As Friedrich Miescher lay sick in Davos with TB, his former mentor the distinguished physiologist Carl Ludwig offered him some words of consolation. The German original is shown below, followed by my translation of the highlighted text into English.
‘Ludwig always took part in following Miescher’s fortunes, he also visited him repeatedly in Switzerland and, as Miescher lay ill in Davos, he expressed his feelings in two heartfelt letters.
‘Truly,’ he wrote in one of the two letters, ‘Patience is easier to preach than practice, and I know from my own experience I know what it means to have to renounce work that is full of future potential and which one has come to love. As grievous as it may be for you to be sick, you have the comfort of having achieved everlasting accomplishments; you have made the centre, the core of all organic life accessible to chemical analysis; and however often the cell will be studied and examined during the centuries to come, the grateful descendants will remember you as the ground-breaking researcher.’
From ‘Die Histochemischen und Physiologischen Arbeiten von Friedrich Miescher’ (‘The Histochemical and Physiological Work of Friedrich Miescher’ compiled by Wilhelm His, 1897, Leipzig); p.12.