dr. theodor langhans
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His home life was a happy one. We may wellwonder at the irony of fate that has cut offtoo early a life so useful to the world. I amable to state that he bore the long and cruel
sufferings of an inveterate, progressive, and in-:sidious malady with the same fortitude withwhich he faced his earlier professional struggles.As we mortals define success, it came to Hewitt.Eminence in his profession; few enemies and ahost of warm and admiring friends; happiness inhis home; a sense of duty done; and a life mostnobly spent. His contemporaries, alas, are fastdisappearing, but amongst those of us who are leftthe memory of Frederic Hewitt will never fade."
Mr. Sheild’s tribute to Sir Frederic Hewitt callsfor no addition save the bare dates of Hewitt’sappointments and honours. He graduated in medi-cine at Cambridge in 1883, proceeding to thedoctorate in 1886. He was elected ansesthetist tothe Charing Cross Hospital in 1884, and held thepost for 14 years synchronously with appoint-ments at the Royal Dental Hospital and the LondonHospital. He was elected aneasthetist to the formerinstitution in 1885, and retired in 1901, and to theLondon Hospital in 1886, where he was consultinganaesthetist at the time of his death. He returned toSt. George’s Hospital as physician anaesthetist in1902. He was appointed to the Victorian Order in1902, and received the honour of knighthood in 1911.His family life was a singularly happy one. He
leaves two daughters and a son, a schoolboy atEton, to mourn their loss.
DR. THEODOR LANGHANS.
WITH Langhans has passed away one whose namemay not unsuitably be identified with the progressof pathology in the last half-century. At firstassistant to the anatomist Henle of Gottingen, hestudied under Virchow and Traube in Berlin andthen became Recklinghausen’s assistant in the
pathological institute at Wiirzburg. He occupiedthe chair of morbid anatomy at Giessen for a fewmonths, and was then called to succeed Klebs inBerne, where his life-work was performed and heremained until ill-health obliged him to relinquishthe professorship which he had held continuouslyfor 51 years. Here he was the senior member ofa trio who made the Berne medical school famousthe world over, and of whom Kocher and Sahli arestill living.The name of Langhans is familiar to all from
his description in 1868 of the giant cell as
an almost constant element in the structureof the tubercle, and the value of this discoveryis not diminished by the fact that such cells havesince been found in association with processes thatare not tuberculous. He made two large contribu-tions to the study of nephritis which paved the wayto the understanding of the functions of the glome-muli and the meaning of the early morbid processesobserved in them. Another important work wason the chorionic layer of the placenta. In his lateryears he was chiefly occupied with the pathologicalanatomy of goitre and of cretinism, and in 1892he described changes in the peripheral nerves Iwhich he had found in cases of cachexia strumi-priva. Langhans’s idea of comparing the thyroidglands in a goitrous district with those of a goitre-free one was fruitful in enabling his pupils torecognise the earliest beginnings of the processin the form of diffuse epithelial proliferation inapparently normal glands.
Of the regard felt towards him by his pupils, oneof them who now occupies the chair of pathologyat another Swiss university testifies: "As a
lecturer Langhans was not merely reverenced forhis learning hut was always beloved by his pupils,to whom, by his simple and clear style, his greatlearning, and his encouragement to exact observa-tion, he gave a priceless preparation for theircareers in after-life. To his assistants and
colleagues he was a much-honoured master whoseconfidence and friendship were things to be eagerlysought after and, when obtained, to be deeplyvalued. He possessed all the qualities of a successfulresearch student-a wonderful gift of observation,a clear intellect, and a never-flagging interest foreven the minutest and apparently least importantdetails; and, lastly, he practised a rigid criticismof his own work, so that it rarely happened thatany of it was corrected by later experience, andthus, in spite of his extremely modest and retiringnature, his judgment was valued everywhere."
MALACHIA DE CRISTOFORIS, M.D. PAVIA.THE Third Italy owes much to her medical
patriots from the dark days of her subservience toAustria, all through the campaigns of 1848, 1859,1860, 1866, and 1870 up to the present when, as theyoungest member of the Quadruple Alliance, she isrounding off her north-eastern frontier and aidingthe good cause by keeping Austria in play by landand sea. Next to Agostino Bertani, the surgeon-in-chief of Garibaldi’s expeditions, who " sacrificed tothe Revolution one of the finest medical intellectsof the nineteenth century
" and who, shortlybefore his death, bequeathed to his country hergreat " Codice Sanitario," no name stands outmore honourably than that of the great Milanesephysician and sanitary reformer, Malachia DeCristoforis, who recently closed his 80 years ofstrenuous life.The youngest of three or four brothers, he was a
child when he fought in the memorable " Five Days"and had already received his " baptism of fire "
when he matriculated at the University of Pavia asa student of medicine. In 1854, as an under-
graduate, he volunteered his services in the terriblecholera visitation, and evinced a quite uniquetalent in improvising and administering ambu-lances in the rural districts. In 1856 he tookthe suniiiii in medicinâ honores, and was im-mersed in clinical observation and research whenthe masterly diplomacy of Cavour, inspired by"Italy’s opportunity in the Eastern Question,"absorbed the interest of all young Italians, till,returning with military honours from the Crimea,the Piedmontese army found a wider field ofconflict by the side of the Emperor Napoleon inthe expulsion of Austria from Lombardy. In 1859young De Cristoforis fought in the " Cacciatoridelle Alpi," a Garibaldian Corps, and acquitted him-self nobly, till, in the following year, his conductunder fire was so conspicuous that he earned notonly the special commendation of Garibaldi, butthat of King Victor Emmanuel, receiving thesilver medal for " military valour " and alsothe martial Cross of Savoy. In 1866; Venetiabeing by this time reclaimed to the mother-land, he resumed his clinical studies in theMilanese Ospedale Maggiore, making gynsecologyhis specialty and steadily rising in professionalacceptance till he was promoted "primario" onthe clinical staff. He was now an authority and