These discoveries proved so far-reaching in their bearing that their establishment and following out were the work of years of almost constant toil. It is estimated that from the period of his first experiments to the close of his life no fewer than thirty-five thousand hours were occupied by Dr. Hall in work strictly connected with the subject. The discovery was first made known to the Zoological Society on November 27, 1832: a fuller and further account was given to the Royal Society in 1833, and published in the Transactions. It was immediately translated into German and inserted in Müller’s Archiv. Yet most of the leading authorities in England, with the fatality which attends discoveries in proportion to their greatness, made Marshall Hall the object of obloquy, and denounced him as the propagator of absurd and idle theories. In 1837 a second memoir was read before the Royal Society, but was rejected from its Transactions; and in a most unscientific spirit, Dr. Hall’s offer to show his experiments before a committee was not acceded to. Even his proposal to withdraw from practice for five years, in order to study the subject without interruption, secured him no better reception. Moreover, the medical press, with the exception of the _Lancet_ and a very few others, denounced Marshall Hall virulently. In one number of a quarterly journal no fewer than four articles attacked the discovery, one denying its originality while allowing it to be true, another denouncing Dr. Hall’s views as new but not true. The long persistence of this opposition was almost incredible; for years one journal kept it up through every number; each step was disputed, and what was indisputable was depreciated. “Ancient works were disinterred in the vain hope of robbing him of his originality. ‘Complete anticipations’ were exultingly announced. On the one hand, he was accused of stealing his ideas from old writers; on the other, contemporaries started up and claimed the discovery as theirs; while some combated its truth, and never ceased cavilling.”