John F. Fulton (1899-1960)

A Midsummer Reminiscence In June of 1957 word came to me in Zurich that Dr. Fulton was gravely ill. He had recently arrived in London to celebrate the Harvey Tercen-tenary and was to go on from there to Oxford to receive an honorary degree. He had rallied from critical illnesses before, but this time it seemed that the end had come. I boarded a plane for London. The muffled roar of the all-but-empty plane and the looming into view of the snow-covered Alps were conducive to reverie. Successively, the Fin-steraarhorn, the dour north face of the Eiger, the M6nch, the Jungfrau, and faraway Mont Blanc caught the mist of one's thoughts and caused it to linger over the little town of Nyon, Switzerland. Noviodunum. Here on the northern shore of Lake Geneva was Les Terrasses, the villa of Arnold Klebs, the great friend of Fulton and Harvey Cushing. Here young Fulton and Cushing had been inspired by an incomparable library of incunabula. Here had been the starting place of expeditions over Simplon Pass to Italy-Ravenna, Milan, Bologna-in search of rare books. Here possibly had begun an expedition in the minds of the three men to reach the peak of excellence in the form of an historical library which would house their respective collections, an expedition that culminated in the achievement of the Yale Medical Historical Library. The plane continued its course over France, another country which Dr. Fulton loved, and which reciprocated his affection and admiration by making him an officer in the Legion of Honor. Thereafter he was never seen without the insignia-the small red rosette-in his lapel. Today it seemed that he would not live to receive the honor that would probably have meant more than any-the degree from Oxford. La tie et la mort. Out of the patchwork of green and orange plowed fields lying three miles below grew the image of Bichat, the young French physiologist of the last century, who like Fulton had achieved an early fame, and who, just before his untimely