Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/369

Rh upon his pupils. It is only too easy for young physicians to become callous to human suffering, which they are daily called upon to witness, and unless carefully guided by a teacher their manner toward patients may easily become inconsiderate. Like his deceased colleague, Wagner, Thiersch was one of those teachers whose benevolent dispositions exercised an ennobling influence over their pupils, and at once checked any tendency toward coarseness in word or thought.

The striking power of Thiersch's personality was at once felt by any one with whom he came in contact. His decisive bearing, his clear and sure judgment gained great respect for him in all circles. Among his surgical colleagues and at our academic meetings his opinion was depended on as a decisive one in all difficult questions.

As companions in the faculty, Ludwig and Thiersch supplemented one another admirably. Each one fully appreciated the other's value. Ludwig's aims were always of an ideal nature and always high. In the struggle to reach them he knew no compromise. It often seemed to me as if Ludwig, in his somewhat austere severity, was the embodied conscience of the faculty. Thiersch, on the other hand, with his intelligent insight, always knew where to find the starting point from which the object to be sought for was accessible. Both men were equal, however, in their sincerity and in the independence of their dispositions, both absolutely free from private considerations, and only anxious for the well-being of the institutions intrusted to them.

The names of Carl Ludwig and Carl Thiersch will be reverenced by our university for many years to come. Long will she be proud to have possessed two such large-minded and noble men. Such a possession is lasting in its consequences, for it will have an elevating and strengthening influence on coming generations. The memory of both men will always be blessed.

fully recognizing the influence of the inheritance of the imagination of his grandfather and the acute observation of his father on the formation of Darwin's scientific habits, Mr. A. R. Wallace mentions as other factors which have been usually overlooked the five years' voyage and his persistent ill health. During a very large portion of the five years on the Beagle, Darwin must have been practically alone and thrown on his own mental resources; and this mental solitude of an active mind, furnished continually with new and interesting facts on which to exercise the imaginative and reasoning powers, led to the formation of those original and suggestive ideas which were the foundation of his greatness. Hardly less important was the almost continuous ill health, which, while not preventing work or shortening life, obliged him to live in the country, free from the distractions of society, where his active mind could only be satisfied by continual study and experiment.