John Tyndall, F.R.S. (born 1820), is one of the foremost of the scientific explorers of the century. Besides his researches in relation to magnetism, radiant heat, heat as a mode of motion, light, etc., Professor Tyndall has rendered very important services to medicine by his studies on The Floating Matter of the Air in Relation to Putrification and Infection, 1881.
Louis Pasteur (born 1822), chemist, is celebrated for his researches relative to the polarization of light, and for his investigations on fermentation, the preservation of wines, and the propagation of zymotic diseases in silkworms and domestic animals. Pasteur’s most important work for medicine was the demonstration of the existence of the germs which cause putrefaction.
The Minister of Public Instruction, addressing M. Pasteur on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, summed up what is known as Pasteurism in the following words: “Henceforward the formula is definitive and complete. Your disciples give it in two words—ferments and virus are living beings; vaccine is an attenuated virus, the basis of medicine is the artificial attenuation of virus, and thus the microbic treatment is founded.”
Pasteur’s later work has been chiefly in connection with the attempt to discover a prophylactic for hydrophobia.
Lionel S. Beale, F.R.S. (born 1828), physiologist and pathological anatomist, is a celebrated microscopist, author of The Microscope in its Application to Practical Medicine; Disease Germs, their Supposed and Real Nature, and on the Treatment of Diseases caused by their Presence; and many other works of equal importance to medical science.
William B. Carpenter (1812-1885) was a celebrated physiologist, whose great work has done more to popularise the study of physiology amongst non-professional, as well as medical readers, than any other, except that of Professor Huxley, which followed it.
Amongst other scientific workers of the century may be mentioned Purkinje, who rediscovered and described the bone corpuscles, contributed greatly to the study of microscopical anatomy and ophthalmology by his experiments with the ophthalmoscope.
R. Wagner (1805-1864) in 1861 called an anthropological congress, which was attended by several distinguished anatomists, and thus originated the “Anthropological Congress.”
Pander (1794-1865) and Baer (1792-1876) made important researches in the history of development. To Baer is due the splendid discovery of the mammalian ovum.
François Magendie (1782-1855) was the first to introduce the experimental method into pathology and pharmacology. His investigations in what are called pharmaco-dynamics, chiefly connected with the alkaloids, introduced many of these powerful remedies into medical practice. He admitted a vital principle in nervous activity, but for the rest endeavoured to reduce medicine to mere physiological and chemical laws.