et way, backed by irrefutable facts. In a remarkable
degree he had the faculty of getting down through the husk to the
core of things, but he rejected nothing untried. The little thing in
hand, he ever insisted, if faithfully done might hold the key to the
whole problem; only let it be done _now_ to get the matter settled.

Whatever his mind touched it made perfectly clear, if it was not so
already. As a teacher of anatomy he invented a dissecting knife that
was an improvement on those in use, and clamps for securing the
edges of a wound in an operation. As a rifle shot he made an
improved breech; as a physician, observing the progress of his own
disease, an effective blood powder for anaemia. At the Light
Institute, which friends built for him, and the government endowed,
he devised the powerful electric lamps to which he turned in the
treatment of lupus, for the sun does not shine every day in
Copenhagen; and when it did not, the lenses that gathered the blue
rays and concentrated them upon the swollen faces were idle. And
gradually he increased their power, checking the heat rays that
would slip through and threatened to scorch the patient's skin, by
cunning devices of cooling streams trickling through the tubes and
the hollow lenses.

Nothing was patented; it was all given freely to the world. The
decision which he and his wife made together was made once for all.
When the great Nobel prize was given to him he turned it over to the
Light Institute, and was with difficulty persuaded to keep half of
it for himself only when friends raised an equal amount and
presented it to the Institute.

Finsen knew that his discoveries were but the first groping steps
upon a new road that stretched farther ahead than any man now living
can see. He was content to have broken the way. His faith was
unshaken in the ultimate treatment of the whole organism under
electric light that, by concentrating the chemical rays, would
impart to the body their life-giving power. He himself was beyond
their help. Daily he felt life slipping from him, but no word of
complaint passed his lips. He prescribed for himself a treatment
that, if anything, was worse than the disease. Only a man of iron
will could have carried it through.

A set of scales stood on the table before him, and for years he
weighed every mouthful of food he ate. He suffered tortures from
thirst because he would allow no fluid to pass his lips, on account
of his tendency to