Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol II (1901).djvu/404

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Harley
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Harley

and was presented to Queen Victoria. In 1855 appeared his mediocre and unpretending work, 'Australia and its Goldfields: a Historical Sketch of the Progress of the Australian Colonies . . . with a particular account of the recent Gold Discoveries . . . to which are added Notices on the Use and Working of Gold in Ancient and Modern Times' (with a map and a portrait of Hargraves), London, 1855, 8vo. Hargraves returned to live in Sydney, and was in 1877 voted a pension of 250l. by the New South Wales parliament. He died at Forest Lodge, Sydney, on 29 Oct. 1891, leaving issue two sons and three daughters.

[Australasian Bibliography, Sydney, 1893; Sydney Herald, 31 Oct. 1891; Mennell's Australasian Biography, p. 216; Heaton's Australian Dictionary of Dates; Strzelecki's Discovery of Gold and Silver in Australia, 1856; North British Review, August 1854; Times, 25 Oct. 1853, 9 and 12 Jan. 1854; Rusden's Hist. of Australia, 1883, ii. 601 seq.]

T. S.


HARLEY, GEORGE (1829–1896), physician, only son of George Barclay Harley and Margaret Macbeath, was born at Harley House, Haddington, in East Lothian, on 12 Feb. 1829. His father was sixty-three at the time of his birth, and his mother was forty. His father died soon afterwards, and he was brought up by his mother and grandmother, Mrs. Macbeath. He received his early education at the Haddington burgh schools, and at the Hill Street Institution, Edinburgh, and subsequently proceeded to the university of Edinburgh, where he matriculated at the age of seventeen and graduated M.D. in August 1850.

After acting for fifteen months as house surgeon and resident physician to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, Harley spent two years in Paris, working in the physiological and chemical laboratories of Charles Dollfus, Verdeil, and Wurtz. He made many observations, which were recorded in the 'Chimie Anatomique' of Robin and Verdeil. Among these the most notable were the recognition of iron as a constant constituent of the urine, and the observation that the cherry colour of normal human urine was due to urohæmatin (Pharmaceutical Journal, 1852). He next worked in the physiological laboratory of the College de France, at first under Magendie and then under Claude Bernard, whose publications on the influence of the liver in the production of diabetes led Harley to undertake research as to the effects of stimulation of nerves on the production of sugar by the liver. During his two years' residence in Paris he was almost entirely occupied with physiological researches, and in 1853 he was elected annual president of the Parisian Medical Society. He subsequently spent two years in Germany at the universities of Würzburg (under Virchow), Giessen (under Liebig), Berlin, Vienna, and Heidelberg. When he was studying in Vienna, during the height of the Crimean excitement, he attempted to join the army of Omar Pasha as a civil surgeon, but, travelling with an irregular passport, he was arrested, and narrowly escaped being shot as, a spy.

His foreign study well qualified him for the lectureship on practical physiology and histology at University College, to which he was appointed on his return from Padua in 1855. He was also made curator of the anatomical museum at University College, and in 1856 he started practice in Nottingham Place. In 1858 he was elected a fellow of the Chemical Society, and fellow of the College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and he read at the Leeds meeting of the British Association a paper in which he showed that pure pancreatine was capable of digesting both starchy and albuminous substances. In 1859 he became professor of medical jurisprudence at University College in the place of Dr. Alfred Carpenter [q. v. Suppl.], and in 1860 physician to the hospital. These appointments he held till eye trouble obliged him to resign them. In 1862 he received the triennial prize of fifty guineas of the Royal College of Surgeons of England for his researches into the anatomy and physiology of the suprarenal bodies.

While at Heidelberg Harley had spent much time in studying in Bunsen's laboratory the methods of gas analysis. After his return to England he made researches on the chemistry of respiration. Some of the results were published in the 'Philosophical Transactions,' and had much to do with his election to the fellowship of the Royal Society in 1865 at the age of thirty-six. In 1864 he was elected fellow of the Royal College of Physicians; he afterwards held the post of examiner in anatomy and physiology in the college. He also became corresponding member of numerous foreign scientific societies.

In 1864 Harley took an active share in the labours of the committee of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society appointed to study the subject of suspended animation by drowning, hanging, &c. The experiments were carried out in his laboratory at University College, as were those for the committee of the same society on chloroform (1864), of which Harley was also a member. He energetically aided in founding