Jedney introduced us that first evening. He was two-sided—daring and aggressive in his work, thorough and patient and precise, but shy, awkward, inept in everyday matters.
Only once did I detect evidence of real emotion, when a speaker at the commencement exercises paid a tribute to science. It was commonplace enough—Huxley said it all better years before; but I happened to glance at Murtha, and was amazed to see how his eyes were shining. In the crowd moving out at the end, we came together, and he spoke to me almost breathlessly, "Wasn't that great? There's a man who sees truly, Harvey—he knows! Science is food and drink, it is rest and work, it is life itself to me! You people who can work and stop" he broke off, flushed and moved away in silence. I had not the heart to follow him and point out that the speaker was a politician, a professional orator who knew neither science nor scientists—inexpensive and sentimental.
But Murtha was sincere. There are people who can love an abstraction that way—who can fling their own egotisms into a cause, and forget themselves for it, and I believed he was one of them. He had his limitations. Even the memory of his tragic end has not wiped out the general enjoyment of his reply when someone asked him something about the Lion of Lucerne.[1] "I know absolutely nothing about zoology," he said.
In his laboratory, however, he was inspired as a great actor is before an audience. My own work was in one of those stages of routine checking important in all research, but leaving the mind free; and Murtha's daring hypotheses attracted me. I disliked him—but the problems he offered were fascinating.
Experiments in Vivisection—a Selenium Retina
During the autumn we restored something very like sight to a blind rabbit. A student named Vinton had volunteered for experiment; but we were uncertain how the voltages we used would affect the nervous system, and it seemed best to try first with the rabbit. I didn't enjoy the blinding of the poor little beast—it reminded me most unpleasantly of little Prince Arthur, in its patient helplessness—but Murtha was briskly efficient, and had no qualms. With selenium as the basis of an artificial retina, we were able to make the creature turn toward the light, and even follow an electric torch about a darkened room. Later we planned to conduct tests with Vinton, who would be able to describe his sensations.
Sight investigations were therefore postponed, and we took up hearing. By means of a series of Helmholz resonators we built artificial ears tuned to cover two octaves, and had just finished them when fortune favored us. A trepanning case at Fairchild hospital gave Murtha the chance to set his electrodes directly on an exposed human brain, transmitting sound over his wires and past nature's ordained channels direct to the center of consciousness. To me it was uncanny—although it was nothing to what followed later.
Perhaps his triumph in this case gave him his dreadful idea. At any rate, he flung himself into the work more savagely than ever, and hardly took time away for meals and sleep. He had but one advanced class that year, and no elementary work, so that almost the whole day (and night) belonged to the work he loved. Also, such had been our progress that he could go on with only occasional assistance from me.
This was fortunate, for a short time before I had been appointed to accompany the Frazier Polar Expedition on the air-flight to the north the following April. We wanted to check Vegard's and McLennan's studies of the aurora, and to pick up whatever else we might see of interest in the region of the pole. I made preparations to turn over my crystal research to Dr. Marling, who also took my classes and my administrative duties. It was necessary for me to do a good deal of extra reading and some consultation with the people in the department of astronomy, and to correspond with other physicists, to be ready. But I found time to be present when Murtha went over the contemplated experiment with Vinton.
A Brilliant Student Afflicted With Blindness—Murtha Experiments With His Eyes
Vinton was blind—but he was a brilliant youngster, and led most of his classes in spite of his handicap. To watch him swing along the street you might think he could see as well as anyone. There was a curious mottled scar across his face, without which he would have been handsome; for there was none of the vacancy in his expression that generally marks the blind man. He looked clean and young and decent, and he was—the sort that makes me enjoy being a teacher.
Against the dark curtain he used to see pictures—for there were two books of verse to his credit, and he was paying his way through school by writing pirate stories. If he had been different there might have been something pitiful in the idea of a blind boy’s writing of adventure; but he never asked sympathy. He wanted desperately to see, however, for as soon as the rumor of our work reached him, he came and offered to help. He would run any risk, or endure any hardship.
When I was convinced there was very little of either involved, I took him around to Murtha. Before we went ahead Murtha asked him, "How did your lose your sight" and he replied, "When I was nine a chum of mine and I rigged a telegraph line between our homes and studied Morse. One day I pulled a wet battery down on my face. That is why I'm scarred in this way." Murtha was satisfied—“I wanted to make sure that the optic nerves were sound, for I can't get farther in," he explained, and we put the boy on the operating table. Murtha made his incisions, connected his electrodes, and swung in the current.
For a time nothing happened; and then the most beautiful look came upon his face and he said very softly, "I can see a yellow light." Murtha pulled the window blinds and brought his electric torch into action. He flashed it on the selenium, shut it off, flashed it on, darkened it again—and each time Vinton reported the waxing and waning of the radiance. Color screens were tried, but all except the blue screen dimmed the image or illumination or
- ↑ Famous monument to Louis XVI's Swiss Guards.—Ed.
