In the recently issued life of von Helmholtz, the great German physicist, his biographer makes it very clear how much Helmholtz thought of Müller, one of the earliest teachers. [Footnote 10] Helmholtz, Brücke, and Du Bois-Reymond were warm personal friends (college chums we would call them in America), and all fervent admirers of their greatest {248} master, who showed them, as Helmholtz says, "how thoughts arise in the brains of independent thinkers." A half-century later, in his recollections of the time, he said: "He who has come in contact with one or more men of the first rank has his mental intellectual standard for all time broadened, and such contact is the most interesting thing that life can hold." Curiously enough, one of the most interesting things in Helmholtz's recollections is that, despite the fact that the poverty of his parents made it advisable for him to get through his medical studies as soon as possible, Müller persuaded him to take another year's medical work before going up for his graduation. This was mainly for the purpose of having his pupil complete an essay in physiology on which he was engaged. Müller offered him the use of his own laboratory and all his instruments for this purpose. His judgment was justified by Helmholtz's wonderful work on the conservation of energy made within a few years after his graduation. [Footnote 10: Herman von Helmholtz, von Leo Koenigsberger. Bd. 2, Braunschweig, Friedrich Viewig und Sohn, 1902-3] Müller's death was sudden, though not entirely unexpected. He had been ailing for many months and had resolved to give up his lectureship. He had made most of his preparations for settling up his affairs, and had even sent for his son, who was practising medicine at Cologne, to come up to see him. He made a special engagement for a consultation with his physician for a certain morning, and having gone to bed in reasonably good spirits, in fact, feeling better than he had for a long while, was found dead in the morning. Some time before he had made his will forbidding an autopsy, and so the exact cause of death will never be known, though it is rather easy to surmise that it was due to apoplexy, as arteriosclerosis--that is, degeneration of arteries--had been noticeable in Müller for some years, and his temporal artery particularly had become hard and tortuous. Müller was buried with all the rites of the Church, and as {249} in Germany the ecclesiastical authorities are very strict in this matter, there can be no doubt that the great physiologist had been a faithful Catholic. He was known for his edifying attendance at Mass on all the Sundays of the year. Many years afterward, in the midst of the Kulturkampf in the early seventies, a monument was erected to him in his native Coblentz, and the occasion of its unveiling was taken by the Catholic Rhineland for a celebration in honor of their great scientist.