Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/288

 increased by his appointments in 1871 as professor superintendent of the Brown Institution (University of London) and as professor of practical physiology and histology at University College, London, in succession to (Sir) Michael Foster [q. v. Suppl. II]. In 1874 he succeeded William Sharpey [q. v.] as Jodrell professor of physiology at University College. The courses of practical teaching which he organised in that capacity served as models for instruction in the medical curriculum of the country. Until 1878 he retained in addition his post in the Brown Institution. He had become F.R.C.P. in 1871, was Harveian orator at the College of Physicians in 1878, was awarded the Baly medal hi 1880, and gave the Croonian lectures there on the progress of discovery relating to the origin of infectious diseases in 1891.

In 1882 he was invited to Oxford as first Waynflete professor of physiology, a fellowship at Magdalen College being attached to the chair. The degree of M.A. was conferred on him in 1883, and that of D.M. in 1895. He remained Waynflete professor until 1895, when he was appointed regius professor of medicine in the university. He was elected at the same time an honorary fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. At Oxford he steadily pursued his researches in physiology and pathology, until his resignation of the regius professorship at the close of 1903. In pathology he powerfully enforced the truth that experimental investigations are essential for the elucidation of pathological problems, and that sound pathology must rest upon an accurate physiological basis.

In physiology his experimental activity was particularly identified with the investigation of the fundamental physical characteristics of living tissues when these are thrown into the active excitatory state. In this investigation, which largely occupied him for twenty-five years, he devoted himself to the precise determination of the comparatively small electrical changes presented by active tissues. The tissues selected included plants like Dionsea (Phil. Trans. 1877, 1882, and 1888), the heart (Journal of Physiology, 1880, 1883), muscle (ibid. 1895, and Proc. Eoy. Soc. 1899), and the electrical organs of the skate (Journal of Physiology, 1888, 1889). He employed for this purpose a modified form of Lippmann's capillary electrometer, which was brought to a state of great perfection in the Oxford laboratory. The value of his work in this field of research was recognised by his being chosen in 1877 for the second tune to give the Croonian lecture at the Royal Society on the excitatory changes in the leaf of Dionaea (Proc. Roy. Soc. xxv.), and by the award of a royal medal in 1883 by the Royal Society. In 1889 he was for the third time selected by the society as Croonian lecturer, taking as his subject ' The Relation of Motion in Animals and Plants to the Associated Electrical Phenomena' (Proc. Roy. Soc. lxv.).

To large audiences throughout the country Burdon-Sanderson frequently gave sugges- tive addresses, biological, physiological, and pathological. He was president of the biological section of the British Association at Newcastle in 1889, where he delivered an address on ' Elementary Problems in Physiology.' In 1893 he was president of the association at Nottingham, and in his presidential address he set forth his intellectual attitude to the genera nature of the physiological problems pre- sented by the living organism. The most noteworthy of his addresses are appended to the memoir commenced by his widow and completed by his nephew and niece, Dr. J. S. Haldane and Miss E. S. Haldane (Oxford, 1911).

Burdon-Sanderson served on three important royal commissions on hospitals for infectious diseases in 1883, on the consumption of tuberculous meat and milk in 1891, and on the University of London in 1892. On 10 Aug. 1899 he was created a baronet. Many other honours fell to him. He was hon. LL.D. of Edinburgh, bon. D.Sc. of Dublin, corresponding member of the Institute of France and of the Academy of Science, Berlin. After several months of increasing physical weakness, he died at Oxford on 23 Nov. 1905, and was buried at Wolvercote cemetery. He married, on 9 August 1853, Ghetal, eldest daughter of Ridley Haim Herschell [q. v.] and sister of Farrer, afterwards Lord Herschell, lord chancellor [q. v. Suppl. I]. His widow survived him until 5 July 1909. He had no children, and the baronetcy became extinct at his death.

He bequeathed the sum of 2000l. 'for bhe support of the pathological department of the University of Oxford and especially to provide for the expenses of research in pathology conducted in the said laboratory or elsewhere,' Of fine presence and striking features, Burdon-Sanderson had rare iharm of manner, A portrait (1883) by the Son. John Collier is in the lecture theatre of the Oxford Physiological Laboratory, and another by Charles Wellington Furse