Sir Joseph Fayrer, Bart., K.C.S.I., F.R.S.

  • Brunton, Thomas Lauder, Sir, 1844-1916.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Sir Joseph Fayrer, Bart., K.C.S.I., F.R.S. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    3/9
    Reprinted from Nature. June 6, 1907.] QN Tuesday, May 21, Sir Joseph Fayrer died. He was born on December 6, 1824, and he died full! o years and full of honours, for he was honorary physician (military) and physician extraordinary to the King, honorary physician to her late Majesty Queen Victoria, M.D. and LL.D. of various uni- versities, and fellow of many learned societies. Yet all his honours were richly deserved, and he bore them with the most unassuming modesty. Many men are acquainted with parts of his work, but very few know the whole. When Huxley died, a wail of grief went up from the scientific world, but manv people are unaware that but for Fayrer the course of Huxley’s life might have been completely different, and! a great part of his scientific work might never have been done. They were fellow students together, Huxley being senior by a year, though Fayrer was. actually older by a few months. When Huxley had finished his medical studies he was, as he himself says in the autobiographical sketch prefixed to his essays, wondering what he should do to meet the imperative necessity of earning his own bread, when Fayrer suggested that he should enter the naval medica service. He did so, and after a few months p ,^asIaij he w,ent on his famous voyage on the Rattlesnake, and thus began his scientific career. The attraction which drew Fayrer and Huxlev together and led to their close friendship was the gre£t likeness that7nnp theni1, in m?ny respects- Jt has been said 3 1CT^ hu.man ace a resemblance may be traced to some animal, and this was markedly so both in