1919-20.] 
Obituary Notices. 
185 
David Berry Hart, M.D., F.R.C.P.E., Librarian, Royal College of 
Physicians, Edinburgh. By J. W. Ballantyne, M.D., F.R.C.P.E. 
(MS. received July 13, 1920.) 
It was the scientific aspects of medicine which appealed most strongly to 
David Berry Hart, and his interest was not limited to the subjects which 
are usually classified as purely medical ; he was therefore in a real sense at 
home in the rooms of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and he enjoyed to the 
full the intercourse with scientists of all departments which was to be had 
there. From the very first true science dominated all Dr Hart’s contribu- 
tions to medicine, and he was quick to apply every advance in cognate 
subjects to the elucidation of the problems of obstetrics and gynecology. 
Dr Berry Hart was horn in Edinburgh in October 1851, both his 
father’s and his mother’s families being well known in the city ; and he 
died there on June 10, 1920, after an illness which had only been recog- 
nised as serious a few days previously. He was educated in his native 
town, and he passed through the medical curriculum in the university with 
distinction, graduating as M.B. and C.M. in 1877. After a short visit to 
Vienna he began his professional career as Assistant in the Midwifery 
Department of the University under Professor Alexander Russell Simpson, 
and at the same time he assisted him in his private practice. Shortly 
afterwards the association thus set up between Sir Alexander and Dr Hart 
was firmly established by the publication of a joint work upon an aspect 
of pelvic anatomy and physiology which was of great importance. From 
1877 onwards there flowed from Dr Hart’s pen a long series of articles on 
obstetrics and gynecology, scarcely one of which could be regarded as 
mediocre and many of which would have sufficed alone to have established 
his reputation as a scientific worker and deep thinker of a high order. 
They numbered by the time of his death over seventy, and whilst, as has 
been said, all were worthy of study, those upon the anatomy and physiology 
of the female pelvic floor, upon the physiology of the third stage of labour, 
and upon ectopic pregnancy were outstanding contributions which decided 
the trend of medical opinion all over the world. In his later years Dr Hart 
dealt with the fascinating problems of heredity as they appeared in con- 
nection with Mendelism, hermaphroditism, and teratology; here he was 
treating abstruse, difficult, and more purely theoretical questions, but what 
he had to say was always well worth attending to. 
Meanwhile Berry Hart was receiving distinctions of various kinds. At 
