Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/94

 Gamgee resigned his chair in Manchester in 1886, and practised for a time as a consulting physician at St. Leonards. He was appointed assistant physician to St. George's Hospital, London, in 1887, where he was also lecturer on pharmacology and materia medica in the medical school. On resigning these appointments in 1889 he resumed his scientific work at Cambridge for a year, and then left England for Switzerland, residing first at Berne, then at Lausanne, and finally at Montreux, where he engaged in active practice as a consulting physician, devoting all his spare time to research in his own laboratory. In 1902 he visited the United States by invitation to inspect certain physiological laboratories where the work was chiefly directed towards the study of nutrition in health and disease. In the same year he delivered the Croonian lecture before the Royal Society on 'Certain Chemical and Physical Properties of Hæmoglobin.' He re-visited America in 1903, and at the celebration of Haller's bi-centenary at Berne he represented the Royal Society.

He died of pneumonia while on a short visit to Paris on 29 March 1909, and was buried in the family vault in Arno's Vale cemetery, Bristol. He married in 1875 Mary Louisa, daughter of J. Proctor Clark. His widow was granted a civil list pension of 70l in 1910. A son predeceased him and two daughters survived him.

Research was Gamgee's main interest through life. His intimate knowledge of physics and chemistry was linked with experience of German methods which he had gained more especially in the laboratories of his life-long friend, W. Kühne, the professor of physiology at Heidelberg. Whilst lecturing at Manchester Gamgee prepared a translation of Ludimar Hermann's 'Grundriss der Physiologic des Menschen' from the fifth German edition. This book, which appeared in 1875 (2nd edit. 1878), together with the publication of (Sir) Michael Foster's textbook of physiology in 1876, powerfully influenced the development of physiological research in England. In 1880 Gamgee published the first volume of 'A Textbook of the Physiological Chemistry of the Animal Body.' The second volume appeared in 1893. The publication of this book marked an epoch in the progress of English physiological study.

Certain parts of physiology possessed a peculiar fascination for Gamgee. Knowledge of the physical and chemical properties of hæmoglobin is largely due to him. He was engaged for many years on an elaborate research upon the diurnal variations of the temperature of the human body with specially devised apparatus for obtaining a continuous record throughout the twenty-four hours. The subject had always been in his mind since he had worked at Edinburgh under Tait. The paper recording his method and results appeared in the 'Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society,' 1908, series B. vol. cc, but his death cut short the investigation. Gamgee believed that physiology stood in an intimate relation to the practice of medicine and that scientific training in a laboratory was essential to the advance of medicine. An excellent linguist, he could lecture fluently in French, German, and Italian. His conscientious modes of work relegated nothing of it to others; he did everything with his own hands.

Apart from the publications already mentioned, numerous contributions to the Proceedings of scientific societies and to scientific journals, Gamgee issued in 1884 'Physiology of Digestion and the Digestive Organs.'



GARCIA, MANUEL [PATRICIO RODRIGUEZ] (1805–1906), singer and teacher of singing, born at Zafra in Catalonia on 17 March 1805, belonged to a family of Spanish musicians. His father, Manuel del Popolo Vicente Garcia (1775–1832), made a reputation as singer, impresario, composer and teacher of singing. His mother, Joaquina Sitchès, was an accomplished actress. Manuel was the only son. Both his sisters, Maria Felicita (Madame Mahbran) (1808–36) and Michelle Ferdinande Pauline (Madame Viardot-Garcia) (1821–1910), achieved the highest eminence as operatic singers. All three children were educated by their parents. At fifteen Manuel was studying harmony with Fetis in Paris and singing in opera with his father at Madrid. In 1825 the family migrated to America, and at New York the father founded an opera house. After eighteen months of brilliant success the company toured to Mexico, where they were robbed of their earnings—some 6000l., it is said, in gold. They then returned to Paris, where the father pursued his career, but young Manuel, having no taste for the stage, became a teacher. In 1830 he temporarily interrupted his musical work to accept an 'appointment in the commissariat of the French army at Algiers,