Pierre Nicolas Gerdy, a French physiologist, bornatLoches, Aube, May 1.1797, died in Paris, March 18, 1856. In 1834 he became professor in the Paris faculty of medicine, and in 1837 was elected a member of the academy of medicine. His treatment of physiology was systematic rather than experimental, and he carried to an extreme degree the doctrine of the so called vital properties residing in as many different organs and tissues of the body, and accounted directly for the phenomena of life, without any reference to the action of physical or chemical forces. His publications were numerous and varied in character, most of them appearing in the medical journals or in the bulletins of the academy of medicine. He also wrote Anatomie des formes exterieures, appli-quee a lapeinture, d la sculpture et a la chi-rurgie (1829); Traite des bandages et des pause-merits (1837-'9); Physiologie philosophique des sensations et de Vintelligence (1846); and Chi-rurgie pratique, uncompleted (l851-'5).