he was appointed Professor of Physiology in King’s 
College, London, and during the last three years of his tenure of 
that chair he was Fullerian Professor of Physiology in the Royal 
Institution, London. When Professor Bennett resigned the Chair 
of Physiology in the University of Edinburgh, Professor Ruther- 
ford was appointed his successor. He will probably be judged in 
the future by his ability as a teacher rather than by devotion to 
original research, though his work on striped muscle attracted 
attention both in this country and on the Continent. His know- 
ledge of all branches of physiology was encyclopaedic. His prin- 
cipal work was entitled Actions of Drugs on the Secretion of Bile. 
He was also the author of Outlines of Practical Histology and a 
Text-book of Physiology. He died on 21st February 1899. He 
was elected a Fellow of this Society in 1869. 
Sir John Struthers was born in 1823 at Brucefield, near Dun- 
fermline. He attended the medical course in the University of 
Edinburgh, and graduated there in 1845. He was Demonstrator 
of Anatomy in the University, and was subsequently appointed 
Lecturer on Anatomy in the Extra-mural School. In 1863 he 
became Professor of Anatomy in the University of Aberdeen. In 
that capacity he succeeded in increasing the anatomy accommoda- 
tion ; he had new dissecting-rooms built, he secured a new building 
for an anatomical museum. He prepared and collected museum 
specimens, dissections, casts, models, and animal skeletons. In his 
more advanced course of Osteology he expanded his human into 
comparative anatomy. In 1889 a failing voice and general weak- 
ness induced him to give up his professorship. He then returned 
to Edinburgh, and took a prominent part in the management of the 
