[25] Makers of Modern Medicine, Fordham University Press, New York, 1907.
[26] New York, Van Nostrand Company, 1891.
[27] Published in the Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institute for the year 1891, Washington, 1893.
[28] In the address on the scientific work of George Simon Ohm, published by the Smithsonian Institute in 1891, this name is translated Sangberg. In the article by Baurenfeind, in the Allegmeine Deutsche Biographie, the name is spelled Langberg. The form of the old German L may have suggested the letter S, or it may have slipped in as a typographical error.
[CHAPTER X.]
Faraday.
The maxim current among European scientists, that it is well to wait before accepting any scientific discovery to see what will be said about it on the other side of the Rhine, throws a rather curious sidelight on the supposed absoluteness of scientific knowledge. Gallic enthusiasm or German subtlety may evolve plausible theories that look like scientific discoveries, but the destructive criticism of the neighbor nation usually saves the scientific world from deception. Not infrequently, the English-speaking scientists held the balance between these rivals in the intellectual world, and their adhesion to either party or side of a question secured its dominance. When all three, Germans and French and English, are agreed as to the value of a scientific discovery, then it may be looked upon as having some of the absoluteness, or at least possesses for the moment the finality of scientific truth. If this triple agreement be taken as the criterion of the significance of a great scientist's work, then must Michael Faraday be considered as without doubt one of the greatest scientists of our time, and probably the greatest experimental scientist that the world has known.
Michael Faraday