ientists of the United States in his time. He had had a
very striking career. As a medical student at the University of
Pennsylvania he reported in his thesis for the doctorate in medicine,
which had become at this time usually such a commonplace statement of
conventional science that it was shortly after given up as a
requirement, a series of observations on absorption through membranes,
using bubbles for his experimental work, that attracted the special
commendation of the faculty and the attention of the scientific world.
He was not yet thirty years of age when he made the first photograph
of a human being--that of his sister--ever made and in 1840
successfully secured the first photographs of the moon. During the
next ten years he made a series of observations on the spectrum which
attracted deserved attention and anticipated not a little of
Kirchoff's work. Melloni, himself a distinguished Italian physicist,
reported these observations {502} to the academy of Naples. Draper's
text-book of physiology was without doubt the best medical text-book
issued in America up to that time and deservedly held its place for
many years in our medical schools.

It was no wonder then that Draper received many distinctions in the
shape of membership in foreign scientific societies, honorable
mentions, and prizes. His works were translated into many of the
European languages. Late in life he gave up his experimental and
scientific work to devote himself to the writing of history. His
history of the Civil War was widely read both in Europe and America.
His "History of the Intellectual Development of Europe," which only a
little reading now in the light of recent knowledge of the Middle Ages
shows us to be a caricature of the philosophy of history, was
translated into several foreign languages and was probably more widely
read than any serious work by an American author up to that time. What
was very rare for an American book at that period it was read by a
great many European teachers and students. All this gave added
distinction to his writing on the subject of the relations of science
and religion, and so it is easy to understand that he was considered
by many to have made an almost final summary of this important
controversy.

Professor Draper's book then became a sort of bible, that is a book of
books, for a great many American teachers of science and, above all,
for the younger generation of university lecturers who were to hav