100 YEARS AGO

Undoubtedly, as the editor remarks in his preface to [this] work, there has been a great desire on the part of teachers of physiology in this country to obtain a complete text-book on their subject, written in English, somewhat similar to the classical Handbuch of Hermann. Prof. Schäfer, with the aid of some of the best-known physiologists in Britain at the present day, has succeeded in bringing out a work which, if one may judge from the first volume, is destined to supply more or less completely the want that has been so long felt.—

Text-book of Physiology, edited by E. A. Schäfer, LL.D., F.R.S.

From Nature 26 May 1898.

50 YEARS AGO

Physiology is a subject covering such a wide range of interests, and involving so many other branches of science, that teachers of it tend to have their own individual ways of approach. Most of them, after trying various ways of introduction to the subject, end up by considering, first, what that great teacher of physiology, Sir Michael Foster, called the ‘master tissues’ of the body, the muscles and the nerves.— Introduction to Physiology, by Prof. W. H. Newton.

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It is difficult to convey to this generation any adequate impression of the giant personalities that gave the Victorian era such brilliance and distinction. E. S. Beaven was one of them. Barley was his great life interest: he was the son of a barley grower, and son-in-law of a maltster whose business he entered as a youth; all his life was spent in handling barley and he knew it more intimately than any of his generation or this. But it was not only as a barley expert that he was known and respected: he was typical of his time, a sturdy, vigorous, forceful personality, outspoken, scathing in his denunciation of anything State-aided or other spoon-feeding agency; a stout believer in self-help, in some of his contemporaries, and in himself.

From Nature 29 May 1948.

Many more abstracts like these can be found in A Bedside Nature : Genius and Eccentricity in Science, 1869 -1953, a 266-page book edited by Walter Gratzer. Contact David Plant.

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