OBITUARY

The Late Professor-Emeritus JOHN GRAY McKENDRICK, LL.D., M.D., F.R.S.

In Professor McKendrick there has passed away one of the pioneers in the modern teaching of Physiology in this country. He had the inestimable advantage of some years of medical practice before he became a physiologist, and he thus understood what the medical student requires. With him Physiology was the Institutes of Medicine as it used to be called in our Scottish Universities. It is satisfactory that in the last few years there has been a return to the recognition of this aspect of the Science and to its relationship with the art of Medicine. McKendrick was born in Aberdeen in 1841, and he graduated there about 1863. He then held various medical posts till, in 1869, he came to Edinburgh as Assistant to Professor Hughes Bennett. This position he held till 1872 when he started as a Lecturer in the Extra-Mural School of Edinburgh, that nursery of many distinguished teachers. When he was appointed Regius Professor in the University of Glasgow, in 1876, he found the Department of Physiology practically non-existent. His distinguished predecessor, Andrew Buchanan, had done no more than give courses of lectures. Practical work was unknown. At this time the inspiration of the great continental physiologists, Ludwig, Helmholtz, Marey and du Bois Reymonde was being felt in our schools and the importance of practical teaching was beginning to be recognised. Rutherford in Edinburgh was developing it there and in Glasgow McKendrick was not behind him. No grants from the University were at first obtainable, and from his meagre salary McKendrick bore much of the expense of acquiring microscopes and apparatus. When laboratories were provided they consisted of two badly-lighted rooms under the lecture theatre which were entirely unsuitable for the purpose. But by careful planning he made the most of them, and before the end of his term of office he was conducting practical classes both for the ordinary medical students and also for those preparing for degrees in Science. At the same time he carried on original investigations, and his love of music led him to the study of sound production and hearing. In 1884 he was elected to the Royal Society and served on the Council in 1892-93, and he was for some years Fullerian Professor at the Royal Institution. 176 Obituary McKendrick was a splendid teacher and one of the best popular lecturers of his time. His students always impressed the examiners as thoroughly trained on the right lines for the future study of Medicine. Their knowledge was sound and practical. He had the gift?to an unusual degree? of holding a popular audience, and the ingenuity and success of his demonstrations always delighted the spectators. His great ambition, to secure for Glasgow University a properly equipped Physiological Department, was realised in 1903, when the generosity of the Glasgow public put the necessary funds at the disposal of the University, and he had the satisfaction of seeing the buildings for the present Institute completed before he resigned. With his characteristic unselfishness he recognised that the equip- ment of the Institute should be left to his successor, and, in 1906, after thirty years of service, he retired to his well-earned leisure. Private sorrows, bravely borne, had fallen upon him as his ambitions for his Science of the University were being realised, and it was with a saddened heart that he transferred his home to Maxieburn at Stonehaven which he had so long looked forward to as the centre of his family life in the midst of which he was so happy. In his retirement he kept his lively interest in Science, and during the War when younger men were doing their duty he had the satisfaction, in spite of his age and infirmities, of doing his "bit" by acting as Examiner at Aberdeen University. His genial, kindly nature and wide culture brought him an extensive circle of friends of all other classes. On his retirement they were able to show their admiration and affection by providing funds for a Laboratory of Experimental Psychology in which the work on the Special Senses, to which he had made such valuable contributions, might be continued and extended. McKendrick was without selfish ambition. To him his Science and his University were everything, and he has gone to his long rest with his life's work well accomplished. D. N. P.

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