[120]
of Philosophy.
A case of somnambulism, which fell under his observation and showed him disease, or, at least, abnormal action of the brain, under an aspect which was new to him, seems to have given a fresh impulse to his medical studies, and, for a time, he was inclined to believe that the vocation which had thus far been to him one of necessity, might become one of preference.
But the naturalist was stronger than the physician.
During this very winter, when he was preparing himself with new earnestness for his profession, a collection of fossil fishes was put into his hands by the Director of the Museum of Munich.
It will be seen with what ardor he threw himself into this new investigation.
His work on the ‘Poissons Fossiles,’ which placed him in a few years in the front rank of European scientific men, took form at once in his fertile brain.
This text is part of:
Houghton, Mifflin and company, New York, Boston, 1885.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.