corner of the
city hospital grounds, at Copenhagen.

There was a pause of amazed incredulity. The scientific men did not
believe it. Three years later, when the physician in charge of
Finsen's clinic told at the medical congress in Paris of the results
obtained at the Light Institute, his story was still received with a
polite smile. The smile became astonishment when, at a sign from
him, the door opened and twelve healed lupus patients came in, each
carrying a photograph of himself as he was before he underwent the
treatment. Still the doctors could not grasp it. The thing was too
simple as matched against all their futile skill.

But the people did not doubt. There was a rush from all over Europe
to Copenhagen. Its streets became filled with men and women whose
faces were shrouded in heavy bandages, and it was easy to tell the
new-comers from those who had seen "the professor." They came in
gloom and misery; they went away carrying in their faces the
sunshine that gave them back their life. Finsen never tired, when
showing friends over his Institute, of pointing out the joyous
happiness of his patients. It was his reward. For not "science for
science's sake," or pride in his achievement, was his aim and
thought, but just the wish to do good where he could. Then, in three
more years, they awarded him the great Nobel prize for signal
service to humanity, and criticism was silenced. All the world
applauded.

"They gave it to me this year," said Finsen, with his sad little
smile, "because they knew that next year it would have been too
late." And he prophesied truly. He died nine months later.

All that is here set down seems simple enough. But it was achieved
with infinite toil and patience, by the most painstaking
experiments, many times repeated to make sure. In his method of
working Finsen was eminently conservative and thorough. Nothing
"happened" with him. There was ever behind his doings a definite
purpose for which he sought a way, and the higher the obstacles
piled up the more resolutely he set his teeth and kept right on.
"The thing is not in itself so difficult," he said, when making
ready for his war upon the wolf, "but the road is long and the
experiments many before we find the right way."

He took no new step before he had planted his foot firmly in the one
that went before; but once he knew where he stood, he did not
hesitate to question any scientific dogma that opposed him, always
in his own qui