402 AUG. 29, 1931 ROBERT MACNEIL BUCHANAN r THiE BRITISH culture media. The speedy growth of applied bacterio- Peter Lowe, who founded the Faculty in 1599, himself logy caused this department to assume a mnore and more held an official post as suirgeon to the corporationi. On prominent place in public health and prevention of the occasion of the Pasteur Centenary in 1922, DI. disease, until, under his guidance, there arose that impor- Buchanan was asked to deliver an oratiotn on Pasteur at tanit departmenit where a great variety of scientific duties the request of the Royal Philosophical Society. is now performedl on behalf of the corporation and the Dr. Buchanan took great interest in the work of the public. One of his first important duties was in connexioni British MIedical Association ; he was chlairman- of the with the outbreak of plague in 1900-1, when he was Glasgow North-Western Division from 1925 to 1927, anid associate(d with the professor of pathology in discovering, president of the Glasgow anid NVest of Scotland B3ranch after long an(l tedious search, the source of plague in the in 1928-29. He was also a representative of the Glasgow rats which infested a particular area of the city. Dr. Division in tihe Representative Body for 1929-30, an(d Buchanlan himself demonstrated the presence of the president of the Sectioni of Microbiology (inicluding plague bacillus in the rat flea. He was thus able to Bacteriology) when the Associationi held its Anniiual assist in coping with thie spread of this serious disease, MIeeting in Glasgow in 1922. which might have involved the city in more disastrous Although he retired froin the services of the Corporation consequences than it actually did. He took the extreme of Glasgow in November, 19:30, his colleagues had looked risk of performing the necessary post-mortems without forward to availing themselves of his exceptioinal and the aid of gloves, which were of so coarse a texture as to specialized knowledge for inany years. I-lis services to hamper the delicate mnanipulations necessary, a proceeding the city, love for his work, and the prominent position which called forth a protest from a Germani scientist who he occupied by virtue both of his office and of the was watching him: " Gott bewahr, Herr Doktor." universal esteem in which he was held by his fellows, are Another of his achievements was the eradication of a measure of the loss which the .city of Glasgow has glanders from the horses of the tramway department, sustained by his deatlh. He was a man of charming and the laboratory contains the finest series of specimens personiality, and ever willing to assist his younger of this affection in the country. He was called upon to colleaguies. Deep sympathy is extended to his widow in deal with many epidemics, suich as that of cerebro-spinal her bereavement. fever in 1906, and various outbreaks of typhoid fever. [LThe photograph reproduced is by T. and R. Annan and Sons, His laboratory also performs a great variety of routine (G;sLsowv.] investigations, ranging froln the examination of milk and Loch Katritie water to the diagnosis of insect pests, of GROUP CAPTAIN MART'IN FLACK, C.B.E., which there are about sixty different species to be found I\I.A.OXON., 'M.B., B.CII.OXON. in the vicinity. Group Captain Martin Flack, director of the department In addition to his bacteriological work, one of the chief of medical research for the Air Miniistry, died in the Royal features of Dr. Buchanani's activities was his interest in Air Force Hospital, Hallton, oni Auiguist 16tth, in hiis .comparative pathology. He made it mainifest in 1922 fiftieth year. Four that much gain could be expected from the correlation of motths ago he disease processes in maan and in the lower forms of life. became stubject to His interests in this respect led him into such questions Attacks of py)rexia as the diseases associated with the vegetable and animal of obscure origin an(1d world-diseases of great economic importance-such as entered the chief lhos- the blights affecting various fruits, and the diseases of p)ital attached to hiis such foo(dstuffs as the potato, the currant, the tomato, Service for observa- the apple, and -other vegetable products. Dr. Buchanan tion anid treatnment. also showed for many years a strong liking for the study hlis illness prove(d to of the insect world. This study was of int.erest to him be a formii of septic- both because of its intrinisic appeal and becauise of the aeinia, an(l, in spite serious economnic loss entailed by the destructive activities of the skilled attenl- of many inisects. His wide knowledge of the life-histories tion and the lovillng of insects was consequently of great value, and his advice care of hiis colleagues, was commonly sought from all over the country with wxho were deeply regard to their ideentification, their habits, and the methods attached to him, and to be adopted for their exterm-yination. For a number of the application of years he had been greatly initerested in the causation of the best means avail- grass sickness in horses, because of its similarity to able, he ultimately encephalitis in man. The museum which he instituted succumbed-in spite in the laboratory has proved of the utmost value to of great natural sanitarians and of unfailing interest to lay visitors. Dr. stjength of body and will to his malady. He did mnuch Buchanan published nuimerous papers dealing with his that will be remembere(1 both for in-e(licilie anid for Ille particular subjects, and had been, in fact, accumulating Service to whiich lhe w'as attziclid. To hiim wsas enltrusted material for a book. dealing with one particular aspect the responsible task of estaiblishing a research sertce of the many he had stucdied durinig hiis long experience. under the Director-General of the medical departmeint of On the more personal side, Dr. Buchanan was held in the Roval Air Force in the later - ears of the great war. the very highest esteem by his colleagues in the medical Martin Flack was bornl in the village of Borden, Kent, profession. In 1925 he received the highest honour which and had to make his own way in life. Scholarships and the profession, in its own city, has in its power to bestow, home help carried him to Keble College, Oxford, which the Presidency of the Royal Faculty of Physicians and he entered as science exchibitioner in 1901, being then Surgeons. He occupied this post with distinction for 19 vears of age. Applying himself to medical sul)jects, he two years, during which he was called upon to organize came under the influence of Professor Arthur Thlomson the celebrations in conlnexion with the Lister Centenary, and the late Professor Francis Gotch, from whom he high duties which he performed with dignity and success. imbibed the spirit of inquiry. One other man had a In this appointment history has exemplified its habit of profound influence on hiin-as on many Oxford men- repeatinlg itself, though afteAr a lon1g interval, for Maister the late WVilliamn Hatchett Jackson, a Fellow of Keble AUG. 29, 1931 MARTIN FLACK [ TIlEBRITISI 403 IMEDICAL JOURNAL 2 and Radcliffe Librarian. Jackson taught him how a good were being conducted there. He wrote the article on the life should be spent. heart for Hill's Further Advances in Physiology (1909); In 1905, having taken his B.A. degree, he entered contributed, in conjunction with Professor J. J. Macleod, the London Hospital, obtaining the Price Scholarship, the article on physiological chemistry to Pembrey's Although his work lay in the hospital, hiis scientific in- Practical Physiology (1910); and wrote, in partnership cniiatioils took him frequently to its mnedical college, with Sir Leonard Hill, A Textbook of Physiology (pub- where his great natural abilities were recognized by Sir lished in 1919). In 1915 he was awarded the Radcliffe Leonard Hill, then lecturer on physiology, and by Sir Prize by Oxford University. At this time Sir Leonard Arthur Keith, who taught anatomy in the college of the Hill was called on to establish a department of applied London Hospital. At that time Sir Arthur Keith was physiology for the Medical Research Council. Flack making an inquiry inito the arrangement of the muLscula- accompanied his chief to Mount Vernon, and it was while ture round the venous orifice of the auricular chambers so engaged that he was appointed to take charge of the of the heart, and was joined by Flack in this inquiry. department of medical research, which the Air Ministry In the following year (1906),- Tawara aninouniced his had established under the Director-General of the Medical discovery of a systemii of conducting musculature between Service of the Royal Air Force. tne auricles and ventricles of the mammalian heart. No happier choice could have been made. He threw all Keith and Flack 4t once verified the truth of Tawara's his energies into his newv office. The problems he had to discovery and set out to trace the evolution of the solve were of two kin-ds: what were the causes which had mammalian auriculo-ventricular connecting system from led to the breakdown, both in body and in mind, of the simpler arrangement found in the hearts of lower experienced flyers? how could candidates for the Royal vertebrates, and also to ascertain if in the region where Air Force who were constitutionally unfit for flying be the heart beat was believed to begin-namely, at the detected? His training in physiology and his experience termination of the superior vena cava in the right auricle as an investigator stood him in good stead. He devised -there existed tissue of the nature of the node which a series of tests for the detection of physical inefficiency Tawara discovered at the beginning of the auriculo- and of physiological instability. These tests, the mnethods ventricular bundle. They found in all mammalian hearts, of their application, and the results which flying experieince at thle expected site, a collection of peculiar muscular brought to light, were made the subject of his M\ilroy tissue, which they niamed the sino-auricular node, in- Lectures at the Royal College of Physicians in 1921. ferriing from its position, and from its resemblance to the Further contributions from his department will be found tissue at the beginning of the ventricular bundle, that in the pages of the British Medical Journal (" Estimation this node was concerned in the inception of the heart of physical efficiency," 1923, ii, 921 " Note on sea-sick- beat. Four years later (1910), Flack, when working in ness," 1931, i, 176). He contributed also the article on Professor Kroilecker's laboratory in Berne, carried out the inedical problems of aviation to the Encyclopaedia experimnents which supported this contentioni. The credit Britannica; an article on "Applied physiology of avia- of demonstrating the exact site at which the normal tion " to Dr. H. Graeme Anderson's Medical and Surgical heart-beat begins, and of proving-that the site coincides Aspects of Aviationi (1919); on " Stable nervous control with the position of the sino-auricular node, belongs to in relation to flying " (La ncet,- 1926, ii, 1748) anid Sir Thomas Lewis. another oq " Man and the machine " to Military Surgekfy While carrying out his clinical studies in the wards (1927, lxi, 758). of the hospital, Flack acted as assistant demnonstrator of At the close of the war his important services were physiology unider Sir Leonard Hill, and assisted his chief recognized; he was mentioned in dispatches, and- received in the many researches which were then being conducted the honour of C.B.E. His enthusiasm was infectious in the department-researches which, in the main, related he knew how to give willing service, and he knew how to fundamental problems of circulation and respiration. to obtain it. For the welfare and improvement of the In this way he gained a first-hand knowledge of the department to which he was attached he gave all that regulatory mechanisms of the heart and lungs, a know- was in him. No trouble was too much. He was an ledge which he applied afterwards with signal success in educator, and took every opportunity of addressing men solving the medical probleimls of aviation. of the Royal Air Force on matters relating to the main- In 1908, at the age of 26, he became M.B., B.Ch.Oxon., tenance of health, of physical efficiency, and of morale. M.A.Oxon., and married his cousin, Cecile Cooper. His None will feel his loss more deeply than those who were income as demonstrator of physiology at -the London associated with him in the headquarters of the medical Hospital, was then £150 -per annum. On this slender department of the Air Ministry. The sympathy of all income debts contracted for his education were paid off, will go out to his widow and his four children in their a happy household was established, to which in due grievous loss. time two sons and two daughters were added. Martin Flack was a " sportsman" in the best sense of that word- Sir LEON'ARD IIJLL writes: a man who welcomed life's handicaps, who enjoyed his Martin Flack was a man of high courage and great work, his home, his life, and was ever ready to lend a ability. Born in a Kentish village, of a father who could helping hand to whomsoever might need it. Everyone give the weight of a score of live beasts correctly within who worked with him enjoyed his partnership; he was a few pounds, he raised himself to Oxford Uiniversity by resourceful, cheerful, with a brave heart, and met his the winning of scholarships, and woIn through to the disappointments with a smile. In 1909 he was awarded taking of his medical degrees, but hampered with a debt the Radcliffe Travelling Scholarship by his old university, to pay off when he first earned a demonstrator's salary which gave him the opportunities he had longed for-of utnder me. Working first with Arthur Keith, he dis- working in Continental laboratories. He worked, as has covered anatomically the sino-auricular node, and then just been mentioned, in the laboratory of Kronecker at showved experimentally onI living animals that this actually Berne, and also in the same laboratory with Dr. L. Asher, was the pace-maker of the heart. The brilliant after-work in a successful investigation on the nerve supply to the of Sir Thoinas Lewis to some extent obscured Flack's thyroid gland. He also wv-orked at the heart with Pro- discovery, and the world, as the excellent appreciation of fessor Fredericque at Liege. Returning fromn the Continent, himi in the Timtes of August 19th shows, did not fully he resumed his demonstratorship in Sir Leonard Hill's realize the fact that he first experimentally proved the department, and shared in the many investigations which function of the node. I can well rememiber projectillg, r THE BRITISW 404 AUG. 29, 1931] SAMUEL WILLIS PROWSE MEDICAL JOURNAL with his help, the beating heart of an animal on the screen of its being thought th'at he was trying to gain promiinenice by means of an epidiascope, and showing the whole class at for himself prevented, him from writing up and offering the London Hospital Miedical College the startling effect for publication his ideas and finidings on many aspects of of local cooling on this node. Flack was a splendid and his work. enthusiastic teacher and demonstrator, and he and I I have seldom met a man who had so strong a sense of together carried out many researches at the London on loyalty, and to the Service which he served so well hi$ the effect of want of oxygen ancd excess of carbon dioxide; loss will be almost irreparable. But it is niot only for in -particular, we showed the inifluence which breathiilg his knowledge and capabilities that he. will be missed.; oxygen, had on the power to hold the breath and withstand he was, in all his relations, one of the most simple, a notably high concenitration of carbon dioxide. We genuinie, anid good-hearted of meni, anid I am sure that showed that filling the lungs with oxygen just beforehanid there are very many who, like myself, will have expe- enabled an athlete to runi an unipaced quarter or half rieniced in his death a real sense of persoinal loss. mile with astonishing ease anid l)ace, and wiith Ino after- feeling of stiffness or fatigue. Flack accompanied Wolffe, the Channel swimmer, oIn one of his atteiimpts anid gave SAM\UEL WILLIS PROWSE, M D., LL.D., him oxygen when exhausted, aind saw him breathe it in F.RC.S>.E.n .J.FAGS. from a bag with huge deep breaths, anid then start to Dean of the Faciflty of vNt(dicinle, andl P'rofessor of oto-larm,ngologv, swim again with astoniishing vigour, only at the end, UJniversitN of M\Ianiitoba however, to be beaten by the cold, and this within a We regret to record that DY)r. S. W. Prowse died suddenly quarter or mile or so of the French shore. We showed, from a heart attack in the Witnnipeg General Hospital too, how oxygen given in ani initerval renewed the vigour Onl Aug,ust 1st, in his sixty-second year. of an exhausted boxer. At Etoii College an unskilled and Samuel WVillis Prowse was born in Prince Edward exhausted lad, after receiving oxygen, knocked his skilled Islaind, the son of Samuel Prowse, a member of the opponent through the ropes. Flack caimie with me to Senate of Caniada. He was educated at Mount Allison the Department of Applied Phyisiology founded by the University, New Brunswick, an(d received his medical Medical Research Counicil in 19,13-14, but when the war training in Edinburgh, where he graduated M.B., C.M. in demonstrated the need for ani investigation into the 1893, proceeded M.D. in 1896, and obtaitned the Fellowship failure of air pilots at high altitu(des, Flack was allocated of the Royal College of Suirgeons of Edinburgh in 1898. to this work, and so camiie to joini the Air Service. He Sir Jaimnes Purves-Stewart was a classmate, and last year, now had full opportuniity of applying the work we had whent the British Medic-al Association met in Wininipeg, done together on oxygen waint. He Inot only arranige(d for Dr. Prowse had his old classmate as his guest and renewed the proper supply of oxygen to pilots but also carried out happv memories. From 1894 to 1898 he practise(d at a brilliant set of tests by which he was able to discriminate Colinisburgh, Fifeshire, anid in the latter year he moved between pilots who were unfit to fly and those who were to Wiinnipeg at a time when Canada was entering uiponi St,. Flack's work laid the fouindation Inot oInly of the a period of great development. After a year or two of IIIdical tests of candidates anid pilots, but of physical general practice lhe restricted himself to ophthalmology training for making and keepinig pilots fit. He had a and oto-laryngology. genius for applying physiology to such problems. In' 1902 he became a member of the staff of the Flack was troubled with a rheumatic affection of the Maniitoba Medical College, and about that time was heart, and as a youIng man received a grave prognosis appointed to the staff of the Winnipeg General HIospital. in spite of this he won through, worked very .hard, and In 1910 he was president of the Medico-Chirurgical Society. attained to great ends. A marke(d characteristic was cheer- He took particular interest in the welfare of medical fulness in the face of all obstacles. At the last he dis- students and of young practitioners, aind wheni the cussed his illness with full knowvledge and great courage. MIanitoba M\edical College offered to raise a hospital uniit We lose in Flack a most cheery, original, and zealous in 1916, Dr. Prowse was unianiimouslyr selectedI to act as worker, and one of the very best of friends. its head. He was gazetted officer commandinig No. 4 Casualty Clearing Station, B.E.F., with the rank of Air Vice-Marshal Sir DAVID MIUNRO writes: lieutenaint-colonel, took the Unit to France, and while When I was a Director of Medical Services, R.A.F., I was there was appointed deain of the Medical School. His in close association with Martin Flack, and know better owin ill health and the serious illness of his wife coin- than most the amount of work he did for that Service, pelled him to return to Canada. In a few years the and the depth of his loyalty to it. The value to avia- Medical College, an independent institution, though affiliated tion of his scientific investigations into its physiological with -the university, transferred to that body its proper-ty problems is well known to the world of scientific men, and equipment, and became the Faculty of Meditine and made him a figure in the world of aviators. In that of the IUniversity of Manitoba. At a dinner giveil by field of investigation he was in this country the pioneer. his colleagues in 1924, in commemoration of his services Nor was his work knowin oinly to his own countrymen: on as deani, it was announced that his frienids ha(d raised the continent of Europe and in the IU.S.A. workers in the £1,000, the proceeds of which were to be devoted to the field of medical research, if they had ever heard of the Prowse Prize for Clinical Research. For many years -he Royal Air Force, knew of it through the name of Flack. was a member of the Royal Society of 'Medicine, anid of Coming to the Service as a trainied physiologist, and one the Ophthalmological Society of the Uniited Kingdom. who had already made some reputation for himself, Tn 1930 he was vice-presidenit of the Section of Laryngo- Flack's special value to the adrninistrationi was his logy and Otology at the Wiinilipeg Meetinig of the British grasp of the range of application of physiological Medical Association, and at a convocation of the Utni- principles. He was emphatically a field rather than a versity of Manitoba he received the degree of Doctor of laboratory physiologist, and he habitually thought of the Laws. everyday actions of huTmiani beinigs in physiological terms. To high professional qualifications Dr. Prowse united His brain in conIsequenlce was fertile in ideas, many of a courtesy of mainner aind a dignity of bearing which which, if elaborated anld written up, would have enideared him not only to his patienits and his associates attracted attention. He always, however, felt strongly in professional life, but especiallv to young people. He that the name of the iiidividual should be subordinated was singularly unselfish and unsparing of himself, and he to the name of the Service, and I know that the fear c;arried on the noblest traditions of the profession.