Other tributes

Abstract

Our readers will forgive us if we devote a few pages, which should perhaps be devoted to scientific investigation, to personal recollection and the history of the Archive itself. For the first time, an issue of this journal bears the name of only one editor — and we do not need to make special mention of the fact that it is death which has torn open this gap. It is exactly five years since this Archive first appeared. It was certainly daring on the part of two young, almost unknown men to wish to establish a journal intended to publish exclusively original articles, and for which there were scarcely any obvious contributors. Some courage was needed to risk one’s name in an enterprise which had to overcome so much competition and which did not conceal its intention of exerting influence on the course of the development of Science. It was a matter of initiating a struggle for principles and methods against established schools of thought and authorities — trusting merely to one’s own strength and confidence vis à vis a good cause. It was perhaps hubris, but certainly not ambition. Both of us would gladly have given our work to other journals, had they been available to us, but Traube’s Beiträge which published our first substantial essays was not continued, mainly for reasons relating to the publisher. The other northern journals opposed us through of their lack of principle and their inner vacuity.The south German journals were remote from us, and in addition, I had had bitter experience of them. One of them had rejected my works on inflammation of the veins with ‘well-meaning advice’ — works whose content was in part later confirmed in its own columns.