Page:Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, volume 1.djvu/139

Rh Fritz Schaudinn was born in the little village of Roseningken, in East Prussia, on the 19th September, 1871. The cold grey Lithuanian skies now look down on peaceful and uneventful scenes, but, in bygone days, there had been tumult and stir enough on these troublous Russian Marches. Sixty-five years before, the stolid agriculturists had been startled by Napoleon and his legions as they thundered past on their way to Eylau and Friedland; dire poverty had not sufficed to save their homesteads from being utterly wasted during the military occupation of Konigsberg; they had lain in the track of the Madman of the North and his Goths in their fierce irruptions into Europe; and for seven long years their very existence had been at stake during the struggles of the Great Frederick for the safety of his people and the integrity of his dominions. Even as young Schaudinn was born the last echoes of the Franco-German war were but dying away, and the friends and relatives of the Schaudinn family were returning to their homes in East Prussia from the distant service with the national army; but peace and tranquillity had come at last, and the boy was able to obtain an excellent general education at the High School of Gumbinnen. At the age of 19, he passed his matriculation examination, and entered as a student at the University of Berlin. So far, his attention had in no way been directed to science. Rather had his bent been to the study of languages, and he went up with the intention of reading philosophy, or, as we would say, he entered for the Arts Course. But, in that curriculum, biology is an early and a prominent subject, and the introduction to it was a short course of lectures on the Protozoa. As by a flash of steel, Schaudinn was struck with fascination; he had found his metier; and to the study of the lowly organisms, which he then saw for the first time, he devoted his life.

At Berlin there were unusual opportunities. In Pro-