He who stimulates others to work, who unfolds a new idea, discusses a new relation between facts, or brings together a mass of hitherto uncorrelated observations, and puts them in usable form for the multitude—he is a great man. Modern commerce and applied science have been the direct result of the work of such men, but in no field are there required mental qualities of such high order as in medicine.
To wrest from the future secrets that will serve mankind requires a constructive imagination that visualizes, as though through a telescope, the hitherto unseen, combined with attention to microscopic detail and acuteness in analysis. These qualities, though rarely found combined in one mind, were realized in one of England's greatest physicians, whose death is recorded by our London correspondent.1