194 Obituary notice of Prof. Thomas Henry Huxley. [Dec. 
The principle was first tested practically with fowl-cholera, and 
then with swine-erysipelas; bat Pasteur lias also applied it to anthrax, 
and as all are well aware, to rabies. So far-reaching is it that the debt of 
humanity to Pasteur becomes immense, even should the efficacy of ino¬ 
culation treatment yet be considered doubtful in certain cases. But the 
great bacteriologist’s own researches have been cut short, though he has 
been more fortunate than many in living to see them bear such ample 
fruit. Though since his paralysis he had enjoyed fairly good health, in 
1887, he developed symptoms of heart and kidney disease, and four years 
ago he had influenza, resulting in yet further weakness. Last winter 
work Avas impossible for him, and though he Aventfor the present summer 
to Garches, near St. Cloud, still Avith an eye to his labours, in the early 
part of September he himself appears to have been conscious of his 
approaching end, and on September 28tli that end came. 
Of his numerous honours we need only speak here of those our own 
countrymen have bestowed upon him. In 1856, he received the Rumford 
Medal from the Royal Society of London, for his researches on the pola¬ 
risation of light, and in 1869 he was made a foreign member of the 
Society, receiving in 1874 the Copley Medal, which was aAvarded to 
Huxley in 1S88. We may congratulate ourselves, as members of the 
Royal Asiatic Society, on having elected the founder of bacteriology as an 
Honorary Member of our body during the past year. 
4 
Thomas Henry Huxley was born at Ealing in 1825. His scientific 
training began at Charing Cross Hospital, where he joined the medical 
school in 1842. Even while heie he distinguished himself by a brief 
notice in the Medical Times and Gazette of that layer in the root- 
slieath of hair which has since borne his name. Passing his M. B. 
Examination in 1845, he took the second place in honours in Anatomy 
and Physiology, and after practising for some time among the poor in 
London, he joined the Royal Naval Medical Service. Thus he came to 
occupy the post of Assistant-Surgeon to H. M. S. Rattlesnake then 
about to start on a surveying voyage to the South Seas. The voyage, 
during Avhich the Inner route between the Barrier Reef and the East 
Coast of Australia and New Guinea was surveyed, and the world 
circumnavigated, occupied four years. So ample Avas the use that 
Huxley made of the opportunities thus afforded, that his communications, 
and the evidence of ability which they furnished, led to his election 
into the Royal Society in the year after his return. Two years later, 
Huxley left the naval service, and in 1856 succeeded Edward Forbes 
as Professor of Natural History in the Royal School of Mines, a post 
Avliicli he continued to hold till his retirement from all official work 
