Finsen knew that his discoveries were but the first groping steps upon a new road that stretched farther ahead than any man now living can see. He was content to have broken the way. His faith was unshaken in the ultimate treatment of the whole organism under electric light that, by concentrating the chemical rays, would impart to the body their life-giving power. He himself was beyond their help. Daily he felt life slipping from him, but no word of complaint passed his lips. He prescribed for himself a treatment that, if anything, was worse than the disease. Only a man of iron will could have carried it through. A set of scales stood on the table before him, and for years he weighed every mouthful of food he ate. He suffered tortures from thirst because he would allow no fluid to pass his lips, on account of his tendency to dropsy. Through it all he cheerfully kept up his labors, rejoicing that he was allowed to do so much. His courage was indomitable; his optimism under it all unwavering. His favorite contention was that there is nothing in the world that is not good for something, except war. That he hated, and his satire on the militarism of Europe as its supreme folly was sharp and biting. Of such quality was this extraordinary man of whom half the world was talking while the fewest, even in his own home city, ever saw him. Fewer still knew him well. It suited his temper and native modesty, as it did the state of his bodily health, to keep himself secluded. His motto was: “_bene vixit qui bene latuit_—he has lived well who has kept himself well hidden”—and his contention was always that in proportion as one could keep himself in the background his cause prospered, if it was a good cause. When kings and queens came visiting, he could not always keep in hiding, though he often tried. On one of his days of extreme prostration the dowager empress of Russia knocked vainly at his door. She pleaded so hard to be allowed to see Dr. Finsen that they relented at last, and she sat by his bed and wept in sympathy with his sufferings, while he with his brave smile on lips that would twitch with pain did his best to comfort her. She and Queen Alexandra, both daughters of King Christian, carried the gospel of hope and healing from his study to their own lands, and Light Institutes sprang up all over Europe. In his own life he treated nearly nineteen hundred sufferers, two-thirds of them lupus patients, and scarce a handful went from his door unhelped. When his work was done he fell asleep with a smile upon his lips, and the “universal judgment was one of universal thanksgiving that he had lived.” He was forty-three years old.